News archive (5 / 2019)

Huawei is one of the most influential Chinese companies around, and while it's still unclear whether the government indeed influences the company, they sure have been targeted like that is a fact.

After US blacklisting Huawei and disallowing American companies to continue business with them, at least after the initial 90 day delay, the company has been trying to both fight the ban in the courts and trying to minimize the damage to its brand.

They've also expressed publicly that they do not wish similar reaction from the Chinese governement and rather fight the ban in the US court of law, where it argues that the ban in unconstitutional.

Whether this is just posturing or what they actual believe, is only known by inside the company, and perhaps the Chinese government if what US has suggested for years is true.

Nevertheless, Chinese governement seems to be ready to strike back. Report from Bloomberg tells us that China is planning to determine a list of "unrealiable" entities that could be thousands of companies that aren't working with Huawei.

Google announced in January that it will be blocking extensions from using a specific API that was commonly used to block ads. Even after a fairly sizable brouhaha from the ad blocker community, Google has decided to put the new policy in place.

Google is providing a new declarativeNetRequest API within Chrome for ad blockers and other extensions but it is not as extensive as the previously used webRequest interface.

While ad blockers do have to go through a few hoops to provide similar experience to customers as before, it is not going to entirely change the landscape of ad blockers on Chrome.

Essentially extensions like uBlock Origin and Ghostery have to adopt the AdBlock Plus', arguable less effective, model.

However, Google hasn't blocked even the previous one entirely.

The Enterprise version of Google Chrome will still be allowed to use webRequest for blocking ads. This is likely so that companies don't have to change their internal extensions because of the change.

According to Google, not allowing the public use of webRequest API is done to expand on user privacy and ensure a safe user experience. Ad blockers might contest that making it harder to block ads is very convenient for the largest ad provider in the world.

Microsoft has revealed that it intends to release the console gaming subscription service to PC as well. At this point we don't have a lot of details about the upcoming extension to PC games, but fortunately E3 is just around the corner.

Microsoft is promising more information at E3 which starts in less that two weeks. At this point we know that Xbox Game Pass will bring over 100 games from 75 different developers, which unsurprisingly includes few Microsoft-owned studios.

The third-party contributors includes giants like Bethesda and Sega but also lesser known studios like Deep Silver and Devolver Digital. Deep Silver is a German game publisher known for games like Metro Exodus and upcoming Shenmue III.

Devolver Digital on the other hand has recently worked with more mobile gaming, like Reigns: Game of Thrones and other Nintendo Switch titles.

In addition to over 100 free games, Xbox Game Pass subscribers get a 20 percent discount on other games in the Microsoft Store.

For further information about things like pricing and compatibility with Xbox Game Pass on console, we'll have to wait until E3.

One thing that isn't only related to the Game Pass, but in Microsoft Store in general. Microsoft has confirmed that the store will soon support native Win32 software. This means that game developers can submit the exact same file on Microsoft's store as they do on say Steam or other competitors.

After Supreme Court's ruling earlier this month, Apple's standing as an untouchable money making machine, thanks to App Store, has become under threat.

Supreme Court ruled that Apple's 30 percent commission in the App Store makes it a participant, and perhaps a monopoly at that, in the transaction, and therefore customers are able to sue them under antitrust legislation.

Apple obviously views their part completely differently, and has expressed this in a new website, titled Principle and Practices, dedicated to App Store policies.

According to Apple, they are not participating in the selling of apps to consumers. Instead they only work with app developers that are also the ones Apple gets their 30 percent cut from.

Furthermore, even when the case goes to court, their view is that the company is not restricting the sales, since the app developer can determine the price themselves, even when there is no alternative store on iOS.

This price can be zero dollars, which means Apple won't get a dime, and 84 percent of apps do just that. They also remind that they do let developers to compete against Apple's own default apps in the App Store.

Google has announced that they are bringing some of the more important features of Waze to Google Maps. The company has already brought them to some markets, including in the US, but now a worldwide launch will extend that to more than 40 countries.

Waze is a navigation and commute app that helps especially with traffic related issue submitted largely by the community, such as congestion, speed traps, and speed limits. It was acquired by Google in 2013.

The list of countries includes now many in North and South America, Europe, Asia, Middle East and even Africa.

According to TechCrunch, the update is coming to both Android and iOS, although only the former will be able to report mobile and stationary speed cameras.

Speed limits are shown in the bottom left side of the screen and speed cameras appear as orange bubbles on the route.

While users will get speed limits and speed cameras on their Google Maps UI now, there will still be plenty of Waze exclusive features that might keep you interested in the standalone app.

Finally, here's the full list of countries supported by the new Google Maps features:

Apple is going to reveal their newest version of iOS next week. The mobile operating system gets announced an update at the annual Worldwide Developer Conference, as usual.

The new iOS 13 will be unveiled first time officially on WWDC keynote on June 3 by Tim Cook et al. While there have been rumors of what updates the new version will bring along, Apple still keeps secrets fairly well.

One thing that has definitely been rumored is a iOS-wide dark mode. Now we've also got some evidence in form of pictures to prove it.

Leaked pictures that 9to5Mac managed to get their hands on show the darker than normal iOS, but according to these pictures there isn't a drastic change. On the left side picture, the bottom Dock seems to be a tad darker, but changing the wallpaper would do a lot to make it darker.

Dark mode gets better use inside apps, like in the Music app where OLED displays will save battery more efficiently thanks to the black backgrounds. The same darker smoked glass effect seen in the Dock is in use in other bottom and top bars too.

9to5Mac also notes that on the right side picture we can see the new annotation tools Apple has implemented in the updated screenshot feature.

Virtual Reality is an amazing experience everyone needs to try out. However, there are clear limitations to what can be achieved with the hardware we have available.

Either you'll need a separate computer or the quality will be reduced, and there's also problems with wires. HP belives that it's newest invention has both of these problems covered.

Say hello to the HP VR Backpack!

This is no joke. When Oculus comes up with new standalone headsets like the Oculus Quest, HP has decided to go the other route.

HP obviously doesn't want you to compromise when it comes to the fidelity of the experience, but you might have harder time moving with a full-blown PC on your back.

The backpack PC includes a 8th gen Core i7 processor, Nvidia's new GeForce RTX 2080 GPU as well as 16 GB of RAM and 256 GB SSD storage. There's also a large battery that means you won't need to be tethered to anything.

