Motorola’s foldable display RAZR leaks in first official-looking images
Moments after Blass shared his photo of the RAZR, Dutch website Mobielkopen posted additional images of the phone, as well as specs. The phone will reportedly feature a Snapdragon 710 processor alongside either 4GB of RAM and 128GB of internal storage or 6GB of RAM and 256GB of internal storage. The website says the phone also includes a modest 2,730mAh battery.
While it's best to treat any spec leak skeptically, you may want to be even more skeptical of this one. Qualcomm's 700-series chips have mostly been seen in the Chinese market, and to our knowledge no US carrier has sold a phone with the Snapdragon 710. For a phone that's reportedly supposed to be a Verizon exclusive, it would be a strange choice. There is always a chance that a European model may ship with a different processor to Verizon's unit, just as Samsung's flagship phones often do.
Motorola will likely officially announce the new RAZR on November 13th when the company hosts a press event in Los Angeles. The company hasn't exactly hid the fact that it plans to bring back the RAZR. When it sent invites to the event, Moto said it would feature the "highly-anticipated unveiling of a reinvented icon."
Article source: https://www.engadget.com/2019/10/31/motorola-foldable-display-razr-leaks-official-looking-images/
Face Darth Vader himself in the final episode of his Oculus VR saga
I was blown away by Vader Immortal's first episode, which arrived alongside the Oculus Quest in May. That standalone headset was the perfect way to experience Star Wars in VR, since I didn't have any cables getting in the way of my lightsaber battles. But the ILMxLAB team continued to refine the game's mechanics in the second episode, adding force powers and more refined combat. Not surprisingly, your puckish smuggler will have even more tricks in the final episode. (The studio wouldn't confirm what the new powers will be, but they hinted that they should be familiar to Star Wars fans.)
According to Ben Snow, Vader Immortal's director, and producer Alyssa Finley, the final episode will last around 45 minutes. You can expect it to wrap up many of the story threads the series introduced along the way. Altogether, the Vader Immortal saga should take around two hours to run through, which makes it just as lengthy as a typical film.
Given the lack of killer VR content out there today, Vader Immortal stands out as a polished virtual experience that genuinely feels like Star Wars. It's precisely what a new Oculus Quest owner will want to jump on -- and given the updates headed to that device, like genuine PC VR connectivity, I suspect it'll find its way into many homes during the holidays.
Article source: https://www.engadget.com/2019/10/31/vader-immortal-episode-3-star-wars/
Dropbox adds Extensions for Gmail, WhatsApp, Vimeo and more
Now, you'll be able to add files to messages in Gmail, Workplace by Facebook, Microsoft Teams, Outlook, WhatsApp and Line Works. You can also use Vimeo to capture feedback and distribute videos, use Clipchamp and WeVideo to edit, create and publish videos, and bring media files into Canva before saving finished work back into Dropbox.
Other new partners include FreshBooks, for managing expenses, DocSend, for tracking document workflow, and Notarize, for signing and notarizing documents. These Extensions are available today, and Dropbox says it's planning on adding even more partner apps next year, as well as support for additional languages.
Article source: https://www.engadget.com/2019/10/31/dropbox-adds-extensions-for-gmail-whatsapp-vimeo-and-more/
Apple Card users get 24-month interest-free financing on iPhones
The offer complements the iPhone Upgrade Program, which is another way Apple helps people pay for the latest iPhone each year, with AppleCare+ coverage included. Both are alternatives to financing the cost of a phone through a mobile provider or with another credit card (and the interest and fees that may involve).
The company also has an iPhone trade-in program, which encourages people to upgrade at a lower cost than buying a new phone outright. Apple CFO Luca Maestri said on the call that many customers are taking advantage of that offer. The company is seeing more than five times the volume of iPhone trade-ins as it did a year ago.
Apple's far from the only entity to offer 24-month, interest-free financing on devices -- Engadget's parent company Verizon does so for any phone. Still, it's a bonus for people with an Apple Card, and might help Apple entice people to upgrade their phones more often than they might otherwise while cutting out the middleman. As with its services like Apple Music, TV+ and Arcade, it seems Apple is trying to reframe iPhone financing and upgrades as a monthly expense, and not necessarily a large, one-time hit to wallets.
