Social Items



Apple Pay's peer-to-peer (P2P) payments beta is live on iMessage, starting today users can send and receive cash right within the Messages app on iPhones.

Now available on iOS 11.2 beta 2, once you’ve updated, you’ll see an Apple Pay button in the apps section of Messages that allows you to initiate a payment.

Albeit, you'll have to opt in using the iOS Public Beta program, available for U.S. customers only with iOS devices on 11.2 or later and with two-factor authentication set up on their Apple ID.

While payments is triggered by simply asking for money in a message or tapping on a message sent by someone else asking for money. The funding could be from any debit or credit card added to Apple Pay, and Apple charges no fees for money that is funded through debit cards.

But an ‘industry standard’ fee for credit cards, likely in the few percent will be required.

For the initial time someone sends you money, you will have to opt in to accept it and be issued a new virtual Apple Pay Cash card, which can only be used to send money or pay for things via Apple Pay.

Also, the card functions as a transaction log for all your Apple Pay purchases on the web or at the store.

Apple Pay Cash simply offers the vital person-to-person extension for Apple’s payments system, and it will be interesting to see how it influences the behavior of people who have mixed iPhone/Android connections.

Apple Pay's peer-to-peer (P2P) payment launches in beta, allows sending and receiving cash in Messages



For most users who upgraded to iOS 11.1, the experience wasn't all that smooth as initial typing of the letter "i" is replaced with the letter "A" and a Unicode symbol, instead of auto-correcting to a capital.

While the bug is persistent through several apps, quite oddly, not everyone who upgraded to iOS 11.1 is affected.

The annoying bug, though is affecting most users, and Apple has provided a temporary workaround until a permanent patch is made available.

For those affected, who after updating their iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch to iOS 11 or later and discovered that when they type the letter “i” it autocorrects to the letter “A” with a symbol, find below what you can do to temporarily fix the issue until a software update is released to fix it.

    • Go to Settings > General > Keyboard > Text Replacement.
    • Tap .
    • For Phrase, type an upper-case "I". For Shortcut, type a lower-case "i."


If successfully done, when you type "i" and hit space, it would automatically correct itself to "I".

The workaround makes use of the Text Replacement feature built into iOS, and requires you to create a text replacement that would automatically change the lowercase "i" to a capital, thereby overriding the bug.

Update: Apple has just sent out a patch that fixes the bug with iOS 11.1.1 now available, marked as the flagship feature.

Solve Apple iOS 11.1 autocorrect 'I' bug with this workaround

While most platforms can’t run JVMs, restricting the use of Kotlin to JVM-friendly platforms like Android, JetBrains has made available the Kotlin/Native technology, which makes native binaries for Kotlin code to run without a Java virtual machine.

The beta version of the CLion IDE allows compilation of Kotlin programs directly to an executable machine-code format.

Albeit, Kotlin/Native uses LLVM compiler technology to generate machine code; with back end, runtime implementation, and native-code-generation facility provided in the CLion IDE beta.

Kotlin/Native preview’s supported target platforms include MacOS, iOS, Ubuntu Linux, and Raspberry Pi.



And developers can use Kotlin/Native by downloading CLion 2017.3, the beta version JetBrains’s IDE for C and C++ development. Also, they'll need to download two plugins, for Kotlin and Kotlin/Native, from the JetBrains Plugin Repository to add Kotlin and Kotlin/Native support to CLion.

The CLion allows to configure and use several toolchains (i.e. CMake, compiler, debugger set) and link them to the appropriate CMake Profile.

To use necessary CMake Profile during Running/Debugging your app, simply select necessary CMake Profile in the run configuration switcher on the toolbar.

JetBrains’s IDE for C and C++ development brings Kotlin/Native technology



While Google had just recently ungraded the kid-focused and stripped down version of YouTube, YouTube Kids, including addition of several new features designed to reflect the app’s aging user base, recent reports doesn't sound good for the media streaming platform.

The controversy is surrounding how the tech giant's algorithms and AI features, could allow troubling videos to get past its filters on an app designed primarily for youngsters.

