Google gets into #Augmented_Reality with ARCore
▻http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2017-08-29-google-releases-arcore-ar-sdk
App-building platform supports Android Studio, Unity, Unreal out of the gate, works with millions of existing phones
Google gets into #Augmented_Reality with ARCore
▻http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2017-08-29-google-releases-arcore-ar-sdk
App-building platform supports Android Studio, Unity, Unreal out of the gate, works with millions of existing phones
Diapo : tout ce qu’il faut savoir sur Android 8.0 Oreo
▻http://www.tomshardware.fr/articles/android-8.0-oreo-systeme-d-exploitation-google,1-65194.html#xtor=RSS-10
Ohhhhh !
Vidéo : Android 8.0 Oreo officiel, premiers smartphones mis à jour
▻http://www.tomshardware.fr/articles/android-8.0-oreo-systeme-d-exploitation-google,1-65143.html#xtor=RSS-10
►http://media.bestofmicro.com/L/F/704499/gallery/aHR0cDovL21lZGlhLmJlc3RvZm1pY3JvLmNvbS8wLzkvNjYyMjY1L29yaWdpbmFsL
Miam, miam !
►http://media.bestofmicro.com/L/F/704499/gallery/aHR0cDovL21lZGlhLmJlc3RvZm1pY3JvLmNvbS8wLzkvNjYyMjY1L29yaWdpbmFsL
Oreo is officially the next name for Android
▻https://www.engadget.com/2017/08/21/android-oreo-unveiled-solar-eclipse
Donner un nom de gâteau à la nouvelle version d’Android : un retour d’enfance chez le grand G ?
Google loves to make a big splash when it reveals the name for the latest version of Android. But the company is going all out this year, using the solar eclipse as an opportunity to reveal that Android O will henceforth be referred to as Oreo. It makes at least a little sense to tie this reveal in to the eclipse — those iconic photos of the solar event are a bit evocative of Oreos, after all.
Firefox Focus – A new private browser for iOS and Android (https://...
▻https://diasp.eu/p/5925643
Firefox Focus – A new private browser for iOS and Android
Hacker News Comments : ▻https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15049171
Source : ▻https://blog.mozilla.org/firefox/lightweight-browser-focus-does-less-which-is-much-more
Integrate KDE Connect with GNOME Shell
▻http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2017/08/kde-connect-gnome-extension
A new extension helps to integrate key features of KDE Connect with GNOME Shell. The Mconnect GNOME extension allows you to quickly peek at your phone’s power levels, locate it when mislaid, and even send text messages to your Google contacts. What is KDE Connect again? KDE Connect is the easy way to connect Android to Ubuntu. […] This post, Integrate KDE Connect with GNOME Shell, was written by Joey Sneddon and first appeared on OMG! Ubuntu!.
China Orders Xinjiang’s Android Users to Install App That Deletes ’Terrorist’ Content
▻http://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/china-orders-xinjiangs-android-users-to-install-app-that-deletes-terrorist-cont
Authorities in the northwestern region of Xinjiang have ordered local residents to install an app on their cell phones that will monitor their activity for “terrorist” content, local sources told RFA on Thursday. "In order to achieve city-wide coverage in the antiterrorist video and audio clean-up, and to target people, materials and thinking for clean-up work, management and crackdowns, a technology company affiliated with the municipal police department has developed an app for Android (...)
#smartphone #Jingwang/CleanWebGuard #spyware #anti-terrorisme #Islam #surveillance (...)
Commoditisation of UI – Hacker Noon
▻https://hackernoon.com/commoditisation-of-ui-36a5abbeb3c0
First, unique and good design alone does not lead to a successful product. In the post-iPhone world good #UI is not a differentiation point, but a cheap commodity, a de-facto standard. In the early days of the new era, there were innovative products that managed to beat incumbents just by having a great design (e.g. Slack had the same core tech as Hipchat, but 10x better design). Good design is a new baseline now (even Android has good design these days).
The Geopolitical Economy of the Global Internet Infrastructure on JSTOR
▻https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5325/jinfopoli.7.2017.0228
Article très intéressant qui repositionne les Etats dans la gestion de l’infrastructure globale de l’internet. En fait, une infrastructure globale pour le déploiement du capital (une autre approche de la géopolitique, issue de David Harvey).
According to many observers, economic globalization and the liberalization of telecoms/internet policy have remade the world in the image of the United States. The dominant roles of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google have also led to charges of US internet imperialism. This article, however, argues that while these internet giants dominate some of the most popular internet services, the ownership and control of core elements of the internet infrastructure—submarine cables, internet exchange points, autonomous system numbers, datacenters, and so on—are tilting increasingly toward the EU and BRICS (i.e., Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) countries and the rest of the world, complicating views of hegemonic US control of the internet and what Susan Strange calls the knowledge structure.