Article source: https://www.engadget.com/2019/10/31/apple-card-iphone-interest-free-financing/
Tipping point: The gig economy hits delivery drivers in their wallets
The US Bureau of Labor Statistics defines those providing their labor in the gig economy as "independent workers." Their jobs range from day labor, seasonal workers, substitute teachers, or "Intermediate contractors who are self-employed but connect with clients through an online marketplace or other intermediary, which include drivers hired via peer-to-peer ridesharing apps." Virtually all independent workers are considered self-employed and typically hired to perform short-term, discrete tasks. This system theoretically empowers workers more flexibility in when and how long they work while employers can better handle seasonal changes in labor demand without having to worry about providing benefits like healthcare.
The rise of the gig economy has also changed the relationship between workers and customers, specifically in the matter of tipping which puts more than $42 billion dollars of income into the pockets of workers in the American food service industry alone. Dr. Michael Lynn, professor of consumer behavior and marketing at the Cornell University School of Hotel Administration, points to five major motivations behind Americans' traditional tipping practices.
"One is to repay reward servers for the work they do -- reciprocity," he told Engadget. "You've done a favor for me, I need to reciprocate. Here's some money." Lynn also points out that tipping big can help ensure better future service, especially if the customer expects to return regularly. Customers will also tip as a means of displaying social status by showing off their wealth with big tips, like the patron who ordered two waters and left a $10,000 tip at a North Carolina restaurant in 2018. Another reason is to help the server. "In many cases, people know servers make substandard wages, below the standard minimum wage," Lynn continued, and will tip as a means of altruism. Finally, many Americans simply see it as a social obligation or duty to tip. Nobody wants to be seen by their peers as that cheapskate who left $0 on a $300 tab.
However, tipping only serves as a moderate motivator to wait staff. In a 2001 study, Lynn found that service quality accounts for less than 2 percent of tip amount variance. "There is in fact a weak relationship," Lynn explained. "Tips are not strongly related to service." That's not to say that the only reason servers show up each shift is for the chance to take home tip money.
"They have to provide a certain level of service just to keep getting fired," Lynn continued. "And many people will work in providing a good level of service because they take pride in their work. Tips aren't the only motivations do a good job."
But they sure help.
In a 2017 study, Lynn notes that the rise of the gig economy is associated with a decline in tipping norms, especially among the younger adults who constitute the largest user base of gig economy services. A subsequent 2018 NYT post found that while traditional cabbies enjoy customary tips in excess of 20 percent of the base fare, Uber drivers generally only get around 5 percent of their base fares. To be fair, Uber introduced its ride-hailing service in 2009 and spent the next eight years telling passengers not to tip their drivers, right up until the company introduced its tipping feature in 2017. So it's not as though Uber customers have been socially primed to tip their drivers like they would a taxi, even though they were always free to give their driver a cash tip if they chose to.
In a study from the NBER, published earlier this month, a team of researchers from Stanford, UCSD and University of Chicago found some surprising contributing factors as to why that ride-hailing tip disparity exists. The study examined 40 million Uber trips conducted from August 18, 2017 through September 14, 2017. They found that only 16 percent of those trips ended with the driver getting a tip, and when they did, the average amount was $3.11 (around 26 percent of the fare).
Tips were typically highest (in both amount and frequency, $3.70 and 17 percent respectively), in the hours between 3 am and 5 am. That's usually when business travellers are getting off red eye flights or getting to the airport to catch the day's first plane out, and potentially expensing the ride to their company. Conversely, the study found that tips were lowest around midnight, earning drivers less than $3 on just 13 percent of their trips.
In addition to a driver's ability -- hard acceleration, breaking, and speeding were all found to be surefire ways to lose a potential tip. Their age, gender and ethnicity all played a role in how and how much extra they received. It should come as no surprise that younger female drivers are tipped at higher rates and amounts than their male colleagues, though that gap does close as the drivers' ages increase. Yes, it's for the same reason that Hollywood actresses stop getting cast after a certain age and how busty blonde waitresses consistently earn bigger tips than their less comely co-workers.
Interestingly, female passengers tip in both smaller amounts and a lower rates than male riders unless their trip is with a female driver. The study authors point out that "men tip female drivers nearly 12 percent more than they tip male drivers, while females tip female drivers roughly 11 percent more than they tip male drivers."
"Our results indicate that gender matters when it comes to tipping," the study authors concluded. "Gender also interacts with age, with men tipping younger women more than they tip any other group. We also show that tipping varies based on the demographic characteristics of where the rider and driver are from. As expected, we find that the quality of the ride matters as well, with higher quality generating higher tips."
