Here are all the details on the new Pixel 3, Pixel Slate, Pixel Stand, and Home Hub

At a special event in New York City, Google announced some of its latest, flagship hardware devices. During the hour-long press conference Google executives and product managers took the wraps off the company’s latest products and explained their features. Chief among the lot is the Pixel 3, Google’s latest flagship Android device. Like the Pixel 2 before it, the Pixel 3’s main feature is its stellar camera but there’s a lot more magic packed inside the svelte frame.

Pixel 3

Contrary to some earlier renders, the third version of Google’s Android flagship (spotted by 9 to 5 Google) does boast a sizable notch up top, in keeping with earlier images of the larger XL. Makes sense, after all, Google went out of its way to boast about notch functionality when it introduced Pie, the latest version of its mobile OS.

The device is available for preorder today and will start shipping October 18, starting at $799. The larger XL starts at $899, still putting the product at less than the latest flagships from Apple and Samsung.

Pixel Slate

The device looks pretty much exactly like the leaks lead us to believe — it’s a premium slate with a keyboard cover that doubles as a stand. It also features a touch pad, which gives it the edge over products like Samsung’s most recent Galaxy Tab. There’s also a matching Google Pen, which appears to more or less be the same product announced around the Pixel Book, albeit with a darker paint job to match the new product.

The product starts at $599, plus $199 for the keyboard and $99 for the new dark Pen. All three are shipping at some point later this year.

Home Hub

The device looks like an Android tablet mounted on top of a speaker — which ought to address the backward firing sound, which is one of the largest design flaws of the recently introduced Echo Show 2. The speaker fabric comes in a number of different colors, in keeping with the rest of the Pixel/Home products, including the new Aqua.

When not in use, the product doubles as a smart picture frame, using albums from Google Photos. A new Live Albums, which auto updates, based on the people you choose. So you can, say, select your significant others and it will create a gallery based on that person. Sweet and also potentially creepy. Machine learning, meanwhile, will automatically filter out all of the lousy shots.

The Home Hub is up for pre-order today for a very reasonable $149. In fact, the device actually seems like a bit of a loss leader for the company in an attempt to hook people into the Google Assistant ecosystem. It will start shipping October 22.

Pixel Stand

The Pixel Stand is basically a sleek little round dock for your phone. While it can obviously charge your phone, what’s maybe more interesting is that when you put your phone into the cradle, it looks like it’ll start a new notifications view that’s not unlike what you’d see on a smart display. It costs $79.

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China’s fast-rising Bullet Messenger hit with copyright complaint

Bullet Messenger, a fast-rising Chinese messaging upstart that’s gunning to take on local behemoth, WeChat, has been pulled from the iOS App Store owing to what its owners couch as a copyright complaint.

Reuters reported the development earlier, saying Bullet’s owner, Beijing-based Kuairu Technology, claimed in a social media posting that the app had been taken down from Apple’s app store because of a complaint related to image content provided by a partner.

“We are verifying the situation with the partner and will inform you as soon as possible when download capabilities are resumed,” it said in a statement on its official Weibo account.

The company did not specify which part of the app has been subject to a complaint.

We’ve reached out to Apple to ask if it can provide any more details.

According to checks by Reuters earlier today, the Bullet Messenger app was still available on China’s top Android app stores — including stores owned by WeChat owner Tencent, as well as Baidu and Xiaomi stores — which the news agency suggests makes it less likely the app has been pulled from iOS as a result of censorship by the state, saying apps targeted by regulators generally disappear from local app stores too.

Bullet Messenger only launched in August but quickly racked up four million users in just over a week, and also snagged $22M in funding.

By September it had claimed seven million users, and Chinese smartphone maker Smartisan — an investor in Bullet — said it planned to spend 1 billion yuan (~$146M) over the next six months in a bid to reach 100M users. Though in a battle with a competitive Goliath like WeChat (1BN+ active users) that would still be a relative minnow.

The upstart messenger has grabbed attention with its fast growth, apparently attracting users via its relatively minimal messaging interface and a feature that enables speech-to-text transcription text in real time.

Albeit the app has also raised eyebrows for allowing pornographic content to be passed around.

It’s possible that element of the app caught the attention of Chinese authorities which have been cracking down on Internet porn in recent years — even including non-visual content (such as ASMR) which local regulators have also judged to be obscene.