This article takes a different tack. It argues that while US-based internet giants do dominate some of the middle and top layers of the internet—for example, operating systems (iOS, Windows, Android), search engines (Google), social networks (Facebook), online retailing (Amazon), over-the-top TV (Netflix), browsers (Google Chrome, Apple Safari, Microsoft Explorer), and domain names (ICANN)—they do not rule the hardware, or material infrastructure, upon which the internet and daily life, business, governments, society, and war increasingly depend. In fact, as the article shows, ownership and control of many core elements of the global internet infrastructure—for example, fiber optic submarine cables, content delivery networks (CDNs), autonomous system numbers (ASN), and internet exchange points (IXPs)—are tilting toward the rest of the world, especially Europe and the BRICS (i.e., Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa). This reflects the fact that the United States’ standing in the world is slipping while an ever more multipolar world is arising.
International internet backbone providers, internet content companies, and CDNs interconnect with local ISPs and at one or more of the nearly 2000 IXPs around the world. The largest IXPs are in New York, London, Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Seattle, Chicago, Moscow, Sao Paulo, Tokyo, and Hong Kong. They are core elements of the internet that switch traffic between all the various networks that comprise the internet system, and help to establish accessible, affordable, fast, and secure internet service.
In developed markets, internet companies such as Google, Baidu, Facebook, Netflix, Youku, and Yandex use IXPs to interconnect with local ISPs such as Deutsche Telecoms in Germany, BT or Virgin Media in Britain, or Comcast in the United States to gain last-mile access to their customers—and vice versa, back up the chain. Indeed, 99 percent of internet traffic handled by peering arrangements among such parties occurs without any money changing hands or a formal contract.50 Where IXPs do not exist or are rare, as in Africa, or run poorly, as in India, the cost of bandwidth is far more expensive. This is a key factor that helps to explain why internet service is so expensive in areas of the world that can least afford it. It is also why the OECD and EU encourage developing countries to make IXPs a cornerstone of economic development and telecoms policy work.
The network of networks that make up the internet constitute a sprawling, general purpose platform upon which financial markets, business, and trade, as well as diplomacy, spying, national security, and war depend. The world’s largest electronic payments system operator, the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications’ (SWIFT) secure messaging network carries over 25 million messages a day involving payments that are believed to be worth over $7 trillion USD.59 Likewise, the world’s biggest foreign currency settlement system, the CLS Bank, executes upward of a million trades a day worth between $1.5 and $2.5 trillion over the global cable systems—although that is down by half from its high point in 2008.60 As Stephen Malphrus, former chief of staff to the US Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, observed, when “communications networks go down, the financial services sector does not grind to a halt, rather it snaps to a halt.”61
Governments and militaries also account for a significant portion of internet traffic. Indeed, 90 to 95 percent of US government traffic, including sensitive diplomatic and military orders, travels over privately owned cables to reach officials in the field.62 “A major portion of DoD data traveling on undersea cables is unmanned aerial vehicle video,” notes a study done for the Department of Homeland Security by MIT scholar Michael Sechrist.63 Indeed, the Department of Defense’s entire Global Information Grid shares space in these cables with the general public internet.64
The 3.6 billion people as of early 2016 who use the internet to communicate, share music, ideas and knowledge, browse, upload videos, tweet, blog, organize social events and political protests, watch pornography, read sacred texts, and sell stuff are having the greatest influence on the current phase of internet infrastructure development. Video currently makes up an estimated two-thirds of all internet traffic, and is expected to grow to 80 percent in the next five years,69 with US firms leading the way. Netflix single-handedly accounts for a third of all internet traffic. YouTube is the second largest source of internet traffic on fixed and mobile networks alike the world over. Altogether, the big five internet giants account for roughly half of all “prime-time” internet traffic, a phrasing that deliberately reflects the fact that internet usage swells and peaks at the same time as the classic prime-time television period, that is, 7 p.m. to 11 p.m.
Importance des investissements des compagnies de l’internet dans les projets de câbles.
Several things stand out from this analysis. First, in less than a decade, Google has carved out a very large place for itself through its ownership role in four of the six projects (the SJC, Faster, Unity, and Pacific Cable Light initiatives), while Facebook has stakes in two of them (APG and PLCN) and Microsoft in the PLCN project. This is a relatively new trend and one that should be watched in the years ahead.