As it is just a regular PC inside the backpack, it supports all the traditional VR headsets that would be used with a PC. HP, however, would love if you would use their own Reverb headset.

Then we come to the price of this amazingly original innovation. To have your own VR backpack you'll have to shell out $3300. It's not exactly cheap, is it?

HTML is often colloquially understood as the grounds which the internet is built upon. The language of the net, Hyper Text Markup Language, and its standardized use has been maintained over the years by World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), but no longer that is the case.

W3C has decided to abandon the maintenance of HTML and DOM standards and has handed the torch to a organization called WHATWG. WHATWG, or Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group, has been around since 2004 and been an integral part of HTML standard development.

The group includes representatives from most of the largest web browser developers, inluding Apple, Google, Mozilla, and Microsoft. Alongside these behemoths there are hundreds of other members.

Previously WHATWG has done some of the hard lifting in determining future specs of web standards before the standardization process was completed by W3C.

Up until early last year, W3C and WHATWG worked together fairly seamlessly, but problems arose around W3C's implementation of DOM standard v4.1 some of which influential WHATWG members objected to.

Now after a year of back and forth, W3C has decided to hand the reins to WHATWG when it comes to HTML and DOM standard implementation.

Many people prefer to go to sleep while listening to soothing music. To help with this, Spotify has finally added a sleep timer to its Android app. Such feature has been a standard option for most music players for ages now, but the biggest of them all, Spotify, hasn't bothered with the feature until now.

To activate the feature, use the three-dot menu in top corner in "Now Playing" mode. Now, a menu appears. There, you can spot the Sleep Timer option. User can choose between 5, 10, 15, 30, 45 and 60 minutes. Alternatively, you can choose to end playing after the currently playing track.

As you might imagine, here's nothing more to it. A simple, yet quite useful new feature to the most popular streaming music app there is. Screenshots below highlight where to find the feature:

An artist has sold an old laptop infected with six of the most financially-damaging pieces of malware in history at auction for more than $1.34 million.

'The Persistence of Chaos' is the name given to this art project. It consists physically of a Samsung NC10-14GB 10.2-Inch Blue Netbook, running Windows XP SP3, that just happens to be infected with some of the most damaging pieces of malicious software that has spread around the world over the years.

In total, there are six pieces of malware running havoc on this system. ILOVEYOU is a virus that was spread via e-mail and file sharing, which caused over $15 billion in damages as it infected more than half a million systems. MyDoom was a rapidly spreading worm, and is estimated to have caused over $38 billion in damages.

SoBig is a worm/trojan that circulated through e-mail, affecting hundreds of thousands of systems and causing around $37 billion in damages. WannaCry is a piece of ransomware that affected at least 200,000 systems in 120 countries a couple of years back, causing an estimated $4 billion in damages. This malware was responsible for disruption to the UK's National Health Service.

DarkTequilla was a piece of malware that stole banking credentials and other data, mainly targeting Latin America. Finally, BlackEnergy is a cyber-weapon that was used in an attack that caused a widespread blackout in Ukraine in 2015.

Poland has made a complaint to the European Union's top court against controversial new copyright reforms that were approved and adopted by the bloc in April.

There was considerable push-back over the past year against proposed European Union copyright reforms. Two articles in particular provoked the ire of silicon valley and digital rights campaigners alike. One article would result in a search and news service provider like Google potentially having to pay for tiny snippets and links to news websites, while another more controversial article could force the use of upload filters and automatic removal of content it deems infringing.

Opposition on grounds that the new rules would push out new start-ups that couldn't afford such filters, or could harm the Internet's meme and mix-and-match culture, has been vocalized many times before and so won't be repeated here. Instead, the focus of Poland's complaint is fears about censorship.

Censorship is forbidden in the national constitution of Poland itself, but the government fears that enforcement of new EU rules (which would have to be adoped by each member state in their own way) could lay the foundation for effective censorship.

SpaceX has launched the first 60 satellites that will be part of its broadband service, beaming Internet access from 2,000km above the Earth.

Elon Musk, chief executive officer at SpaceX, eyes the Starlink project as a potential source of revenue to help fund SpaceX' lofty goals in space transport and exploration. The Starlink network will provide high-speed broadcast access to customers starting in the United States for a fee, potentially providing high speed options for those stuck in rural areas.

The first array of satellites launched by SpaceX flew atop a Falcon 9 rocket. At 500lb a piece, the total payload is the heaviest carried by the private rocket firm to date. The first stage / booster that carried the rockets had flown two previous SpaceX missions and successfully landed for a third time to potentially fly again soon. That's good news considering that the ultimate goal of SpaceX' Starlink is to have 12,000 working broadband satellites in orbit.

Providing high-speed Internet access from satellites in low-Earth orbit is an idea not exclusive to SpaceX. Amazon is also eyeing its own 3,200-satellite array that would provide Internet access services, dubbed Project Kuiper, and will undoubtedly be helped by founder and CEO Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin rocket firm.

The journey of an Android-based crowd-funded open games console comes to an end on June 25.

In 2012, Ouya raised millions of dollars in a Kickstarter. The idea was appealing to many; an affordable games console that runs on open Android software and would be easy to develop video games and apps for. When it arrived, it was rough around the edges to say the least.

It some performance issues when trying to run games and owners complained about the usability of the controller, as well as a cheap-feeling finish.

In 2015, Ouya was bought by Razer which stopped sales of new Ouya consoles and incorporated the Ouya gaming content and platform into its Forge TV set-top-boxes instead. Ouya console owners could still enjoy support for the console however, but that's about to end.

Razer is discontinuing support for Forge TV and support for Ouya is going with it. After June 25, Ouya owners will only be able to play games they have already downloaded to the device. Razer will be deleting all user accounts permanently and halting all online services.

More information: support.razer.com

A federal grand jury in the United States returned an 18-count superseding indictment today charging Wikileaks founder Julian Assange with offenses related to one of the largest compromises of classified information in U.S. history.

Assange is currently serving a 50-week prison sentence in the United Kingdom for jumping bail, and is fighting an extradition request from the United States. The 47-year-old Australian made headlines worldwide from 2009 as Wikileaks published tens of thousands of classified documents and cables.

He had been staying at the Ecuadorian embassy in London for years before the Ecuadorian government revoked his asylum status in April, leading to his arrest by British authorities.