Although it’s equally possible Apple itself is responding to a porn complaint about Bullet’s iOS app.

Earlier this year the Telegram messaging app fell foul of the App Store rules and was temporarily pulled, as a result of what its founder described as “inappropriate content”.

Apple’s developer guidelines for iOS apps include a section on safety that proscribes “upsetting or offensive content” — including frowning on: “Apps with user-generated content or services that end up being used primarily for pornographic content.”

In Telegram’s case, the App Store banishment was soon resolved.

There’s nothing currently to suggest that Bullet’s app won’t also soon be restored.

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China’s fast-rising Bullet Messenger hit with copyright complaint

Bullet Messenger, a fast-rising Chinese messaging upstart that’s gunning to take on local behemoth, WeChat, has been pulled from the iOS App Store owing to what its owners couch as a copyright complaint.

Reuters reported the development earlier, saying Bullet’s owner, Beijing-based Kuairu Technology, claimed in a social media posting that the app had been taken down from Apple’s app store because of a complaint related to image content provided by a partner.

“We are verifying the situation with the partner and will inform you as soon as possible when download capabilities are resumed,” it said in a statement on its official Weibo account.

The company did not specify which part of the app has been subject to a complaint.

We’ve reached out to Apple to ask if it can provide any more details.

According to checks by Reuters earlier today, the Bullet Messenger app was still available on China’s top Android app stores — including stores owned by WeChat owner Tencent, as well as Baidu and Xiaomi stores — which the news agency suggests makes it less likely the app has been pulled from iOS as a result of censorship by the state, saying apps targeted by regulators generally disappear from local app stores too.

Bullet Messenger only launched in August but quickly racked up four million users in just over a week, and also snagged $22M in funding.

By September it had claimed seven million users, and Chinese smartphone maker Smartisan — an investor in Bullet — said it planned to spend 1 billion yuan (~$146M) over the next six months in a bid to reach 100M users. Though in a battle with a competitive Goliath like WeChat (1BN+ active users) that would still be a relative minnow.

The upstart messenger has grabbed attention with its fast growth, apparently attracting users via its relatively minimal messaging interface and a feature that enables speech-to-text transcription text in real time.

Albeit the app has also raised eyebrows for allowing pornographic content to be passed around.

It’s possible that element of the app caught the attention of Chinese authorities which have been cracking down on Internet porn in recent years — even including non-visual content (such as ASMR) which local regulators have also judged to be obscene.

Although it’s equally possible Apple itself is responding to a porn complaint about Bullet’s iOS app.

Earlier this year the Telegram messaging app fell foul of the App Store rules and was temporarily pulled, as a result of what its founder described as “inappropriate content”.

Apple’s developer guidelines for iOS apps include a section on safety that proscribes “upsetting or offensive content” — including frowning on: “Apps with user-generated content or services that end up being used primarily for pornographic content.”

In Telegram’s case, the App Store banishment was soon resolved.

There’s nothing currently to suggest that Bullet’s app won’t also soon be restored.

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U.S. government sides with Apple and Amazon, effectively denying Bloomberg ‘spy chip’ report

Homeland Security has said it has “no reason to doubt” statements by Apple, Amazon and Supermicro denying allegations made in a Bloomberg report published earlier this week.

It’s the first statement so far from the U.S. government on the report, casting doubt on the findings. Homeland Security’s statement echos near-identical comments from the U.K.’s National Cyber Security Center.

Bloomberg said, citing more than a dozen sources, that China installed tiny chips on motherboards built by Supermicro, which companies across the U.S. tech industry — including Amazon and Apple — have used to power servers in their datacenters. The chip can reportedly compromise data on the server, allowing China to spy on some of the world’s most wealthy and powerful companies.

Apple, Amazon and Supermicro later published statements on their websites. Bloomberg said it’s sticking by its story. And yet, this latest twist isn’t likely to leave anyone less confused, days after the story was first published.

Homeland Security protects the nation’s cyber defenses from both domestic and foreign threats. It’s rare for the government to issue a statement on an apparent threat which, according to Bloomberg, is a classified matter that’s been under federal investigation for three years.

The reality is that days after this story broke, it seems many of the smartest, technically minded, rational cybersecurity experts still don’t know who to believe — Bloomberg, or everyone else.