A preliminary view based on the publicly available information is that the US internet companies are important but subordinate players in consortia dominated by state-owned national carriers and a few relatively new competitors. Keen to wrest control of core elements of the internet infrastructure that they perceive to have been excessively dominated by United States interests in the past, Asian governments and private investors have joined forces to change things in their favor. In terms of the geopolitical economy of the internet, there is both a shift toward the Asia-Pacific region and an increased role for national governments.
Return of the State as Regulator of Concentrated Markets
In addition to the expanded role of the state as market builder, regulator, and information infrastructure policy maker, many regulators have also rediscovered the reality of significant market concentration in the telecom-internet and media industries. Indeed, the US government has rejected several high-profile telecoms mergers in recent years, such as AT&T’s proposal to take over T-Mobile in 2011, T-Mobile’s bid for Sprint in 2014, and Comcast’s attempt to acquire Time Warner Cable last year. Even the approval of Comcast’s blockbuster takeover of NBC Universal in 2011, and Charter Communications acquisition of Time Warner Cable last year, respectively, came with important strings attached and ongoing conduct regulation designed to constrain the companies’ ability to abuse their dominant market power.87 The FCC’s landmark 2016 ruling to reclassify broadband internet access as a common carrier further indicated that US regulators have been alert to the realities of market concentration and telecoms-internet access providers’ capacity to abuse that power, and the need to maintain a vigilant eye to ensure that their practices do not swamp people’s rights to freely express themselves, maintain control over the collection, retention, use, and disclosure of their personal information, and to access a diverse range of services over the internet.88 The 28 members of the European Union, along with Norway, India, and Chile, have adopted similar “common carriage/network neutrality/open network”89 rules to offset the reality that concentration in core elements of these industries is “astonishingly high”90 on the basis of commonly used indicators (e.g., concentration ratios and the Herfindahl–Hirschman Index).
These developments indicate a new phase in internet governance and control. In the first phase, circa the 1990s, technical experts and organizations such as the Internet Engineers Task Force played a large role, while the state sat relatively passively on the sidelines. In the second phase, circa the early to mid-2000s, commercial forces surged to the fore, while internet governance revolved around the ICANN and the multi-stakeholder model. Finally, the revelations of mass internet surveillance by many states and ongoing disputes over the multi-stakeholder, “internet freedom” agenda on the one side, versus the national sovereignty, multilateral model where the ITU and UN system would play a larger role in internet governance all indicate that significant moves are afoot where the relationship between states and markets is now in a heightened state of flux.
Such claims, however, are overdrawn. They rely too heavily on the same old “realist,” “struggle for control” model where conflict between nation-states has loomed large and business interests and communication technologies served mainly as “weapons of politics” and the handmaidens of national interests from the telegraph in the nineteenth century to the internet today. Yet, nation-states and private business interests, then and now, not only compete with one another but also cooperate extensively to cultivate a common global space of economic accumulation. Communication technologies and business interests, moreover, often act independent of the nation-state and via “private structures of cooperation,” that is, cartels and consortia, as the history and contemporary state of the undersea cable networks illustrate. In fact, the internet infrastructure of the twenty-first century, much like that of the industrial information infrastructure of the past 150 years, is still primarily financed, owned, and operated by many multinational consortia, although more than a few submarine communications cables are now owned by a relatively new roster of competitive players, such as Tata, Level 3, Global Cloud Xchange, and so forth. They have arisen mostly in the last 20 years and from new quarters, such as India in the case of Tata, for example.
Remix OS, the Android Desktop OS, Is Discontinued
▻http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2017/07/remix-android-desktop-os-discontinued
Remix OS, a desktop-orientated version of Android available that was freely available as an .ISO to install on any PC, has been discontinued. This post, Remix OS, the Android Desktop OS, Is Discontinued, was written by Joey Sneddon and first appeared on OMG! Ubuntu!.
Coincidence or Subtle Influence? Ubuntu’s Impact on Software Naming Conventions
▻http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2017/07/ubuntu-impact-software-naming
Could Ubuntu have had an impact on the versioning and naming conventions of other software projects, including Windows, Android and more? Reader Abu A. pinged us earlier today to share this interesting insight he has on Ubuntu’s contributions to the wider software community. Musing on the possibility of this (admittedly anecdotal) observation — inspiration isn’t always […] This post, Coincidence or Subtle Influence? Ubuntu’s Impact on Software Naming Conventions, was written by Joey Sneddon and first appeared on OMG! Ubuntu!.