The United States sought Assange's extradition to face charges related to the acquisition of classified material. Assange is alleged to have actively encouraged and aided Chelsea Manning in obtaining tens of thousands of pieces of classified information which was later uploaded to Wikileaks.

In a press release outlining the charges, the Department of Justice (DOJ) alleges that Assange conspired with Manning to obtain classified information with reason to believe that the information was to be used to the injury of the United States or the advantage of a foreign nation. It then alleges that Wikileaks published classified documents that contained the unredacted names of human sources who provided information to United States forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, and to U.S. State Department diplomats around the world.

Apple has agreed to warn users of older iPhone models about the potential performance impact from software in updates installed on the devices.

Apple was criticized in 2017 when it admitted that software updates installed on the iPhone 6, iPhone 6s and iPhone SE models could impact overall device performance. The software was intended to manage demands on aging batteries in iPhones, impacting performance to deal with battery degradation.

Consumer protection authorities suggested that Apple should have made it clear that such throttling and management software was included in the updates. The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) points out that consumers may have felt compelled to repair or replace devices due to the drop in performance after upgrading.

According to the CMA, Apple has committed to be clearler and more upfront about battery health and performance going forward, and said the company has already started being clearer to users on the issue.

The Cupertino-based firm was also fined by authorities in Italy last year over the same issue.

Google has made a couple of changes to its Search results pages that will deliver some additional information for the user.

When you search with Google, typically you get a ranked set of Search results in plain text (putting aside ads, image results etc.). While you can see part of the URL under the headline and snippet in the search result, Google wanted to make it clearer where the Search result is actually coming from.

For that purpose, Google has added the website logo and name to the top of each Search result card. In the case of ads, Google also now show a bold ad label and the URL.

Additionally, Google will also add actions to the Search result page, such as playing a podcast or purchasing a movie ticket. At the moment, the Search design changes are only rolling out for mobile devices so keep an eye out for them.

Under fire Chinese firm Huawei is dealt another major blow as chip designer ARM halts business activity with the firm.

The latest shock to hit Huawei comes after Intel and Qualcomm both ceased doing business with the company. Huawei licenses chip designs from ARM to fabricate processors and graphics technology for use in its smartphones.

"ARM is complying with all of the latest regulations set forth by the U.S. government," an ARM spokesman said, reports Reuters. "No further comment at this time."

According to internal memos, ARM's designs contain technology with a U.S. origin, and so it believes it is affected by the Trump administrations ban on doing business with the Chinese tech giant.

Huawei reacted to the latest setback by saying it is confident that the situation will be resolved.

"We value our close relationships with our partners, but recognize the pressure some of them are under, as a result of politically motivated decisions," a Huawei spokesman said.

"We are confident this regrettable situation can be resolved and our priority remains to continue to deliver world-class technology and products to our customers around the world."

After yesterday's decision by Google to revoke Huawei's Android license, more bad news are piling for Huawei. Now, U.S. semiconductor giants Intel and Qualcomm have stopped supplying parts to Huawei.

Even though Huawei has its own chip manufacturing business that produced Kirin chips and others for mobile phones, the company still relies heavily on U.S. chips for most of its other products. Effectively, the decision by Qualcomm and Intel will mean that the Huawei's PC manufacturing business ceases to exist. Only U.S. companies produce chips needed to build x86 compatible computers, at least in scale that is required by a giant like Huawei.

Furthermore, some of the Huawei's phone models - especially those in the high end - use at least some U.S. -made chips - and this will mean trouble for those models, too.

The decision is based on U.S. administration putting Huawei officially to its trade blacklist on Thursday, making it illegal for any U.S. company to do business with Huawei.

Google has confirmed the yesterday's news about Google revoking Huawei's Android license.

Company said that the decision is based on United States adding Huawei officially to the country's trade blacklist on Thursday and that it is simply obeying the decision made by the U.S. It also states that the decision wont affect the current Huawei phones and that those will still have access to Google's services and updates. However, it is not clear whether the current Huawei phones will continue to receive Android updates or updates to Google services.

Huawei losing its Android license means that it has to rely on open sourced version of Android (AOSP) for its Android updates. This means that all new Android versions will arrive to Huawei models with considerable delay - sometimes the delays between the official Android update and AOSP update have been almost a year or so.

United States has waged a war against Chinese telecom giant Huawei for some time now. But now the big guys are joining the fight. According to reports, Google will stop all collaboration with Huawei.

Decision means that Huawei phones wont get any new Android updates, ever. It also means that all future Huawei phones will be blocked from accessing Google services. No access to Gmail, no access to Google Play store, etc.

Huawei will still have an access to open sourced versions of Android, but without the access to Google's proprietary services and APIs. Google will also cease all collaboration and support for Huawei that involves Android development and testing, Reuters' sources say.

Google's decision comes shortly after United States officially added Huawei to the U.S. trade blacklist.

Huawei also owns popular sister phone brand, Honor, and the decision applies to that brand, too.

EDIT 20/05/2019: Google has clarified what the decision means to existing Huawei users.

Android offers a wide range of features that many of the competing platforms, including most importantly of course Apple's iOS, do not have.

One of these features is a traditional and feature rich file system that is easily accessible with built-in tools as well as 3rd party apps.

This allows downloading files to your smartphone's and tablet's memory, and further management of the files almost as easily as with a desktop or laptop computer. For example you can download media files from the web and manage them within the file system.

Note! This also means that you can download things that are harmful easier than on iOS devices.

While downloading is usually easy as clicking a link on a website, finding the file or document might not be as straight forward, especially if you aren't too familiar with Android.

Microsoft and Sony have been fighting in the console wars for nearly 20 years ever after the introduction of the original Xbox.

Xbox was of course competing against PlayStation 2, Xbox 360 against PlayStation 3, and now Xbox One has been duking it out against PlayStation 4. One would think that Microsoft and Sony are at this point archenemies of the highest order.

Well, turns out that the two companies can still agree on something, as they've just signed a cloud gaming and AI deal.

According to the new agreement, the companies join forces in developing cloud gaming systems on top of Microsoft's Azure cloud platform. This means that Sony's current cloud gaming service will use Microsoft Azure, and the development continues there.

Some parts of the Microsoft's upcoming cloud gaming platform, dubbed xCloud, might be used in Sony's services as well.

While the partnership seems out of ordinary for such long-standing competitors, it's clear that perhaps both have been worried about other competitors, whether it'd be Amazon with cloud services or Google with their new gaming service Stadia.

