Samsung is planning a major upgrade for its 10th anniversary flagship phones next year, including next-generation 5G network speeds, bigger screens and more cameras, The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday, citing people familiar with the matter. From the report: Samsung, the world's largest smartphone maker by volume, is preparing three versions of its next flagship Galaxy S10 smartphone, with displays that range in size from 5.8 inches to 6.4 inches, the people said, versus two variants in previous years. Those three phones are set to debut in February next year, they added. In addition, the South Korean technology giant is developing a fourth variant of the Galaxy S10 that will be 5G-enabled and is internally code-named "Beyond X," [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source] some of these people said.

The 5G phone, slated for a spring release in the U.S. and South Korea, would sport an even larger screen, measuring 6.7 inches diagonally, and pack in a whopping six cameras -- two in the front and four in the back, these people said, which promise richer photos and better spatial perception.

At its Android Developer Summit today, Google detailed plans to bake support for folding phones into the mobile operating system. One of the first Android phones to hit the market with a foldable display looks to be from Samsung with a launch date of "early next year." TechCrunch reports: "You can think of the device as both a phone and a tablet," Android VP of Engineering Dave Burke explained. "Broadly, there are two variants -- two-screen devices and one-screen devices. When folded, it looks like a phone, fitting in your pocket or purse. The defining feature for this form factor is something we call screen continuity."

Among the additions here is the ability to flag the app to respond to the screen as it folds and unfolds -- the effect would likely be similar to the response of applications as handsets switch between portrait and landscape modes.

Samsung is one of the biggest smartphone makers to hold off on releasing smartphones with display notches. But at the company's developer conference today, Samsung confirmed that it's soon going to join in on the trend. "A slide during the keynote showed several notch designs that are almost certainly coming to Samsung-branded devices in 2019 and beyond," reports The Verge. From the report: Hassan Anjum, a director of product marketing at Samsung, took the stage to highlight Samsung's previous breakthroughs in reducing bezels and maximizing display size year after year. "We're going to keep going. The bezels are going to shrink even further," Anjum said. "We're going to push the limits with our new lineup: the Infinity U, V, and O displays. These are new concepts that are just around the corner, and I can't wait to tell you more about them."

Infinity U: This basically looks identical to the Essential Phone's notch design. It's a small half oval that cuts down into the top middle of the display.
Infinity V: Similar to Infinity U, but with four edges instead of a curved half-oval.
Infinity O: This is a full circular cutout of the display and not so much a "notch" the top edge of the screen. Still, it seems like an eyesore and it's hard to imagine reaction to this being very positive. What's gained by that little area of display above it? Asus seems to be exploring a similar idea for its ZenFone 6, and feedback has been overwhelmingly bad.
New Infinity: This looks to be a completely notchless display. Anjum didn't discuss this one onstage, and the technology isn't quite there to allow for this design just yet. That said, Samsung could be exploring the idea of a slider phone that would house the selfie camera and other components somewhere outside their usual location.