And until someone gets their hands on these apparent chips, don’t expect that to change any time soon.

Bloomberg’s spy chip story reveals the murky world of national security reporting

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Here’s how Google is revamping Gmail and Android security

Eager to change the conversation from their years-long exposure of user data via Google+ to the bright, shining future the company is providing, Google has announced some changes to the way permissions are approved for Android apps. The new process will be slower, more deliberate, and hopefully secure.

The changes are part of “Project Strobe,” a “root-and-branch review of third-party developer access to Google account and Android device data and our philosophy around apps’ data access.” Essentially they decided it was time to update the complex and likely not entirely cohesive set of rules and practices around those third-party developers and API access.

One of those roots (or perhaps branches) was the bug discovered inside Google+, which theoretically (the company can’t tell if it was abused or not) exposed non-public profile data to apps that should have received only a user’s public profile. This, combined with the fact that Google+ never really justified its own existence in the first place, led to the service essentially being shut down. “The consumer version of Google+ currently has low usage and engagement,” Google admitted. “90 percent of Google+ user sessions are less than five seconds.”

But the team doing the review has plenty of other suggestions to improve the process of informed consent to sharing data with third parties.

The first change is the most user-facing. When an application wants to access your Google account data — say your Gmail, Calendar, and Drive contents for a third-party productivity app — you’ll have to approve each one of those separately. You’ll also have the opportunity to deny access to one or more of those requests, so if you never plan on using the Drive functionality, you can just nix it and the app will never get that permission.

These permissions can also be delayed and gated behind the actions that require them. For instance, if this theoretical app wanted to give you the opportunity to take a picture to add to an email, it wouldn’t have to ask up front when you download it. Instead, when you tap the option to attach a picture, it would ask permission to access the camera then and there. Google went into a little more detail on this in a post on its developer blog.

Notably there is only the option to “deny” or “allow,” but no “deny this time” or “allow this time,” which I find to be useful when you’re not totally on board with the permission in question. You can always revert the setting manually but it’s nice to have the option to say “okay, just this once, strange app.”

The changes will start rolling out this month, so don’t be surprised if things look a little different next time you download a game or update an app.

The second and third changes have to do with limiting what data from your Gmail and messaging can be accessed by apps, and what apps can be granted access in the first place.

Specifically, Google is restricting access to these sensitive data troves to apps “directly enhancing email functionality” for Gmail and your default calling and messaging apps for call logs and SMS data.

There are some edge cases where this might be annoying to power users; some have more than one messaging app that falls back to SMS or integrates SMS replies, and this might require those apps to take a new approach. And apps that want access to these things may have trouble convincing Google’s review authorities that they qualify.

Developers will also need to review and agree to a new set of rules governing what Gmail data can be used, how they can use it, and the measures they must have in place to protect it. For example, apps are not allowed to “transfer or sell the data for other purposes such as targeting ads, market research, email campaign tracking, and other unrelated purposes.” That probably puts a few business models out of the running.

Apps looking to handle Gmail data will also have to submit a report detailing “application penetration testing, external network penetration testing, account deletion verification, reviews of incident response plans, vulnerability disclosure programs, and information security policies.” No fly-by-night operations permitted, clearly.

There will also be additional scrutiny on what permissions developers ask for to make sure it matches up with what their app requires. If you ask for Contacts access but don’t actually use it for anything, you’ll be asked to remove that, since it only increases risk.

These various new requirements will go into effect next year, with application review (a multi-week process) starting on January 9; tardy developers will see their apps stop working at the end of March if they don’t comply.

The relatively short timeline here suggests that some apps may in fact shut down temporarily or permanently due to the rigors of the review process. Don’t be surprised if early next year you get an update saying service may be interrupted due to Google review policies or the like.

These changes are just the first handful issuing from the recommendations of Project Strobe; we can expect more to appear over the next few months, though perhaps not such striking ones. To say Gmail and Android apps are widely used is something of an understatement, so it’s understandable that they would be focused on first, but there are many other policies and services the company will no doubt find reason to improve.

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In letter to Congress, Apple sends strongest denial over ‘spy chip’ story

Apple has doubled down on its repudiation of Bloomberg’s report last week that claimed its systems had been compromised by Chinese spies.