Yesterday Asus, the Taiwanese electronics manufacturer mostly known for computers, announced their latest flagship smartphone. The company's new ZenFone 6 is mostly just a regular 2019 notch-less smartphone, but there is one very unique feature that distinguishes it from the rest.

First, let's get the specs out of the way. The phone comes with a 6.4-inch Full HD+ IPS LCD
display, Snapdragon 855, 6 or 8 gigs of RAM, and 64/128/256 GB storage options. Thus far, very familiar, right?

Well the phone also comes with a massive 5,000 mAh battery, which definitely should last a day, like fairly long into the second one as well, and maybe even whole 2 days that is marketed. But even more importantly the new ZenFone 6 features a new type of camera the company calls Flip Camera.

The came acts both as the default one in the back as well as the selfie shooter in the front. To achieve this, the company has built a mechanism that flips the camera over the top of the device.

The dual camera setup features a 48 MP Sony sensor, also used in the recently announced OnePlus 7 Pro, as well as a 13 megapixel and 125 degree wide angle camera. You can use both of them in both default as well as selfie mode.

One of the bigger tech patent disputes in recent years was the one between Apple and semiconductor manufacturer Qualcomm. After problems with their modem partner Intel, Apple had to settle the differences, and get a modem deal with them, and pay $4.5 billion.

After this, and previous year Apple and Samsung settling, one of the more significant disputes that remained was between two of the current largest smartphone manufacturers by marketshare, Samsung and Huawei. The companies have been fighting over patents for three year, but now they have settled on a truce, Nikkei Asian Review reports.

Unfortunately there aren't clear details on how this went down, but the reports say that the dispute was settled in Guangdong High People's Court. The report speculates that this might be due to global challenges in the smartphone market, which both companies want to focus on.

It has to be said, though, that the tough markets haven't been a similar struggle to everyone. While Samsung hasn't been nosediving or in free fall, that figure of speech is definitely more appropriate with Apple. Huawei on the other hand has been thriving even in these circumstances.

The specialty glass manufacturer Corning has released a new product. The company is most known for its Gorilla Glass, which is found on most smartphones.

Multiple iterations of Gorilla Glass have found their ways from the original iPhone to almost every single smartphone on the market at the moment. Now after six generations of Gorilla Glass they have announced a new product called Corning Astra Glass.

The product is designed for larger devices, or as the company says "optimized for mid-to-large-size". This includes tablets, notebooks, and even TVs. The company specifically mentions "high-performance tablet" and "8K TVs", which makes the new glass sound expensive.

However, according to the press release, Astra Glass is indeed designed to support the higher pixel density of such devices, providing clarity for higher definition while keeping the properties of durability.

According to the director of business at Corning, Ham Yim, Astra Glass provides "low total pitch variation, low total thickness variation, and low sag" in an oxide display glass that is needed in 8K TVs.

Just a few months ago we wrote about the new microSD cards coming to the stores near you in the summer of 2019. Well, depending on where you live, the summer is here.

Those pinkie fingernail sized memory cards that can store a whopping one terabyte of data are now available. One of the leading flash memory brand, Sandisk, has announced that their new terabyte microSD card is in stores now.

Obviously not everyone is going to need a terabyte of storage in a such a tiny fashion, traditionally in a smartphone.

However, if you live on storage capacity on your mobile device, this will make your live much easier. That is, if you are willing to shell out around $450.

The specs are within the UHS Speed Class 3 (U3), which means it's fast enough for 4K video recording, which it might be the most useful for.

While you might not be up for paying hundreds of dollars for the largest commercial microSD card available, as with everything, the prices will eventually go down. Now it's just a matter of time when you'll have potentially one full day of 4K footage on your fingertips.

As Apple has been struggling to move as many iPhones as it did the previous year for a while now, the company has had to resort to a different avenue of increasing profits.

Apple has been developing more and more of its hardware in-house, this lowers the cost of the phone, increasing the profits of the device, and allows better customization. One of the remaining chips that is yet to turn into an Apple designed semiconductor are modems.

That is what the company has invested in the most recently. Issue, like ones with Intel and Qualcomm, furthermore make it important for Apple to advance in their quest for an in-house modem.

As Intel failed with their 5G deployment, and Qualcomm has already been an expensive partner for Apple, shareholders have hopes on a quick development in the Apple modem camp.

Unfortunately it might be that Apple isn't as far into development as some might have thought. Report by The Information suggests, that they are still ways off from inserting their own modem inside iPhone.

Many of the people that have managed to get their hands on the first proper foldable phones have been convinced that it is indeed the future.

While things like Galaxy Fold aren't even quite ready for mass scale, they bring something completely new to the table that is likely to revitalize the entire smartphone market.

It seems entirely possible that similar thing could happen to laptops too. One of the companies that is leading the strike is Lenovo.

The world's leading laptop manufacturer has produced a prototype that offers a foldable display in a traditional clamshell laptop design.

One could easily argue that is just a folding tablet, especially since it comes with a separate keyboard and supports a Wacom stylus, but the innards are ThinkPad certified PC stuff.

Whatever it is, it's an interesting device. Here's The Verge's hands-on with the Lenovo folding PC.

Intel has barely gotten past the horrendous Spectre and Meltdown vulnerabilities, and we've got some bad news for owners of Intel chips.

Processors released after 2011 have been found to have a new vulnerability called ZombieLoad, TechCrunch reports. Just like the previously mentioned vulnerabilities from last year, ZombieLoad abuses a common technology in modern processors called speculative execution.

As the name suggests, the processor speculates on what type of task might need handling next, and does the calculations to be either used or discarded. A few bugs associated with this feature allows ZombieLoad to capture data straight from the processor.

Essentially, ZombieLoad floods the processor with data which makes the CPU turn to its microcode in order to not crash. According to Intel, the exploit uses four different bugs to deliver the attack. One of these bugs allows full access to data processed by the microcode, even though usually it is unavailable to normal applications.

The Chinese company OnePlus is primarily known of course for its flagship killing smartphones, but the company has been also developing headphones, or earbuds to be more exact, for a few years.

After couple iterations of wired buds, the company reveled last year their first wireless offering, the Bullets Wireless. Yesterday they announced that there's an upgraded version.

New Bullets Wireless 2 headphones offer an updated design, improved charging, and better sound quality.

The design still features the neck strap with controls, but the plastic buds have been upgraded to sturdier metal design. They still have the Magnetic Control feature which allows pausing and resuming music by attaching or detaching the buds using magnets.