Apple is turning its attention to a range of devices it has not upgraded in recent years. Alongside the new MacBook Air that the company unveiled on Tuesday, it is also upgrading the Mac Mini for the first time in four years, and also has a new iPad Pro in the offering. Regarding the new Mac Mini: It has Intel's 8th generation processors -- in four- and six-core i7, i5, and i3 flavors -- and 60 percent faster graphics. The processor's paired with up to 64GB of RAM (8GB comes on standard) at 2666MHz and up to 2TB of SSD storage -- double the capacity of previous Mac Minis. Overall, it's up to 5 times faster than the previous-gen models, Apple claims, and can drive 4K and 5K Thunderbolt displays and output in three formats. In terms of ports, there's plenty to go around: two USB-A, HDMI 2.0 video, four Thunderbolt USB-C, an audio out port, and a Gigbabit Ethernet port (you can add up to 10 Gigabit Ethernet, if you so choose). Also onboard is Apple's T2 chip. It's a 64-bit ARMv8 chip -- a variant of Apple's A10 -- that runs Apple's custom BridgeOS 2.0 operating system (an Apple watch derivative). The new Mac Mini starts at $799. Regarding the new iPad Pro: After months of rumors, Apple has today announced a completely redesigned iPad Pro with slimmed-down bezels, Face ID, a USB-C port, and far more powerful specs than its predecessor. Just like prior years, the new iPad Pro comes in two screen sizes: 11-inch and 12.9-inch. The 11-inch model has essentially the same proportions as the prior 10.5-inch model. And the 12.9-inch model puts the same-sized display into a much smaller form factor. The new iPad Pro starts at $799 for the 11-inch and $999 for the 12.9-inch. Preorders begin today and it ships November 7th. The new Pro is the company's first iPad not to include a home button, which allowed Apple to extend the screen vertically for a much more immersive experience. The bezels have been downsized on all four sides. [...] But something else has been removed, too: the headphone jack. There's no 3.5mm port visible on any of the device's sides, meaning that buyers will need a USB-C-to-headphone dongle to listen to music through wired headphones. The 11-inch iPad Pro starts at $799. The 12.9-inch version starts at $999. It goes on sale today and ships on November 7.

Those of you who detest display notches will find this bug especially unpleasant. A small number of Pixel 3 XL users are reportedly experiencing a bug where an additional notch appears on the right side of the display. Android Police reports: Turns out that it's a real-life bug experienced by several users, including Jessie Burroughs, Kyle Gutschow, and UrAvgConsumer. We're not sure what's causing it, but it could be something to do with the screen rotation setting getting a bit confused about its orientation. In all three of the examples we've seen, the users reported that the issue went away after a restart or fiddling with the developer settings, so at least it's not a permanent problem. Anyone who bought a Pixel 3 XL probably decided that the notch didn't bother them that much, but we're not sure how they'd feel about another one showing up unannounced. Google is aware of this bug and says a fix is "coming soon."

In addition to the foldable smartphone that's currently in the works, Samsung says it is also working on foldable laptop displays. "Like foldable smartphones, Samsung is collaborating with display makers to develop laptops with foldable displays that will not just simply fold in and out but create new value and user experience, amid the changing market trends for laptops," said Lee Min-cheol, vice president at marketing for PCs at Samsung, during a laptop event in South Korea earlier this week. The Verge reports: Foldable displays in laptops could transform the market for 2-in-1 devices. Existing convertible laptops attempt to flip and twist into tablet and media modes, but a foldable display would certainly help create new designs. Samsung hasn't revealed which companies it's working with, or any expected date for a prototype or retail device. Still, laptops like HP's new Spectre Folio would be an ideal candidate for a flexible and foldable display, or even potential devices like Microsoft's "pocketable" Surface.

An anonymous reader quotes Space.com: If you're a meteor enthusiast, the year 2018 has been very kind to you. This past summer, the annual Perseid meteor shower reached its peak the day after a new moon, ensuring that no moonlight would hinder those spotting celestial streakers. And looking ahead to December, the Geminid meteor shower, the most prolific of all of the annual displays, will reach its peak when an almost-first-quarter moon is setting during the late evening hours. This will make for excellent viewing conditions. And coming almost midway between these two popular showers, this weekend brings one of the most reliable meteor events. A sort of lesser version of the summertime Perseids, the Orionid meteor shower should reach its peak activity early on Sunday morning...

[Y]ou should wait until around 2 a.m. in your local time zone, when Orion will have climbed well above the horizon. And just prior to the break of dawn, at around 5 a.m., Orion will appear highest in the sky toward the south. That's when Orionid viewing will be at its best... Past studies have demonstrated that about half of all observed Orionids leave trails that last longer than those of other meteors of equivalent brightness. This is undoubtedly connected to the makeup of Halley's Comet; the object produces meteors that start burning up very high in our atmosphere, at around 80 miles (130 km) up, possibly because they are composed of lightweight material. This suggests they came from the diffuse surface of Halley's nucleus as opposed to its core.