The secret lives of Google raters | Ars Technica
▻https://arstechnica.com/features/2017/04/the-secret-lives-of-google-raters
Who are these raters? They’re carefully trained and tested staff who can spend 40 hours per week logged into a system called Raterhub, which is owned and operated by Google. Every day, the raters complete dozens of short but exacting tasks that produce invaluable data about the usefulness of Google’s ever-changing algorithms. They contribute significantly to several Google and Android projects, from search and voice recognition to photos and personalization features.
Few people realize how much these raters contribute to the smooth functioning act we call “Googling.” Even #Google engineers who work with rater data don’t know who these people are. But some raters would now like that to change. That’s because, earlier this month, thousands of them received an e-mail that said their hours would be cut in half, partly due to changes in Google’s staffing policies.
Though Google boasts about its army of raters, the raters are not Google employees. Instead, they are employed by firms who have contracted them to Google, full time, for years on end. These raters believe that Google has reaped significant benefits from their labor without ensuring their jobs are secure and stable. That’s why 10 raters came to Ars Technica to tell the story of what their lives are really like.
Du #digital_labor derrière les requêtes Google (et de la politique salariale de cette dernière)
The hidden human labour behind search engine algorithms
▻http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/businessreview/2017/04/22/the-hidden-human-labour-behind-search-engine-algorithms
The algorithmic production process requires work from highly trained professionals, such as top-level computer scientists and software engineers. Their work also becomes entangled with the input of low-skilled workers necessary for the customisation, testing, adaptation and sustainability of search in local markets worldwide.
At least three types of search labour can be identified in Google’s global production process. First, the paid work of in-company engineers. This is the most celebrated aspect of algorithmic production and a major part of the story of Google’s technical superiority. Second is the non-paid labour of internet users, which contributes to value generation of the company. Simply put, the more people use the search engine, the more data the company collects, analyses, packages, and ultimately sells to advertisers. Third is the least transparent and discussed labour performed by “search quality raters” and “precision evaluators” hired via third party companies specialised in crowdsourcing global workforces. Google performs so-called precision evaluations and quality assessments of algorithmic changes on a regular basis. According to the latest data published by the company, it performs around 40,000 evaluations a year.
(…)
Unpacking the layers of labour processes behind algorithmic production has wide scholarly implications and potential policy impact in the field of digital literacy, market competition, transparent, fair, innovative and open digital economy. In the past few years, multiple European Union anti-trust investigations targeted three key areas: Google’s comparison shopping service, pre-installation of Google’s applications and services on Android OS, and restriction of third-party websites from displaying search ads from Google’s competitors.
Google built its public image on separating the so-called organic, or “untampered” search results, from paid search results or ads. This division becomes less visible from a labour perspective. Tracing and mapping the input of precision evaluators delivered for algorithmic calculations of highly skilled engineers is hidden behind a wall of trade secrets. Thus the algorithmic ranking problem ceases to be a technical problem. Transparency of algorithmic calculations is also a political and economic issue since it affects visibility of actors seeking public exposure and impacts the advertising revenue flow.
Channel 4 launches first VR title
▻http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2017-06-15-channel-4-launches-first-vr-title
Mobile relaxation game Soar: Tree of Life now on iOS and Android, coming to Gear VR later this year
Yo-kai Watch dev Level-5 acquires Keiji Inafune’s Comcept
▻http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2017-06-13-yo-kai-watch-dev-level-5-acquires-keiji-inafunes-comcept
The first fruit of this merger will be an iOS and Android title called Dragon Colonies
A KDE Connect Bluetooth Backend Is In Development
▻http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2017/06/kde-connect-bluetooth-backend-development
A KDE Connect Bluetooth backend is now in development, meaning you can soon pair your Android phone with your Ubuntu PC without the use of wifi. This post, A KDE Connect Bluetooth Backend Is In Development, was written by Joey Sneddon and first appeared on OMG! Ubuntu!.
Standard Notes is an Open-Source Encrypted Notes App
▻http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2017/05/standard-notes-encrypted-notes-app-for-linux-android-ios
Standard Notes is an encrypted note taking app available for free on Linux, macOS, Windows, Android, iOS, and the web. And yup, in case you were wondering, it’s also totally open source. Linux isn’t short of note taking ands to-do apps that work across devices and platforms, with Simplenote, Todoist, Google Keep (my go-to app for cross-platform […] This post, Standard Notes is an Open-Source Encrypted Notes App, was written by Joey Sneddon and first appeared on OMG! Ubuntu!.