Bullets Wireless 2 also now have the same Warp Charge technology from freshly announced OnePlus 7 Pro, which allows 10 hour charge with just 10 minutes of charging.

When it comes to sound, OnePlus says that a trio of drivers – two Knowles balanced armature drivers for high frequencies and one dynamic Goerlek driver for lower frequencies &ndahs; provide an improved sound quality.

Here we review Roomba's most affordable robot vacuum cleaner, Roomba 605, which is also sold as Roomba 606 and Roomba 620. The only difference reflected by the various model numbers is the color of the unit; the hardware is exactly the same otherwise.

The model we are reviewing is the Roomba 606, which is black. Roomba 605 comes in white.

Roomba 605 is the cheapest model available (from the current line) from the American firm iRobot, which has made a wide range of robot vacuum cleaners for twenty years.

For our test, we let the Roomba 606 loose in a 70m2 (753.4ft2) apartment as its only floor cleaning tool for a couple of months. This period of time gives us a good indication of how tidy this cleaner can keep a typical apartment long-term.

Additionally, we tested the vacuum cleaner for a few week at another location that provided a myriad of capets and other obstacles for it to manouver around.

Roomba 605 / Roomba 606 - Let's examine the device!

Roomba 605/606 sales package

The Chinese smartphone manufacturer OnePlus has today released their newest lineup of smartphones. The company's first series of smartphones includes the regular OnePlus 7, a larger and better OnePlus 7 Pro, and their first 5G smartphone, OnePlus 7 Pro 5G.

All OnePlus 7 models include the new Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 system-on-a-chip, from six up to 12 gigabytes of RAM, new faster UFS 3.0 storage (128/256GB), Dolby Atmos stereo speakers, in-screen fingerprint sensor, improved camera with UltraShot feature, and improved fast charge with Warp Charge.

The regular OnePlus 7 (pictured above) features a double camera with a 48 MP Sony IMX586 -sensor and a secondary 5 MP camera. The camera is optically and electronically stabilized and features a f/1.7. However, the regular model won't be officially available in the United States.

With the OnePlus 7 Pro (pictured below) you'll instead get a triple camera that got the second best result on DxOMark with a score of 111. In addition to the 48 MP sensor you'll get a 16 MP wide angle camera and a 8 MP telephoto camera with 3x zoom.

The display of Pro is larger, sharper and smoother. The 6.67-inch and QHD resolution AMOLED diplay is the first OnePlus display to feature 90hz refresh rate.

Most of the computer fans know the legendary Commodore 54. Even those of you who are too young to personally experience machine might have heard of the computer. But very few have ever heard about Commodore 65, C=64's planned successor.

Commodore, noticing that during the era of 16-bit computers, their old cashcow, Commodore 64 was quickly losing its sales, set up a team to milk the last pennies out of the decade-old Commodore 64. They built a backwards compatible Commodore 65 that added features similar to Commodore's other computer line, Amiga.

C=65 had a built in 3.5" disk drive, high-resolution graphics and CPU at 3.54MHz (C=64 ran at 1MHz) with 128kB of memory (expandable to 1MB) - and most importantly, a C=64 mode, allowing the computer to run C=64's massive software and game selection. Commodore 65 never made it to the market and only appx. 50 - 200 prototypes were ever built.

After Commodore went bankrupt in 1994, its assets were liquidated and the prototypes were sold all across the world.

Since those days, the Commodore 65 has begun one of the most sought-after collectibles in the computing history and some of those few prototypes tend to appear in various online markets for sale. We reported of one such incident 2 years ago when an "almost complete" Commodore 65 was on sale at eBay.

Google has over a billion users around the world every month, and their reach is increasing with every Android phone sold, every search made, and every Android app launched.

One of the ways Google takes advantage of their massive reach is to follow their users, and what they do, to gain valuable data. Now that they are in the pockets of a billion users, they can also literally follow where people around.

Fortunately there's a fairly easy way to block Google from tracking your movements via your devices and apps. First head to Activity controls.

If the direct link doesn't work, you'll have to head to Google's Privacy Checkup page.

After pressing Start Now, you'll be presented with options to Personalize your Google experience. The second option should be Location History, under which you can find a link to Manage Location History. Press the link.

This will open the map view of your locations over time. Below it you'll find another link to Manage Location History, press the link. Now you should be in the Activity controls page.

Samsung's first ever folding smartphone was unveiled in San Fransico's Unpacked 2019 earlier this years, and the company promised a fairly rapid launch schedule.

They of course wanted to be the first to the market, as Huawei was looming in the background with their own upcoming foldable phone. Samsung got the devices in reviewers hands pre-launch, and everything seemed good – for a day or two.

The issues with the display were quickly uncovered, and while at first Samsung kinda brushed them off, soon they had to acknowledge the seriousness of the problem, called back all devices, and delayed the original launch that was planned for April 26.

Samsung has already polled the preorderers whether they would still be interested in the device, and you could cancel the order if that wasn't the case. Samsung also said that the order would be automatically cancelled if they couldn't deliver on it by the end of May.

Well, we aren't quite at the end of May yet, but people have been questioning for a reason whether Samsung will be able to fix the phone in less than a month, or if even they know when this device is slated for a re-launch.

Google has some massive services that reach hundreds of millions or even billions of people. Whether it is the all-encompassing search or Gmail, millions upon millions of people around the world use them.

Where the Mountain View, CA, company hasn't managed to succeed yet? Paid entertainment.

Bloomberg reports that Google's and YouTube's paid music streaming services, Google Play Music and YouTube Music, have only 15 million subscribers, combined.

This is a far cry from market leading Spotify, who've just passed 100 million paid subscribers, and even from the U.S. #1 Apple Music, which is north of 50 million and racking up record profits to Cupertino.

YouTube, or Google as a whole, hasn't revealed their subscription figures officially, so this might be a little off. However, it doesn't seem that Google is even in the same ballpark with the market leaders.

Semiconductor giant Intel has spoken about their timeline for upcoming chip process technologies. In a call during their Investor Day, Intel revealed plans about 7 nm chips in fairly near future.

Intel has been stuck developing chips with larger processes which hinders both efficiency and power consumption. However, while 9th gen chips are still developed with 14 nm technology, this year Intel promises to start delivering 10 nm processors.

The company's first 10 nm Cannon Lake chips were already revealed in 2017 but they haven't been produced to mass market.