An anonymous reader writes: FitMetrix, a fitness technology and performance tracking company owned by gym booking giant Mindbody, has exposed millions of user records because it left several of its servers without a password. The company builds fitness tracking software for gyms and group classes -- like CrossFit and SoulCycle -- that displays heart rate and other fitness metric information for interactive workouts. FitMetrix was acquired by gym and wellness scheduling service Mindbody earlier this year for $15.3 million, according to a government filing. Last week, a security researcher found three FitMetrix unprotected servers leaking customer data. It isn't known how long the servers had been exposed, but the servers were indexed by Shodan, a search engine for open ports and databases, in September.

The servers included two of the same ElasticSearch instances and a storage server -- all hosted on Amazon Web Service -- yet none were protected by a password, allowing anyone who knew where to look to access the data on millions of users. Bob Diachenko, Hacken.io's director of cyber risk research, found the databases containing 113.5 million records -- though it's not known how many users were directly affected. Each record contained a user's name, gender, email address, phone numbers, profile photos, their primary workout location, emergency contacts and more. Many of the records were not fully complete.

On Tuesday, Google announced the Google Home Hub, a 7-inch display that gives you visual information, making it easier to control smart home appliances and view photos and the weather. The unusual thing about it is that it doesn't run the smart display software that it introduced for third-party OEMs. Ars Technica explains: First, let's talk about what the third-party smart displays run. When Google created its smart display software, it also came up with a turnkey solution for OEMs. So far, we've seen Lenovo, LG, and Samsung's JBL all produce devices on the same basic platform. Just like with smartphones, these devices are all an extension of the Android/Qualcomm partnership -- they run Android Things on Qualcomm's SD624 Home Hub Platform. Android Things is Google's stripped-down version of Android that is purpose-built for IoT products, and the third-party smart displays are the first commercial devices to run the OS.

Unlike regular phone Android, Android Things is not customizable by third-parties. All Android Things devices use an OS image direct from Google, and Google centrally distributes updates to all Android Things devices for three years. Android Things doesn't really have an interface. It's designed to get a device up and running and show a single app, which on the smart displays is the Google Smart Display app. Qualcomm's "Home Hub" platform was purposely built to run Android Things and this Google Assistant software -- the SD624 is for smart displays, while the less powerful SDA212 is for speakers. When it came time to build the Google Home Hub, Google didn't use any of this. After talking to Google's VP of product management, Diya Jolly, Ars Technica's Ron Amadeo discovered that the Home Hub is actually built on Google's Cast platform and uses an Amlogic chip instead of Qualcomm's SD624 Home Hub Platform.

When asked why Google was using a totally different platform from the third parties, Jolly told Amadeo, "There's no particular reason. We just felt we could bring the experience to bear with Cast, and the experiences are the same. We would have easily given the third-parties Cast if they wanted it, but I think most developers are comfortable using Android Things." Amadeo seems to think it has to do with the low price, as it undercuts the cheapest third-party Google smart display (Lenovo's 8-inch model) by fifty bucks.

jrepin writes: KDE has released Plasma 5.14 desktop. Among many other things, Plasma 5.14 simplifies managing multiple displays thanks to its new Display Configuration widget; Global Menus a la macOS now work also with GTK applications like GIMP; a new safeguard feature warns you if other users are logged in when you log out; and Discover now lets you install Snaps from all available channels (not just the default), orders software by release date, and shows package dependencies. Downloads can be found here.

