Month: June 2019

• 

  Google's first official picture of the Pixel 4.

So you want some Pixel 4 news, do you? After rumors started flying that the Pixel 4 would support Project Soli, Google's radar-based gesture chip, Google has offered an official response. It's, uh, a picture of the Pixel 4.

What you see above comes from Google's official hardware-focused "Made by Google" Twitter account, which, along with the picture, commented, "Well, since there seems to be some interest, here you go! Wait 'til you see what it can do. #Pixel4." This is certainly not what we're used to from company PR, but we'll take it!

With Google's official picture, we can confirm a number of things about the Pixel 4. First, there's a giant square camera assembly that looks like it comes out of the phone quite a bit. If the early renderings of the iPhone 11 from in-the-know people like OnLeaks are any indication, Google and Apple could have rather similar-looking devices—from the back, at least.

Enlarge / Soccer fans in Madrid on June 12, 2019. (credit: PIERRE-PHILIPPE MARCOU/AFP/Getty Images)

La Liga, Spain's top professional soccer league, has been slapped with a €250,000 ($280,000) fine for violating user privacy after the league's official app activated the microphones on user cell phones, El País reports. The app spied on users in an effort to identify bars that were showing pirated streams of soccer games.

Spanish users download the app to get game times, scores, and other information about soccer games. But the app also included a function designed to help the league identify venues that were streaming soccer games without paying the appropriate licensing fees.

The app would use the GPS sensor to determine whether the phone was located in a bar or other venue that might show soccer streams. If it was, the app would listen for audio from a copyrighted game. If a bar was caught streaming a game and didn't have an appropriate license, the league could demand the bar pay up.

When you think of motorsport, you probably don't associate it with being environmentally aware. But there are actually racing series that take the concept of reducing carbon emissions quite seriously. Obviously, there's Formula E, which races electric cars powered by biofuels. But well before Formula E was a thing, there was the American Le Mans Series. Back in 2008, the series partnered with SAE International, the US Department of Energy, and the Environmental Protection Agency to create the Green Racing Challenge, a race-within-a-race that looked at energy consumption and carbon emissions as well as sheer lap time to determine who went the farthest, fastest, and most cleanly.

The program survived the 2013 merger between the ALMS and another series, Grand-Am, but sadly came to an end of sorts in 2016 when the series aligned itself with a Le Mans rulebook that mandated E20 rather than cellulosic E85 as the gasoline/ethanol blend of choice. But the hiatus is now over. "We’re getting the band back together" said Scott Atherton, president of IMSA (International Motor Sports Association), the sanctioning body that runs what we now call the WeatherTech Sportscar Championship. "We were the first racing series to form partnerships with DOE and EPA, and we're making IMSA a leader in reducing the environmental impact of our sport," he said at a press conference held at this year's Detroit Grand Prix at the end of May.

Green racing is an actual thing

In the past, the Green Racing Challenge was only for one of the GTLM class, contested by road-based machines like Corvettes, Ferraris, and Porsche 911s. Now, the goal is for the entire series—which sees a mix of DPi prototypes, GTLM cars, and the more amateur-friendly GT3 versions all race together—to achieve Green Racing Cup status. Yes, that's actually a thing. In 2014, SAE published green racing protocols to ensure that efforts such as these have some meaningful impact. It's a technical manifesto that I think many here would be on board with, as laid out by its mission:

Enlarge / Forecast output from the new version of the model, which goes into service today. (credit: NOAA)

Weather forecasters need a ton of knowledge and a fair bit of experience with local weather patterns to do their job well. They also need a good forecast model. These computer models take in measurements from weather stations on the ground, satellites in orbit, and balloons in between and then simulate the physics of weather forward in time a few days.

For the first time in about 40 years, the guts of the US model got swapped out for something new today. The upgrade brings us a new “Finite-Volume Cubed-Sphere” (or FV3) dynamical core, which simulates the basic atmospheric physics at the heart of this endeavor, a change that has been in the works for a while.

The new core had its origins in simulating atmospheric chemistry but ended up being adapted into other models. A few years ago, it was selected to replace the old core in the US Global Forecast System model. And for more than a year now, the new version of the model has been running in parallel so its results could be compared to the operational model.

Enlarge / The Huawei Matebook 13, which was released in January 2019. (credit: Valentina Palladino )

Huawei was planning to announce a new MateBook laptop this week, but an executive confirmed that the company cancelled the launch because of US sanctions against the Chinese company. It's not clear when—or whether—the laptop will be released.

The US has banned sales of technology to Huawei, which uses Intel chips and the Windows operating system in its MateBook PCs. Huawei "planned to unveil the new Windows laptop at the CES Asia 2019 trade show in Shanghai this week" but "indefinitely postponed" the launch because of the US export ban, The Information reported yesterday.

Huawei consumer division CEO Richard Yu subsequently confirmed the cancellation to CNBC. "We cannot supply the PC," Yu said, calling it "unfortunate," according to CNBC.

Enlarge (credit: Google)

Google is expanding its new Android-based two-factor authentication (2fa) to people logging in to Google and Google Cloud services on iPhones and iPads. While Google deserves props for trying to make stronger authentication available to more users, I’ll be avoiding it in favor of 2fa methods Google has had in place for years. I’ll explain why later. First, here’s some background.

Google first announced Android’s built-in security key in April, when it went into beta, and again in May, when it became generally available. The idea is to make devices running Android 7 and up users’ primary 2fa device. When someone enters a valid password into a Google account, the phone displays a message alerting the account owner. Users then tap a "yes" button if the login is legitimate. If it's an unauthorized attempt, the user can block the login from going through.

The system aims to tighten account security in a meaningful way. One of the key causes of account breaches is passwords that are compromised in phishing attacks or other types of data thefts. Google has been a leader when it comes to two-factor protections that by definition require something in addition to a password for someone to gain access to an account.