The company's 10 nm technology will be followed by upgraded 10nm+ and 10nm++ technologies, after which the company is readying the launch of their first 7 nm chips.

The upcoming 7 nm technology is still a little ways off, but Intel intends to launch the process in 2021 alongisde 10 nm++. In the following two years they are going to upgrade the process to 7 nm+ and 7nm++.

The bigger density chips usually end up in the most mobile devices first, since they provide greater power to area ratio and improve upon power consumption.

However, they are harder and more expensive to make, so on platforms where surface area is not necessarily a problem, they might not be available among the first. One of the 7 nm "lead products" in 2021 will be Intel's general-purpose GPU, or GPGPU.

Google officially announced yesterday their newest Android version, Android Q. The tenth version of Google's mobile operating system is still in beta, but fortunately for the ones dying to try it, they've also expanded the beta program to more devices than ever.

This time around Google has made the beta version available to a total of 23 phones, all the Pixel phones plus 15 others. Own one of those devices and you'll be able to try out the early versions of Android Q no questions asked, well except to agree to beta program TOS.

Here are the 23 phones:

Google's 2014 acquisition of Nest for $3.2 billion hasn't turned out to be the most profitable of deals, as of yet at least. Now the search giant is trying to blow some additional wind to Nest's sails with some of their Google Home line of devices.

Yesterday at their annual Google I/O developer conference Google announced that they'll move Google Home Hub products under the umbrella of Nest. From now on Google Home Hub is called Google Nest Hub.

However, this doesn't seem to affect the smart speakers, Google Home and Google Home Max. Those still seem to retain their names. Perhaps new and upgraded smart speakers, if and when they'll arrive, will be renamed accordingly.

Nonetheless, not only did they rename some older devices, they also introduced a brand new Nest Hub Max. This new smart display is essentially a bigger and better version of Nest Hub (formerly Google Home Hub).

Instead of a 7-inch display it has a 10-inch one and it now comes with a camera that can be used for video calling with smart focusing and supports gesture controls, like pausing music by raising your hand up.

The camera also enables face recognition and multiple users. This means that walking up to the display it will recognize the user and show only information relevant and privy to that specific person.

Yesterday Google announced some new products and services at their annual developer conference Google I/O. Alongside announcing official the tenth Android version, Android Q, they also first time ever announced a new Pixel device at the event.

As expected, Google unveiled the new Pixel 3a and its bigger sibling Pixel 3a XL. This is the cheaper option to traditional Pixel line of smartphones.

The phones have the same OLED screens (although in 5.6 and 6" sizes), similar body design albeit polycarbonate, same 4GB of RAM and 64GB of internal storage, and same amazing camera as last year's Pixel 3, but instead they are powered by a lesser Snapdragon 670 chipset. With the less powerful processor, however, also comes less expensive price tag.

Pixel 3a starts at $399 and Pixel 3a XL at $479.

Pixel 3a also has a 3.5 mm headphone jack, Active Edge support, and a 3000 or 3700 mAh battery that supports 18W fast charge and Google promises will last all day and night, or up to 30 hours.

Both the models ship with Android 9.0 Pie but will be among the first devices to get the Android Q. You can also already get the Android Q for them in beta form.

It comes in three color options: Just Black, Clearly White, and Purple-ish. You can get it in the U.S. via Verizon, T-Mobile, Sprint, US Cellular, Spectrum Mobile (Charter), C Spire and Google Fi, and is available starting immediately.

Google's developer conference Google I/O started yesterday with keynote from CEO Sundar Pichai and myriad of announcements from his fellow execs.

One of the most anticipated annoucements was of course Android Q, the tenth version of the company's mobile operating system. While the final version of the OS will be released in the fall alongside likely the next-gen Pixel phones, there's already a beta version to try out and see for yourself what the new Android has to offer.

Most of the new features are already built-in to the beta version, although it might not work perfectly.

Android Q is going to focus a lot on privacy and security, which isn't a sexy theme but it is important, and is often under the hood and for no one to really see. There are, however, also nice security features like updates that can be installed without rebooting the device.

You'll get support for foldable devices, including screen continuity between multiple different sized displays on the device, which are said to come out of multiple manufacturers this year, we'll see if Samsung is still one of them.

Rather obviously Android Q also brings along a native 5G support, as many of the first 5G phones will enter the market later this year or early next year.

A long time ago it was thought that Microsoft would battle against Linux for the world domination in a platform war of ages. That epic war never happened, of course, at least not how many of us imagined, and nowadays Linux and Microsoft get along fairly well.

Microsoft has been slowly warming up to Linux over the years, and now they were apparently ready, for the first time, to bring a full Linux kernel to a Windows 10 release.

That is right, the company revealed at their Build 2019 developer conference that new development versions of Windows 10 will feature a full-fledged Linux kernel within.

According to Microsoft, Windows 10 will feature in-house built LTS release of Linux kernel, which is v4.19. Later it will continue updating to newer LTS versions bringing the most up-to-date features for developers.

Linux kernel is part of update to Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) which has previously supported Linux development on Windows but not featured a full Linux kernel.

The company also announced the new Microsoft Terminal, which is a combination of Command Prompt (cmd), PowerShell as well as WSL.

Robots are becoming more common in regular households, and robot vacuums are probably the most common example of that. While they are not even close to intelligent, or humanoid, they are somewhat relatable with all their faults.

They are like clumsy animals that instead of leaving things around, collect and clean them. The manufacturers have realized this too, and allow users to name their pet robots.

While some argue that making robots more relatable might be the biggest problem we do with artificial intelligence, some do want their robots to be more human-like.

One of these people is robotics YouTuber Michael Reeves who has finally filled his promise of delivering a screaming Roomba. So what would a Roomba that feels pain for every wall or furniture collision sound like?

Here's your chance to indulge into that experience. For those who can't play the video and are wondering, it sounds like someone perpetually stubbing their toe.

Hilarious? Yes. More relatable? Probably. Also probably a bad idea in many ways.

Fortunately if you still want to give your own try, you only need a Roomba, a Raspberry Pi, and a speaker of sorts.

Everything is electronic, or smart, these days. Well, everything except voting it seems. For years upon years electronic voting has been suggested as the fix to all election problems, yet here we are with hackable voting machines and cries about rigged elections.

While electronic voting is becoming more popular, there are problems with both security and convenience. Microsoft agrees, and has introduced their own platform for elections, called ElectionGuard, at their Build 2019 conference to solve most of it.