At its Pixel 3 launch event, Google announced a smart speaker called the Google Home Hub, featuring a 7-inch display to give you visual information, making it easier to control smart home devices and view photos and the weather. Interestingly, Google decided not to include a camera in this device for privacy reasons, as they want you to feel comfortable placing it in an intimate location, such as a bedroom. PhoneDog reports: Google explains that Home Hub will be able to recognize who is speaking to it using Voice Match to provide info for that specific person, which should help to make the device more useful in homes with multiple people. And when you're not using Home Hub, a feature called Live Albums will let you select certain people and have Google Photos create albums with images of these people. Another feature of Google's Home Hub is the Home View. With it, you can easily see and control your smart home devices. And then there's Ambient EQ, which uses a sensor that'll adjust the color and brightness of the Home Hub screen based on the ambient lighting. That includes dimming the screen at night when it's time for bed. Google Home Hub will be available for $149 in four colors -- Chalk, Charcoal, Aqua, and Sand. It will launch on October 22nd and each purchase will come with six months of YouTube Premium.

Some Apple Watch Series 4 owners in Australia experienced crashes and reboots on Saturday due to a bug that surfaced because of the daylight saving time change. From a report: According to Reddit users hit by the Apple Watch bug, the root of the problem appears to be the Infograph Modular face's Activity complication, which displays a timeline graph with hourly data for the user's Move calories, Exercise minutes, and Stand hours. When daylight saving time (DST) lops an hour off the typical 24-hour day, the Activity complication is apparently unable to compute the change and draw the timeline graph with only 23 hours, which throws the Apple Watch into an endless reboot loop until the battery runs out.

After it was reported that proprietary diagnostic software was needed in order to replace key parts on computers equipped with Apple's T2 chip, iFixit decided to put that claim to the test by replacing a part on a brand-new 2018 MacBook Pro. They found that after pulling it apart and replacing the display, it still worked -- even without the software. Engadget reports: As they put it, any "secret repair kill switch hasn't been activated -- yet." So far, it has limited approaches that limit repairs based on security to the TouchID and FaceID sensors that require specialized software, as I noted yesterday, even though people have reported trouble with the ambient light sensor after replacing iPhone displays. While it's possible that a future software update could change things and make it require specialized software that only official Apple Stores and authorized service centers have access to, we're not there yet. Passing "right to repair" laws currently under consideration could be a big step to guaranteeing things stay that way.

Zorro shares a report from Quartz: According to recently released U.S. federal contracting data, the Drug Enforcement Administration will be expanding the footprint of its nationwide surveillance network with the purchase of "multiple" trailer-mounted speed displays "to be retrofitted as mobile LPR [License Plate Reader] platforms." The DEA is buying them from RU2 Systems Inc., a private Mesa, Arizona company. How much it's spending on the signs has been redacted. Two other, apparently related contracts, show that the DEA has hired a small machine shop in California, and another in Virginia, to conceal the readers within the signs. An RU2 representative said the company providing the LPR devices themselves is a Canadian firm called Genetec.

An anonymous reader shares a report: In 2014, in a bid to replace the more than 11,000 aging payphones scattered across New York City's pedestrian walkways with more functional fixtures, Mayor Bill de Blasio launched a competition -- the Reinvent Payphones initiative -- calling on private enterprises, residents, and nonprofits to submit designs for replacements. In the end, LinkNYC -- a plan proposed by consortium CityBridge -- secured a contract from the city, beating out competing proposals with electricity-generating piezoelectric pressure plates and EV charging stations. The plan was to spend $200 million installing as many as 10,000 kiosks, or Links, that would supply free, encrypted gigabit Wi-Fi to passers-by within 150 feet. They would have buttons that link directly to 911 and New York's 311 service and free USB charging stations for smartphones, plus wired handsets that would allow free calls to all 50 states and Washington, D.C. And perhaps best of all, they wouldn't cost the city a dime; advertising would subsidize expansion and ongoing maintenance.

The Links wouldn't just get urbanites online and let them juice their phones, though. The idea was to engage users, too, principally with twin 55-inch high-definition displays and tethered Android tablets with map functions. Mike Gamaroff, head of innovation at Kinetic, characterized the Links in 2016 as "first and foremost a utility for the people of the city, that also doubles up as an advertising network." Two years after the deployment of prototypical kiosks in Manhattan, Intersection -- a part of the aforementioned CityBridge, which with Qualcomm and CIVIQ Smartscapes manages the kiosks -- is ready to declare them a success. The roughly 1,600 Links recently hit three milestones: 1 billion sessions, 5 million users, and 500,000 phone calls a month. Recommended reading: Free Municipal Wi-Fi May Be the Next Front In the War Against Privacy.