Linux Users Shouldn’t Expect Further Updates to WPS Office…
▻http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2017/05/wps-office-linux-on-halt
Development of the free WPS Office for Linux is ‘on a halt’, the makers of the office suite have said on Twitter. The free (but not open-source) office software, which is available on Windows, macOS, Android, iOS and Linux, has proven popular with users thanks to an interface and feature set that draws heavily on Microsoft Office. But while users of […] This post, Linux Users Shouldn’t Expect Further Updates to WPS Office…, was written by Joey Sneddon and first appeared on OMG! Ubuntu!.
Combination of features produces new Android vulnerability
▻https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/05/170523083601.htm
A new vulnerability affecting Android mobile devices results not from a traditional bug, but from the malicious combination of two legitimate permissions that power desirable and commonly used features in popular apps.
Indicator KDE Connect 0.9.0 Lets You Send Files to Multiple Android Devices
▻http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2017/05/indicator-kde-connect-0-9-0-update
The latest version of Indicator KDE Connect lets you send files to multiple Android devices, delete or sync your Google Contacts, and more. This post, Indicator KDE Connect 0.9.0 Lets You Send Files to Multiple Android Devices, was written by Joey Sneddon and first appeared on OMG! Ubuntu!.
Android O et Go : deux versions d’Android prévues pour 2017
▻http://www.tomshardware.fr/articles/android-go-android-0-systeme-d-exploitation-google,1-63983.html#xtor=RS
Android Go !
AFN 360 Internet Radio
▻http://www.afneurope.net/AFN-360
Now you can receive your local AFN station plus eight additional music & information channels using your computer, Apple iOS or Android device. Now you can listen to AFN crystal clear without a radio.
AFN 360 improves AFN quality where you get mobile data or internet. Using the best in audio encoding technology, we’re able to deliver near-CD quality programming while using minimal bandwidth. Once you’ve heard it, you’ll agree AFN radio never sounded better over any other medium!
AFN 360 will work in countries where AFN radio is broadcast. You can listen to AFN 360 on computers or portable devices connected in Germany, Italy, Belgium, The Netherlands, Spain, Turkey, the Azores, or on OCONUS military workstations
Yup, This is The Best Sound Converter for Ubuntu
▻http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2017/05/simple-sound-converter-ubuntu
Though I tend to stream music from the cloud when at my desktop PC, I prefer to download and play local audio files when listening to podcasts and audio books on the move. Earlier this week I needed convert a stack of old audio books from the .m4a format to a more Android-friendly format like .mp3 — and SoundConverter did what I needed effortlessly. Sound Converter […] This post, Yup, This is The Best Sound Converter for Ubuntu, was written by Joey Sneddon and first appeared on OMG! Ubuntu!.
Amazon discontinuing Underground Actually Free initiative
▻http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2017-05-02-amazon-discontinuing-underground-actually-free-initiative
Android version of store will close this summer, with full shutdown planned for 2019
The secret lives of #Google raters | Ars Technica UK
▻https://arstechnica.co.uk/features/2017/04/the-secret-lives-of-google-raters
Who are these raters? They’re carefully trained and tested staff who can spend 40 hours per week logged into a system called Raterhub, which is owned and operated by Google. Every day, the raters complete dozens of short but exacting tasks that produce invaluable data about the usefulness of Google’s ever-changing algorithms. They contribute significantly to several Google and Android projects, from search and voice recognition to photos and personalization features.
Few people realize how much these raters contribute to the smooth functioning act we call “Googling.” Even Google engineers who work with rater data don’t know who these people are. But some raters would now like that to change. That’s because, earlier this month, thousands of them received an e-mail that said their hours would be cut in half, partly due to changes in Google’s staffing policies.
Though Google boasts about its army of raters, the raters are not Google employees. Instead, they are employed by firms who have contracted them to Google, full time, for years on end. These raters believe that Google has reaped significant benefits from their labor without ensuring their jobs are secure and stable. That’s why 10 raters came to Ars Technica to tell the story of what their lives are really like.
Google Photos v2.14 is preparing personalized experiences and sharing suggestions based around facial recognition [APK Teardown]
▻http://www.androidpolice.com/2017/04/26/google-photos-v2-14-is-preparing-personalized-experiences-and-sharing
When the Photos app launched in 2015, Google had already been working on computer vision for many years. It was no surprise that object recognition was a major draw for the app, and automatic sorting of pictures by person with the use of facial recognition became a must-have feature. Google is now looking to leverage this technology to make the Photos app a bit more social. A teardown of the latest Photos update reveals the service will soon offer additional features based around facial (...)
#Google #Photos #algorithme #smartphone #Android #biométrie #facial