The company promises that ElectionGuard is as secure and transparent as you would hope a voting platform to be. It has been working in partnership with multitude of voting system providers, including Democracy Live, Election Systems & Software, Hart InterCivic, BPro, MicroVote, and VotingWorks, and developed the software with Galois.

Microsoft has said the pilot programs kick off next year, just in time for the 2020 elections.

However, ElectionGuard isn't exactly a complete electronic voting system, more like a software platform to build the system on top of. It collects and handles the data that is fed to it from voting machines.

Microsoft has build it in open source which provides a great deal of transparency as well as opportunity for constructive critique. The company also says that it is compatible with current generation of voting machines, which makes it easy to deploy and use.

Microsoft's Build 2019 developer conference launched yesterday, and company leads took the stage to introduce some of their new projects, and reveal updates to others, to kick it off for the developers.

One of the updates was about the company's new search engine tool, first unveiled last year. Microsoft Search is said to now come to all apps and company's platforms.

While it was introduced last years it hasn't been extended over to all possible places, which is exactly what Microsoft intends to do starting this month. Most apps and services will be featuring Microsoft Search functionality in the near future.

Better yet, Microsoft Search is context aware. While it uses Bing's engine, if logged in to Microsoft Graph on your work computer, you'll be presented with different kinds of results than on your regular home PC.

Microsoft Search is a competitor for Google's Cloud Search. They are both meant for searching on corporate networks and internal searches. Making it available as widely around the desktop experience as possible increases the likelihood that the search will be in the right place at the right time.

Soon it will be found in Office apps, on the desktop, and on Bing, and that's probably one of the bigger advantages compared to Google's offering.

Stranger Things lawsuit turns upside down as plaintiff drops the case just days before the hotly anticipated trial was set to get underway.

Charlie Kessler claimed since 2018 that Matt and Ross Duffer (aka, The Duffer Brothers) had effectively stolen key elements of Stranger Things from his short film Montauk, and had breached an implied contract when he spoke to them about his ideas in 2014.

The Duffer Brothers insisted that Kessler's claims were bogus and that they had never agreed to make any TV show with him, and further that they had been working on the project that would become Stranger Things since 2010.

Kessler pressed ahead with the lawsuit despite lawyers for the Duffers insisting that they had e-mails and Google Documents dated years before Kessler briefly interacted with them at a film festival to prove they had created the series.

Conspiracies surrounding a location called Camp Hero in Montauk, New York, have been abundant for decades, ranging in content from time travel to cold war experiments on test subjects. In fact, the Duffers originally referred to the project that would become Stranger Things as "Montauk", and you can even read the original pilot script dubbed "Montauk" online.

The conquering of ExaScale supercomputing continues with a $600 million machine to be built by AMD and Cray for the U.S. government.

Dubbed "Frontier", when this new supercomputing beast is fully completed it will be capable of exceeding 1.5 ExaFlop/s. An Exaflop is one quintillion floating point operations per second.

The system will be based on Cray's new Shasta architecture and Slingshot interconnect and will feature high-performance AMD EPYC CPU and AMD Radeon Instinct GPU technology.

"Frontier's record-breaking performance will ensure our country's ability to lead the world in science that improves the lives and economic prosperity of all Americans and the entire world," said U.S. Secretary of Energy Rick Perry.

"Frontier will accelerate innovation in AI by giving American researchers world-class data and computing resources to ensure the next great inventions are made in the United States."

Researchers will harness Frontier's powerful architecture to advance science in such applications as systems biology, materials science, energy production, additive manufacturing and health data science.

This year's iPhone is largely still a mystery, but perhaps a new report from a revered Apple analyst gives us some information about iPhone 11.

According to TF Securities' analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, Apple is developing a new antenna design, which would greatly improve navigation features in iPhones. Especially the new antenna is going to be improving indoor navigation, which has been talked about for years, but no real breakthroughs have been made.

Kuo has previously suggested that Apple could introduce a new antenna technology this year, but now that the design of the phone is being finalized and mass production soon starts, he seems more confident that this is indeed the case.

He says that Apple is replaced liquid crystal polymer (LCP) antenna technology used in previous iPhones to modified PI antennas, which is more cost-effective and performs better than the previous solution.

It is only a temporary fix for some issues with high-frequency connections, because Apple intends to go back to LCP for the first 5G iPhone in 2020, Kuo says.

What makes the upcoming iPhones better at indoor navigation is the improvements in ultra-wideband.

Obviously antenna designs haven't always went well for Apple. Most famously Apple introduced a new antenna design in iPhone 4, in which holding the phone "wrong" would drop the cellular connectivity.

People love their iPhones. Not as much as they used to, but people still love their iPhones.

One of the things that they usually don't like, however, is the battery life. Controversies like the #batterygate didn't do much to help Apple's case either.

'Member? Apple admitted that it is throttling older phones so they could keep it lasting longer because of degraded batteries. Not that it is necessarily a bad thing, but they didn't tell the users about it, until it was exposed and they had to.

Well, there's more bad news about Apple's battery practices. According to a British customer advocacy group Which?, as covered by Business Insider, Apple has been fooling customers with the battery life figures.

As they tested iPhones, a total of nine different models, and how long you could actually use them as a phone, the results were not even close to what Apple claims.

Among the models the new iPhone XR was the worst offender. Apple promises 25 hours of talk time but it only managed 16.5 hours. Apple is giving the phone more than 50% more talk time than it can actually manage.

Smartphones are getting better and better, but for a while now the sales volume has gone down. That's probably the reason many manufacturers are making their phones more expensive, to combat the declining quantity.

For some it is not necessary, namely Huawei. The controversial Chinese manufacturer has managed to grow their business among others struggling and the entire market posting -6.6% growth.

Apple has fallen very sharply, according to IDC's newest report. In fact it is leading in negative year-over-year change with -30%. Huawei has now passed the American giant by a huge margin by increasing the volume YoY just over 50%. That is insane in this market.

In 1Q18 Apple shipped 52.2 million iPhones while Huawei "only" managed 39.3 million. A year later the tables have turned, and more, with Apple dropping to 36.4 million and Huawei with 59.1 million shipped smartphones.

Huawei's 19% market share is a scary prospect for Samsung as well, who is leading the pack with 71.9 million units and 23.1% share of the market. Even they dropped 8.1%.