The rumors were true. Amazon on Thursday announced a range of new Echo smart speakers and other Alexa-enabled devices. The company first announced the Echo Sub, its answer to voice-enabled premium audio products such as Apple's HomePod, Sonos One, and Google Home Max. Then there is the Echo Input, a wireless accessory that connects to legacy speakers; the Echo Link Amp and Echo Link, amplifiers with multiple audio inputs and outputs; and Amazon Smart Plug, a connected outlet plug. VentureBeat: They round out Amazon's existing and refreshed selection of smart speakers (the Echo, Echo Dot, and Echo Plus), smart displays (the Echo Show and Echo Spot), and smart cameras (the Echo Look). The $129.99 Echo Sub, which ships today, features a mesh cloth that comes in several colors, and a 6-inch, 100W down-firing speaker that can be configured in stereo. Two paired Echo Sub speakers can act as a single 2.1 system, with distinct left and right audio channels. That's one better than current-gen Echo speakers, which support multiroom audio (i.e., the ability to group speakers together by room) but not proper stereo.

The $25 Amazon Smart Plug (shipping next month) doesn't have nearly as many bells and whistles as the Sub, but lets you switch off or on whatever's plugged into it with a voice command. You can schedule quiet hours, too, and it works independently of a hub -- it's managed entirely through the Alexa app for Android, iOS, and Amazon Fire devices.

The Echo Link Amp and Echo Amp are amplifiers through and through -- both with Ethernet, coax, optical in, and multichannel capabilities. The Echo Link stars at $200 and will be available later this year, and the Amp starts at $300. It'll hit store shelves in 2019. Last but not least, the Echo Input, which starts at $34.99, adds music-casting (and multiroom audio) capabilities to legacy speakers. There's also the $30 The Echo Wall Clock, which is literally just an old-school analog wall clock like you might see in a classroom. It's not an Echo speaker; it works with Echo nearby to show you timer you set. LEDs around the rim of the clock show your Alexa timers. "You never have to worry about daylight savings time," an Amazon executive said. CNET reporters talk about other devices in a live blog: Introducing "Echo Guard." Say something like "Alexa, I'm leaving," and she'll move your Echoes into Guard mode. You'll get a notification if they hear breaking glass or the sound of an alarm. If you have smart lights, Guard-mode Alexa will randomly turn them on and off to make it look like you're home.

The Ring Stick Up Cam, priced at $180, will be available later this year. [...] An all-new Echo Show. Complete redesign. "This product has been completely redesigned. It has great sound." Integrated a bass radiator inside, real-time Dolby processing. Fabric back-cover matches the new Dot and Echo Plus. Also has the same smart home hub functions as the Echo Plus, with built-in Zigbee support. And yep, it looks a lot like some of the new Google Assistant smart displays. Amazon playing some defense, here. 10-inch HD display, 2X display area from original Echo Show. 8 mic array, "it's the most advanced mic array we know how to build. Same price, $230. Preorders today, ship next month. There's also an Alexa-powered microwave: Amazon will begin to sell its own brand of Wi-Fi-connected microwaves that work with Alexa, Amazon's voice-activated, internet-connected digital assistant, the company announced Thursday at its headquarters in Seattle. The AmazonBasics-brand, $60 microwave will also include Dash Replenishment Services so it can automatically order popcorn from Amazon. You can preorder the microwave starting today, and Amazon will begin to ship them later this year. The AmazonBasics Microwave has dozens of quick-cook voice settings so you can use verbal commands to operate the microwave. Additionally, the company also unveiled new software features, including some that are aimed at developers. You can read them here.