It's not just Uber, the gig economy has also had an unexpected impact in the tipping norms of delivery drivers as well. A study out of MIT and Michigan State University this past May argues that because gig workers can work when they want and are paid per task, "market norms crowd out the internalized social tipping norms that compel some consumers to tip out of a sense of obligation or duty." Additionally, knowing that gig workers don't have to take a job if they don't want to can depress a user's willingness to tip.
Their study involved a pair of smaller studies; one using Foodler, which utilizes a restaurant's own employees as delivery drivers; the other using GrubHub, which relies on third-party drivers.
For the Foodler test, the researchers ordered 115 times to the same Boston-area address over the course of five years, alternating between tipping up front and withholding tip until the food actually arrived. They found that, when withholding the tip, their orders arrived around seven minutes faster on average compared to tipping up front (38.77 minutes and 45.67 minutes, respectively). "We also found that when tips were provided upfront, drivers tended to deliver food faster when the tips were larger," the study authors wrote, "despite seemingly not having any additional incentive to do so besides feelings of goodwill or reciprocity."
"It suggests that tipping norms decline in the gig economy not because services are ordered online or over a smartphone app," the authors concluded, "but because the workers have control over whether they work at that time."
Conversely, GrubHub drivers are independent workers, not employees of the restaurant you ordered from. The researchers hypothesized that because GrubHub drivers only see a composite price on the delivery as a whole (that is, they don't see how much tip is included, just the total), they "would be less likely to even notice tips in the first place, and the size of upfront tips would have little impact driver performance."
Testing this involved 12 volunteers ordering 154 meals through the online service. The average delivery time across all orders was just under 40 minutes. Even when controlling for cuisine variety, order subtotal and distance from the restaurant, only distance showed a significant effect on delivery speed, adding 6 minutes per mile on average. "A simple regression of average time on tip percentage up front also found no effect," the study authors wrote, "suggesting not only that the timing of tips did not matter, but also their size."
It appears that hiding the tip amount from GrubHub drivers (who rarely receive tips once they arrive), motivates them to complete deliveries faster so as to complete more deliveries per shift. Restaurant delivery drivers have the opposite motivation (get more and bigger tips) and therefore prioritize some deliveries over others depending on who's doing the ordering.
One way in which restaurant and GrubHub drivers are alike is in how their tips can impact their paychecks. In a number of states, restaurants can legally pay tipped workers less than the state and federal minimum wage because they make tips. It's called the tip credit.
"Essentially, employers are allowed to credit some of the tips servers make toward their wages and pay them more wages as a result," Lynn explained. The restaurant is still paying those workers a flat hourly wage, "it's just lower than what the cooks are making."
A number of gig economy companies, including Instacart and DoorDash, have until recently done the same. They'll count the driver's base pay and tips together to subsidize their own cost liability. So if the minimum hourly wage in a state is $15 but the driver's base pay and tips only come out to $12, the company will cover the $3 shortfall. If however the driver's base and tips for that hour exceed $15, the company only has to pay the base.
Lynn sees nothing wrong with this, so long as all parties are up front about the arrangement. "The idea that tips would supplement or replace wages, at least conceptually, that happens in restaurants all the time," he said.
In DoorDash's case, "the only real problem with it is that many consumers weren't aware of the policy," Lynn continued. Customers thought that they were helping their driver with their tips unaware that every extra dollar given reduced the wages the driver received. "And so, DoorDash was keeping money that customers thought they were giving to the server that was augmenting the servers income." Unsurprisingly, public reaction to this revelation was fierce and negative, prompting the company's CEO, Tony Xu to tweet:
1/ After a year of research and conversations with thousands of Dashers, we built a pay model to prioritize transparency, consistency of earnings, and to ensure all customers get their food as fast as possible.
— Tony Xu (@t_xu) July 24, 2019
"There's nothing wrong with that if everybody knows that up front. The employees knew it up front, they signed a contract, but the customer, in many cases, didn't know that. And so, arguably DoorDash could have, should have, done more to communicate their compensation policy to consumers. As long as everybody knows about it, what's the harm?"
