Month: April 2021

Enlarge (credit: Google Play)

Google has announced another privacy restriction for Play Store apps. Starting this summer, Android 11's new Query_All_Packages permission will be flagged as "sensitive" on the Play Store, meaning Google's review process will restrict it to apps the company feels really need it. Query_All_Packages lets an app read your entire app list, which can contain all sorts of sensitive information, like your dating preferences, banking information, password management, political affiliation, and more, so it makes sense to lock it down.

On a support page, Google announced, "Apps that have a core purpose to launch, search, or interoperate with other apps on the device may obtain scope-appropriate visibility to other installed apps on the device." Google has another page that lists allowable use cases for Play Store apps querying your app list, including "device search, antivirus apps, file managers, and browsers." The page adds that "apps that must discover any and all installed apps on the device, for awareness or interoperability purposes may have eligibility for the permission." For apps that have to interact with other apps, Google wants developers to use more scoped app-discovery APIs (for instance, all apps that support x feature) instead of just pulling the entire app list.

There's also an exception for financial apps like banking apps and P2P wallets, which the page says "may obtain broad visibility into installed apps solely for security-based purposes." We assume this means scanning for root apps. The new policy also states that "[a]pp inventory data queried from Play-distributed apps may never be sold nor shared for analytics or ads monetization purposes."

Enlarge / A Waymo self-driving car in Silicon Valley in 2019. (credit: Sundry Photography / Getty)

A police report obtained by the Phoenix New Times this week reveals a minor Waymo-related crash that occurred last October but hadn't been publicly reported until now. Here's how the New Times describes the incident:

A white Waymo minivan was traveling westbound in the middle of three westbound lanes on Chandler Boulevard, in autonomous mode, when it unexpectedly braked for no reason. A Waymo backup driver behind the wheel at the time told Chandler police that "all of a sudden the vehicle began to stop and gave a code to the effect of 'stop recommended' and came to a sudden stop without warning."

A red Chevrolet Silverado pickup behind the vehicle swerved to the right but clipped its back panel, causing minor damage. Nobody was hurt.

Overall, Waymo has a strong safety record. Waymo has racked up more than 20 million testing miles in Arizona, California, and other states. This is far more than any human being will drive in a lifetime. Waymo's vehicles have been involved in a relatively small number of crashes. These crashes have been overwhelmingly minor with no fatalities and few if any serious injuries. Waymo says that a large majority of those crashes have been the fault of the other driver. So it's very possible that Waymo's self-driving software is significantly safer than a human driver.

At the same time, Waymo isn't acting like a company with a multi-year head start on potentially world-changing technology. Three years ago, Waymo announced plans to buy "up to" 20,000 electric Jaguars and 62,000 Pacifica minivans for its self-driving fleet. The company hasn't recently released numbers on its fleet size, but it's safe to say that the company is nowhere near hitting those numbers. The service territory for the Waymo One taxi service in suburban Phoenix hasn't expanded much since it launched two years ago.

It's a shame that 2017's The Emoji Movie exists—though, by all means, get that money, Patrick Stewart (in the role of "Poop") and Maya Rudolph ("Smiler"). It's just... that animated cash grab soiled a perfectly good title for a superior emoji treatise that would follow only two years later: the 2019 Tribeca Film Festival-selected documentary Picture Character.

You might (might) recognize this film today as The Emoji Story, as it was acquired by production company Utopia in December 2020 before having its name changed and finally becoming available on most VOD platforms. But this comprehensive look at the world of 1,182 unique emoji (and counting) first sneaked onto our radar during South by Southwest 2019. Emoji activist and dumpling emoji () creator Jennifer 8. Lee was presenting on the newly adopted "interracial couple" emoji (which she helped shepherd to reality alongside partners at Tinder) and mentioned she had produced an upcoming project. Lee's panel essentially demystified the unseen emoji creation and approval process for a small Austin Convention Center conference room, and her film would set out to do the same for a much wider audience.

“It’s kind of a maze and takes a really long time—generally between 18-24 months—from when you have an idea and when it hits your iPhone,” Lee said during that SXSW panel. She would know. In addition to her successful dumpling campaign, Lee is one of the leaders of EmojiNation, a group that set out to diversify emoji after learning firsthand how limited the selection process can be. After all, the emoji that now run rampant on our smart devices and social media feeds all get approved by the tiniest, 12-person selection committee made up of older techie representatives from big corporations (Netflix, Google, Oracle, IBM, Apple, Facebook, Adobe, Microsoft, Shopify) alongside a few unexpected guests (German software company SAP; the Chinese telecom company Huawei; and the government of Oman). Each organization pays tens of thousands a year for the privilege of having someone voting yes or no on everything from "mate" (a customary Argentine drink) to "anglefish." Lee eventually joined the Unicode sub-committee on emoji (a non-voting role open to anyone with a $75/year Unicode membership) to better learn the emoji vetting process and look through submissions.

It has been over a year now since Sony first announced it would be bringing the previously PlayStation-exclusive series MLB The Show to Xbox as early as 2021. Today, Microsoft announced even better news for Xbox-owning baseball fans: MLB The Show 21 will be included with an Xbox Game Pass subscription the day it launches on April 20.

The move means that over 18 million Game Pass subscribers will have free access to the game on Xbox One and the Xbox Series X/S, or on Android phones via xCloud streaming. That creates a bit of an awkward situation for PlayStation owners, who will have to pay individually for a Sony San Diego-developed and Sony-published game that many Xbox subscribers will get included with their subscription fee.

That's especially notable because Sony has its own subscription service, PlayStation Now, which is not getting MLB The Show on launch day (as of now, at least). Then again, PlayStation Now has famously struggled to compare to Game Pass' "day one" bluster for a while now, especially when it comes to first-party software. Sony's recent "Play From Home" initiative and the PlayStation Plus Collection have opened up access to some Sony-published titles recently, but these, too, have revolved around dated software.