The blockbuster story cited more than a dozen sources claiming that China installed tiny chips on motherboards built by Supermicro, which companies across the U.S. tech industry — including Amazon and Apple — have used to power servers in their datacenters. Bloomberg’s report also claimed that the chip can reportedly compromise data on the server, allowing China to spy on some of the world’s most powerful tech companies.

Now, in a letter to Congress, Apple’s vice president of information security George Stathakopoulos sent the company’s strongest denial to date.

“Apple has never found malicious chips, ‘hardware manipulations’ or vulnerabilities purposely planted in any server,” he said. “We never alerted the FBI to any security concerns like those described in the article, nor has the FBI ever contacted us about such an investigation.”

It follows a statement by both the U.K. National Cyber Security Center and U.S. Homeland Security stating that they had “no reason to doubt” statements by Apple, Amazon and Supermicro denying the claims.

Stathakopoulos added that Apple “repeatedly asked them to share specific details about the alleged malicious chips that they seemed certain existed, they were unwilling or unable to provide anything more than vague secondhand accounts.”

Apple’s statement is far stronger than its earlier remarks. A key detail missing in the Bloomberg story is that its many sources, albeit anonymous, provided the reporters with a first hand account of the alleged spy chips.

Without any evidence that the chips exist beyond eyewitness accounts and sources, Bloomberg’s story remains on shaky grounds.

View this document on Scribd

Bloomberg’s spy chip story reveals the murky world of national security reporting

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UK High Court blocks compensation suit against Google’s ‘Safari workaround’

An attempt to bring a class-action style litigation in the UK to claim up to £3BN in compensation from Google for ignoring iPhone user privacy settings has been blocked after the High Court judge ruled the case cannot proceed.

The case pertains to actions by Google between 2011 and 2012 when it allegedly harvested personal data from Safari users without their permission, via the use of tracking cookies.

In the US, Google settled with the FTC over the same cookie tracking issuing — agreeing in 2012 to pay $22.5M to settle the charge that it bypassed Safari’s privacy settings to serve targeted ads to consumers.

In the UK a civil legal action was filed last year by one named iPhone user, Richard Lloyd — the former director of consumer group, Which? — who was seeking to represent millions of UK users, whose Safari settings the complaint alleged were similarly ignored by Google’s tracking technologies, via a representative legal action.

Lawyers for the claimants argued that sensitive personal data such as iPhone users’ political affiliation, sexual orientation, financial situation and more had been gathered by Google via a ‘Safari Workaround’ that operated between August 2011 and February 2012, and used for targeted advertising without their consent.

The suit sought compensation for Google’s improper use of people’s data — with a proposed amount of £750 per claimant, which could have resulted in a bill of up to £3BN for the company (based on representing ~4.4 million UK iPhone users).

While the judge did not disagree “it is arguable that Google’s alleged role in the collection, collation, and use of data obtained via the Safari Workaround was wrongful, and a breach of duty”, the ruling was based on legal questions related to the merit of the case’s compensation claims, and whether the court should allow a representative action in this case.

In a judgement issued today Mr Justice Warby ruled that the claimants had not been able to demonstrate a basis for bringing a compensation claim.

UK law in this area requires claimants to be able to demonstrate they suffered damage as a result of violation of the relevant data protection rules. And in this instance the claimants had not been able to show damage, the judge ruled.

“I do not believe that the authorities show that a person whose information has been acquired or used without consent invariably suffers compensatable harm, either by virtue of the wrong itself, or the interference with autonomy that it involves. Not everything that happens to a person without their prior consent causes significant or any distress. Not all such events are even objectionable, or unwelcome. Some people enjoy a surprise party,” wrote Warby in the judgement, going on to state that “the question of whether or not damage has been sustained by an individual as a result of the non-consensual use of personal data about them must depend on the facts of the case”.

“The bare facts pleaded in this case, which are in no way individualised, do not in my judgment assert any case of harm to the value of any claimant’s right of autonomy that amounts to “damage” within the meaning of DPA s 13,” he concluded.

On a second legal point, the judge also ruled that the case would not have been allowed to proceed as a class-action style suit, asserting that “the essential requirements for a representative action are absent” — owing to individuals in the group not all having the “same interest” in the claim, and the difficulty of reliably defining a class for the purposes of this case.

In a statement after the ruling was announced, Google said: “The privacy and security of our users is extremely important to us. This claim is without merit, and we’re pleased the Court has dismissed it.”

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