The report credited to The New York Times, pinpointed a dark side to YouTube Kids, with a video showing Mickey Mouse in a pool of blood while Minnie looks on in horror. While another video, has a claymation version of Spider-Man urinating on Elsa, the princess from "Frozen."

As those ain't anything to worry about, then comes “PAW Patrol,” a Nickelodeon show that is popular among preschoolers, screaming in a car. The vehicle hurtled into a light pole and burst into flames.

The 10-minute clip, “PAW Patrol Babies Pretend to Die Suicide by Annabelle Hypnotized,” was a nightmarish imitation of an animated series in which a boy and a pack of rescue dogs protect their community from troubles like runaway kittens and rock slides. In the video Isaac watched, some characters died and one walked off a roof after being hypnotized by a likeness of a doll possessed by a demon.

Albeit, the offending videos are just a tiny fraction of YouTube Kids’ universe, they are typically an instance of abuse on digital media platforms that rely on computer algorithms, to filter the content that appears in front of users, most especially young people.

YouTube, however have tagged the content as "unacceptable," but said its distribution isn't rampant.

Meanwhile, for parents who are concerned about what their kids are watching on YouTube Kids, there are additional parental controls to limit what the kids view, allowing to block specific videos or channels and turning off search.

Google under Scrutiny as Horror Videos appear on YouTube Kids

Microsoft's open source code editor, Visual Studio, is designed as a streamlined editor for code debugging, running tasks and version control; as workflows require the use of full-featured Integrated Development Environment (IDE).

While the roadmap for Visual Studio includes better performance, reduced memory consumption, and support for JavaScript and TypeScript.

The multilanguage code editor, performance-oriented plans also include support of language packs for community-contributed translation, and more diagnostics capabilities.

Microsoft aims to improve the discoverability in the use of TypeScript to type-check JavaScript code, with improvements in source maps so that it can be more precise and provide variable mappings. As the Visual Studio editor would gain the ability to organize and remove unused imports for the two languages.



It wants to enhance support for splitting and viewing multiple terminals, along with source control integration improvements that include the ability to view changes inside the editor using a peek/inline experience.

Microsoft also intends to improve both the extension recommendation system and searching, so that tracking issues caused by extensions would be simplified.

The initial version 1.0 debuted in April 2016 and supports Node.js, JavaScript, and TypeScript. Now, you can download the latest version of Visual Studio from the project website.

Microsoft’s roadmap for Visual Studio include JavaScript and TypeScript

Already, Google Search affords users custom updates on live matches and EPL Table standing among others; and currently under testing is a new feature that will compare specifications of smartphones when a user searches for two devices.

The company seems to be testing the comparison feature for some users, while searching for two devices with "vs" in the middle (for example, "Pixel 2 vs Pixel 2 XL") brings up a comparison chart.

Albeit, it doesn't seem to work with three or more devices, as there's only a mode to highlight differences between just two devices.



As spotted by AndroidPolice, the device comparison feature is visible on the main results page, and tapping the blue button expands it to show every detail.

The new feature, however seems to be rolling out, and when active for all, may include comparison for other popular mobile brands.

Google testing highlight of differences between devices in search



Twitter blocked the search for the word “bisexual” in photos and news earlier, which angered quite not so few people, but the company responded that the removal of the search results for certain terms were “an error.”

While Twitter claimed it was due to an error, some users aren’t quite convinced as to the rationale behind such an incidence.

As the removal could be seen as a form of discrimination and purposely disallowing people to search for items such as images and news articles of the term labeling one’s sexuality.

According to Twitter, the teams are working quickly to resolve it:



Twitter, though maintains that they don’t know how this happened, even as the removal only seems to affect the label of sexuality.

The company still have other seriously derogatory terms like “Hitler,” or “Nazi” which were not removed; neither the Russian bot problem, seemingly taking ages to fix.

Twitter's removal of “bisexual” in search for photos and news



Apple's revolutionary new feature on iPhone X, Face ID allow you to unlock your phone by looking at it, but just how much facial biometric can reveal about the bearer is quite huge.

