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(credit: Yuri Samoilov)

A co-leader on Google's product security team has waved a piece of red meat in front of already frothing privacy advocates by deleting part of a blog post saying he wished the Allo messenger app the company announced Wednesday would provide end-to-end encryption by default.

To critics, the deletion by Thai Duong amounted to tacit admission that his employer was willfully choosing to leave messages sent by the vast number of Allo users open to government surveillance. The critics have argued that because end-to-end encryption will be turned off by default and turned on only in an incognito mode, most users will never avail themselves of the protection.

In a blog post published shortly after Wednesday's announcement, Duong said the move would benefit people who want their messages to be processed by an artificial intelligence agent that would offer auto-replies based on the content of the messages. A built-in digital assistant, for instance, might automatically suggest nearby restaurants or available movies when parties are making plans, but only if the encryption feature is turned off. Then Duong went on to say something that he later deleted from the post:

The Project Ara Developer Edition.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.—After numerous delays, Google's modular smartphone concept, Project Ara, is still kicking inside Google. At its I/O conference, the company announced another developer kit for the device (called only the "Developer Edition") due out in 2016. The consumer version has received yet another delay, however, this time to 2017.

Pictures and a signup page for the Developer Edition are up on a new Ara website, and this update will replace the current "Spiral 2" dev kit. Project Ara started in 2013 and, like all ATAP projects, it was expected to take two years. The initiative was delayed past its 2015 deadline when it failed to deliver on a promised Puerto Rican pilot (where the phone was going to be sold out of food trucks). Now in 2016, Project Ara is delayed again to a supposed 2017 consumer launch, but there's going to be heavy redesigns to make that happen.

Most of the modular promises have been toned down—now all the "base components" of a smartphone are built into the Ara body, just like a normal smartphone. The Ara body contains a fixed CPU, GPU, antennas, sensors, battery, and display. The Ara page says this "frees up more room for hardware in each module," but it also removes Ara's promise of upgradability. The modules will now be for the camera and speakers, along with accessories to the base smartphone like a fingerprint reader or an extra display.

(credit: Adrien Sifre)

For giant pandas, there’s nothing like having friends in low places. The bears rely on chummy relations with their gut microbes to extract nutrients from their vegetarian diet, but an annual switch from noshing bamboo stalks to leaves can plunge the pandas' gut microbes into disarray. According to a study of panda poop, this switch potentially causes one grizzly problem.

The authors of the study suggest that the microbial mayhem explains why the bears occasionally poop out their intestinal mucosal linings amid that seasonal shift. The slimy dumps likely expunge broken microbiomes, clearing the way for the bears to forge fresh microbial alliances. Based on the numbers of gooey poops in captive bears, however, that yearly bowel reboot often doesn’t go well, leaving many pandas suffering from chronic inflammation, intestinal ulcers, and unpleasant gastrointestinal symptoms. And those gut troubles often coincide with mating season and pregnancies, the researchers report in Frontiers in Microbiology.

If the hypotheses hold up in further studies, the findings may help explain why pandas are notoriously bad breeders—it’s likely hard to get in the mood if you’re battling stomach cramps, bloating, and mucus poops. Currently, there are only a couple thousand giant pandas in the wild.

Minecraft's iconic Steve character will finally land on Chinese computers and smartphones thanks to a licensing deal with a Chinese game publisher. (credit: Sam Machkovech)

When Microsoft opened its wallets in 2014 and traded $2.5 billion for Mojang, the public by and large nodded their heads in agreement. Right, the makers of Minecraft. Those dudes are worth a lot of money.

But any doubters who questioned that sky-high valuation saw a new feather drop onto Microsoft's cap this week: Minecraft's PC and smartphone versions are finally coming to China. On Friday, Microsoft and Mojang announced the beginning of a "five-year exclusive partnership" with Chinese software publisher NetEase, Inc to roll the game out onto Chinese computer and smartphone marketplaces.The game's Chinese rollout date and release details have yet to be announced, and neither company confirmed how much money exchanged hands for the deal.

China isn't hurting for games originally published in the West, but Minecraft is arguably the world's most popular video game. Microsoft was able to publish the game on Xbox One consoles late last year, but those consoles have yet to penetrate the Chinese market to the extent that PCs and smartphones have, and the fact that even Microsoft had to license the game to someone else as opposed to launching it from its own Shanghai campus is a stern reminder of what roadblocks stand in the way of Western software developers.

Enlarge / iPad Pro and Smart Keyboard. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)

Update: Apple has re-posted the update as of today. Fixing an iPad bricked by the old update may be possible if you connect your tablet to a Mac or PC running iTunes, but we'll need to wait for reports from affected users to know for sure.

Original story (5/20/16): Apple is pulling iOS 9.3.2 for the 9.7-inch iPad Pro following reports that tablets were being bricked by the update. Affected tablets show the "connect to iTunes" message that iDevices display when put into recovery mode, but iTunes only displays an "Error 56" message and can't actually be used to restore the tablets. The bug doesn't appear to affect any other supported iDevices and the update hasn't been pulled for any other iPhone, iPad, or iPod.

Apple's statement on the issue offers no real insight about what the problem is. The company says it is "working on a fix" and will "issue an update as quickly as possible." Whether the update will resuscitate already-bricked iPads isn't clear, but 9to5Mac reports that at least a few users had affected tablets replaced at Apple Stores.