Article source: https://www.engadget.com/2019/10/31/gig-economy-tipping-hurts-delivery-drivers/
WhatsApp’s fingerprint unlock feature finally arrives on Android
Earlier this year, WhatsApp added an extra layer of privacy for iOS users when it enabled support for Touch ID and Face ID. Today, it announced Fingerprint Lock for Android. Now, WhatsApp users can unlock the app with their fingerprint on Android, too.
Article source: https://www.engadget.com/2019/10/31/whatsapp-android-fingerprint-lock/
‘The Witcher’ will debut on Netflix December 20th
Netflix's upcoming adaptation of The Witcher series of fantasy novels has a full trailer and, at long last, a release date. As you might expect if you're familiar with the books or the series of games based on them, the show will feature monsters, sword-swinging action and magical powers, some of which you see in the trailer.
Article source: https://www.engadget.com/2019/10/31/the-witcher-netflix-release-date-trailer/
Instagram is trying to shut down stalking app Like Patrol
Like Patrol launched on iOS in July with a subscription price of $2.99 per week or $80 per year. The app's founder, Sergio Luis Quintero, says that fewer than 300 people are currently subscribed. Like Patrol sends notifications to users whenever their target likes or comments on an Instagram post and provides analytics about who they're interacting with, such as gender and even attractiveness.Originally, Like Patrol referenced data from Instagram's own creepy "Following" tab, which showed who a user interacted with, their conversations and more. When Instagram discontinued the Following tab, Like Patrol developed its own scraping algorithms to track interactions.
"Scraping violates our policies and we take action against companies who we find to be engaging in it," a spokesperson from Facebook (which owns Instagram) said to CNET. The company is also reviewing other apps from Like Patrol's developer that could be violating development guidelines.
People stalking each other on social media is so commonplace that it's become a cliché. On one hand, users have to accept that anything they post should be considered to be out in the open. On the other, social media companies should be doing more to curb stalkers and limit features that enable creepy behavior. Instagram confronting Like Patrol's publisher is a step in the right direction.
Article source: https://www.engadget.com/2019/10/31/instagram-shut-down-like-patrol/
ACLU sues to reveal the FBI’s uses of facial recognition
The FBI has engaged in "political policing," the ACLU said, including spying on peaceful activists. That raised the potential for abuse against innocent targets. The agency also claimed that it didn't need to demonstrate probable cause to use facial recognition, and couldn't confirm if it honored "constitutional obligations" to inform defendants in criminal cases when the tech was involved. And these concerns assume the systems are accurate, which they sometimes aren't -- the ACLU referred to studies showing racial and gender biases in facial recognition.
This isn't the first time the ACLU has pressed for disclosure. It filed Freedom of Information Act requests with the FBI and DEA in January. Both agencies recognized the requests, but didn't provide any "responsive documents," the ACLU said.
However the agencies respond to the lawsuit, they'll be swept up in a mounting opposition to unfettered use of facial recognition. California and the city of San Francisco recently passed measures banning key government uses of facial recognition, and companies like Facebook have shied away from past uses. There's an increasing sense that the privacy risks are too great to ignore, and that there should be at least some baseline restrictions on when facial recognition comes into play.
Article source: https://www.engadget.com/2019/10/31/aclu-sues-over-fbi-secrecy-with-facial-recognition/
Garmin’s new nav system can emergency land small planes
If a passenger presses the Autoland button, the system considers factors like weather, fuel on board, runway surface and length, terrain and obstacles and determines the best place to land. It can then guide the plane through the landing. It alerts Air Traffic Control, so help can be waiting on the ground and so that other planes can be diverted. And it talks passengers through what's happening in plain language, displaying a map and providing updates.
Autoland could also benefit solo pilots. The system will engage if it determines the pilot is incapacitated. And if you need to cancel Autoland, Garmin has made sure that's easy and intuitive as well.
Pending FAA approval, Autoland will be available as part of the G3000 flight deck on the Cirrus Vision Jet and the Piper M600. According to TechCrunch, existing planes with the Garmin G3000 cockpit may also be retrofitted with Autoland, for an additional cost.
Autoland isn't exactly new. Pilots can already program autopilot systems to land aircraft, but most require some oversight and perform better in some conditions (like fog) than others (wind). Garmin's Autoland is meant more as an emergency backup than a way to free pilots up for other tasks, and it's in line with some of Garmin's other offerings like Emergency Descent Mode and Electronic Stability and Protection.
Article source: https://www.engadget.com/2019/10/31/garmin-autoland-autopilot-landing/