Huawei has managed this without getting into the competitive U.S. market, thanks largely to the governments' hostility towards the Chinese company's suspected spying.

The old magnetic strip of debit and credit cards is nowadays rarely used in most of the Western countries, having been mostly replaced by either contactless payments or chip-and-pin payments. Finnish bank S-Pankki has now introduced a line of debit and credit cards that are designed vertically rather than horizontally.

Reasoning behind the design change is that consumers mostly see their cards positioned vertically - either when stored with their phone flip-covers or when paid with chip-and-pin terminals.

The card itself is still the same, standard-sized bank card we all know, but the all the graphical design elements - including the numbers on the card - are positioned so that they're meant to be read when the card is positioned vertically.

S-Pankki is not the first one to do the switch, as some banks have introduced the portrait cards in past two years, too, such as Sterling Bank in the UK. But S-Pankki is one of the largest banks in Finland, whereas most other banks around the world to introduce portrait cards have been "new banks" rather than traditional, big banks.

Traditional 16 digit card number is split into four lines, each having four numbers. Card still has the old, black magnetic strip so the card can still be used in countries where chip-and-pin payments and contactless payments aren't the norm. More info from S-Pankki website (in Finnish).

The patent dispute between Apple and Qualcomm had all the right ingredients to become a decade long battle like the one between Apple and Samsung, but who knew a failure by a third-party would open this gridlock.

When Intel recognized that it couldn't make 5G chips for Apple, like they promised, Apple had to quickly figure out a new 5G partner. The problem was that they were fighting in the courtroom with the obvious partner, Qualcomm.

Apple had to settle the dispute and, as expected, it wasn't cheap.

According to Qualcomm's latest quarterly financials it is receiving at least $4.5 billion in the settlement. This doesn't include royalties with the new licensing deal.

The deal is a exclusive six-year licensing agreement with a two-year extension option where Qualcomm provides Apple's iPhones with modems. Apple is also developing their own modems in-house, so it remains to be seen how the company manages the development of their own modems and a lengthy deal with Qualcomm.

Revolutionary electric car company, Tesla, is looking for investments to continue operations as planned. The company is looking to raise another $2 billion from investors.

According to CNBC, Tesla is going to try and raise the money via convertible notes and new equity. $1.35 billion would come from convertible notes and $650 million from new equity.

Tesla is looking for investors and one of them is said to be company CEO Elon Musk. Musk has offered to buy around $10 million worth of stock, which is of course a drop in the bucket for both the entirety of the investment round, or Musk's 20% stake in the company worth over $12.5 billion.

Tesla has been burning through their cash deposits in a remarkable pace for couple years. Musk said in the quarterly conference call to shareholders that raising money is not a fix, but instead the company needs to be more efficient.

I don't think raising capital should be a substitute for making the company operate more effectively. I do think there is some merit to raising capital, but this is sort of probably about the right timing.

The controversial Chinese smartphone manufacturer Huawei is quickly climbing to the top of the smartphone market share worldwide, but they are hardly done.

In 2016, Huawei introduced their MateBook laptop. Last year they redesigned the device, and released the highly acclaimed Matebook X Pro.

Now they have decided to diversify their portfolio further by expanding to television manufacturing. According to Nikkei Asia Review, Huawei is developing a 5G-enabled TV with 8K resolution.

The first ever 5G TV is said to be unveiled later this year, and according to the sources it would enter the market this year as well. However, even if the reports are correct, it is not clear at all that the TV would be sold in the U.S. or even Europe.

Many of the Chinese manufacturers never enter the western markets, and some of them only bring selected products to the U.S. and Europe. This combined with current government's distrust of Huawei's devices could be detrimental to the TV's chances in the U.S., especially considering it's equipped with 5G.

Apple has revealed latest quarterly results, and as expected revenue went down from last year. However, figures weren't as bad as expected and the stock shot up slightly.

Last fiscal years second quarter ended with revenue of $61 billion and this year the figure dropped to $58. The revenue from iPhones took a fairly steep dive, although Services as well as wearable technology, like the Apple Watch and especially AirPods, mostly plugged the hole.

Services generated $11.5 billion in revenue, which is an all-time high for Apple. One service that is certainly responsible for much of that is Apple Music, which has gained fast inside the U.S. even though trailing Spotify by a hefty margin worldwide.

Apple also managed to grow iPad business once more, from $4 billion to just $4.9 billion, likely thanks to the new iPad Pro. Unfortunately Apple no longer reports unit sales.

The company also revealed that there are more than 1.4 billion Apple devices currently in use worldwide. According to CEO Tim Cook, the trade war between Chine and the U.S. calmed down, and the relationships have been improved greatly since last year.

Apple took a significant hit from complication with the trade policies between the two countries. Now at least Cook believes that the tides are turning, and it's already evident in their operations in China, although tariffs are still in place.

Facebook owns some of the world's most popular social media and communication channels, but haven't done much to improve their interoperability. This is about to change soon, as the company plans to allow sending private messages between its main messaging platforms: Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp.

The feature was already rumored earlier this year, but it was finally confirmed at yesterday's f8 developer event. It is unclear how the interoperability would exactly work, as WhatsApp relies solely on phone numbers, while Instagram and Messenger require users to create their own accounts. Thus, to what "phone number" would WhatsApp user send a message to when wanting to contact a person who is only in Messenger.

Company didn't give a clear timeline for the change, but it wont happen soon - it seems that the next year is most likely timeline for the roll out.

Facebook has been tipping its toes with the massive dating app market recently with its Facebook Dating feature, available in handful of countries. Now, company is expanding that business by launching a feature called Secret Crush.

With Secret Crush, one can tag up to 9 of his/her friends as the ones who the user is interested in. To limit the scope, the people added to the Secret Crush list must be either user's friends or friends of the user's friends.

People added to the list wont know about the addition ever, unless they also add the user to their own list. If so, both users will receive a notification from Facebook about the match. According to Facebook, the feature, announced yesterday at the f8 event, wont change the way Facebook newsfeed works, i.e. the people you've added to the lis wont appear more frequently in your newsfeed than without the list.

Secret Crush is part of the Facebook Dating feature, which has been available only in select few countries, including Colombia and Canada. Now the service is expanding to 14 new countries, but yet to the U.S. or any of the Western European countries.

Feature itself is simply a "power to the user" feature - it could be automated, as studies have shown that Facebook actually knows about your love interests before you do.