The new front-facing sensor module within the ‘notch’ enables the smartphone to sense and map in-depth facial features, which inevitably, communicates a lot about its owner without them necessarily realizing it.

Now, this dexterous piece of software called the TrueDepth camera system, is to power a new authentication mechanism based on a facial biometric, Face ID, which iPhone X owners are required to register their facial biometric by tilting their face in front of the camera.

The Face ID also replaces Touch ID for Apple Pay and other apps that uses it to authenticate users, like banking apps.

Albeit, Apple claims it does not have access to the depth-mapped facial blueprints that users enroll with when they register for Face ID. As the mathematical model of the iPhone X user’s face is encrypted and stored locally on the device in a Secure Enclave.

But Face ID learns over time, the additional mathematical representations of the user’s face may also be created and stored in the Secure Enclave after successful unlocks — if the system deems them useful to “augment future matching”.

While developers trying to incorporate Face ID authentication into their iOS apps does not have access to the Secure Enclave; the authentication is via a dedicated API which returns only a positive or negative response after comparing the input signal with the Face ID data.

Apple’s engineering and security systems behind Face ID’s architecture should given you confidence that the core encrypted facial blueprint to unlock your device and authenticate your identity with all sorts of apps is never shared with anyone.

Does Apple's Face ID facial biometric raise privacy concerns?



Facebook have been an unconventional breaking news source, as the leading social platform may be gearing up for a new “breaking news” tag feature that will enable publishers to bring their news posts to the right audience.

The company which is constantly testing new products, is working on a "breaking news" feature, though no official statement has been made about it.

First spotted by Matt Navarra, director of social media at The Next Web, the “breaking news” tag for publishers, could serve to push relevant news stories higher into users’ feeds, or at least make them more visually appealing.

Matt, who has become a notorious leaker of unreleased Facebook products and features which he usually find in Facebook’s code or through other means, also shared screenshots on a purported payment system called "red envelop" on Twitter.





The red envelope feature is especially interesting, as red envelopes are typically used for gifting in Chinese New Year holidays, though its ability to send money on Facebook would mean an actual peer-to-peer payments system.

Albeit, the company already have payments system in place on its Messenger, but its not supported on Facebook’s main app or on the Web.

Facebook's wooing of sellers on its Marketplace, which advertisers are not allowed to buy ads specifically for the Marketplace section, may therefore mean making people to actually pay for a purchase on Facebook would be the monetization scheme.

Facebook “Red envelope” and “Breaking news” features coming soon



Kotlin, the newly endorsed language for Android app development, has hit version 1.2 and offers an experimental feature enabling reuse of code across platforms, as well as compatibility with the Java 9 module system.

The experimental multiplatform projects capability will allow developers reuse code between target platforms: starting with JVM and JavaScript, and native support, coming later.

While code compilation is produced for both the common and platform-specific parts, and placement can be either in a common module; or platform-dependent parts placed in platform-specific modules.

And developers can express dependencies of common code on platform-specific parts via expected and actual declarations.

The declaration specifies an API, with an actual declaration either platform-specific to the API or a type alias that refers to an existing implementation of the API in an external library. While the standard library features the kotlin.math package for performing mathematical operations in cross-platform code.

Kotlin.math package also offers better precision for math polyfills for JavaScript, with the standard library compatible with newly introduced Java 9 module system, which forbids split packages (multiple .jar files declaring classes in the same package).

In version 1.2, the kotlin-stdlib-jdk7 and kotlin-stdlib-jdk8 artifacts replace the old kotlin-stdlib-jre7 and kotlin-stdlib-jre8.

It eliminates the deprecated declarations in the kotlin.reflect package from the kotlin-reflect library to make support for Java 9 possible.

Other improvements in Kotlin 1.2 include the option to treat all warnings as errors; and enabling the compiler to use information from type casts in type inference. This is especially relevant for Android app development, for the compiler to correctly analyze findViewById calls in Android API Level 26.

The Kotlin version 1.2 release candidate is now available for download on GitHub.

Kotlin 1.2 Release Candidate now out; with support for Java 9

Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)