schwit1 shares a report from The Wall Street Journal: Google is making a major push into the auto industry, partnering with the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi Alliance to use the tech company's Android OS to power media displays (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternative source) that will eventually be sold in millions of cars world-wide. The auto-making alliance, which together sells more vehicles than any other auto maker, is picking Google to provide the operating system for its next-generation infotainment system, marking a major victory for the Silicon Valley tech giant, which has spent more than a decade trying to replicate the success it has had with the smartphone in the car. The alliance, which last year sold a combined 10.6 million vehicles globally, will debut the new system in 2021, giving drivers better integration of Google's maps, app store and voice-activated assistant from the vehicle's dashboard, the companies said. The move comes as other auto makers have been reluctant to cede control of this space to tech rivals, in part because they see the technology as generating valuable consumer data that can be turned into new revenue streams. Slashdot reader schwit1 adds: "But can I get it unlocked and can it be turned off, like this traveling telescreen?

Apple on Wednesday announced its 2018 flagship phones: the 5.8-inch iPhone Xs and 6.5-inch iPhone Xs Max. From a report: As the direct sequel to the iPhone X, the iPhone Xs retains its predecessor's marquee features: a stainless steel frame and 5.8-inch, edge-to-edge Super Retina display, interrupted by a depth-sensing Face ID camera inside a black "notch." The new model promises the best liquid resistance in any iPhone, with a screen that's now HDR10 and Dolby Vision-certified.

As expected, Apple also introduced a larger version of the iPhone Xs called the iPhone Xs Max. While the iPhone Xs packs a 5.8-inch OLED screen into a footprint roughly the size of its former 4.7-inch iPhone 6, 6s, 7, and 8 models, the Max version includes a 6.5-inch screen within a chassis sized like the 5.5-inch-screened iPhone 6 Plus and its successors. [...]

The iPhone Xs has a 2436 by 1125 screen, while the Xs Max has a 2688 by 1242 screen, the largest ever in an iPhone. Apple's calling it "Max" because it's bigger than the iPhones' past Plus-sized displays. Apple also says that the new phones have wider stereo sound fields than before.

[...] The handsets are powered by A12 Bionic, a 6-core, 7nm CPU with 2 performance cores that deliver up to 15 percent speeds and 40 percent lower power, with 4 efficiency cores running at up to 50 percent lower power. Apple is touting a 50 percent GPU performance improvement over the A11 Bionic, as well. It also has a second-generation Neural Engine, and can process 5 trillion operations per second, up from 600 billion the year before. Both the new iPhones sport a dual-camera system:12MP wide-angle+12MP telephoto. The new iPhones can accommodate up to 512 GB of internal storage. The base models of iPhone Xs and iPhone Xs Max start at $999 and $1,099 respectively. More on this here. On the sidelines, Apple said it was inching closer to selling its two-billionth iOS device.

The company also announced the iPhone Xr, the cheapest among the three handsets announced today, that sports a 6.1-inch LCD display (instead of OLED screen) and does not offer 3D Touch functionality. Its base model starts at $749. All of these handsets go on sale later this month.

Qualcomm has unveiled the long-awaited successor to its Snapdragon Wear 2100 smartwatch chipset, the Snapdragon Wear 3100. The new high-end chipset is "based on a brand-new architecture Qualcomm claims is the most efficient it's ever created, optimized for wearables-specific use cases like step tracking, heart rate monitoring, and always-on connectivity," reports VentureBeat. From the report: [T]he company's engineers stuffed the Snapdragon Wear 3100 with a four A7 cores and two secondary chips -- a digital signal processor (DSP) and an ultra-low power coprocessor (QCC1110) -- in what Qualcomm calls a "big-small-tiny" arrangement. The "big" A7 cores handle intensive, complex tasks like switching between apps, while the "small" and "tiny" DSP and coprocessor perform sensor fusion and other background chores. The way Pankaj Kedia, senior director and business lead at Qualcomm's Smart Wearable division, tells it, the coprocessor -- a diminutive 5.2mm x 4mm chip that's the product of more than five years of research -- is the inarguable showrunner. It taps a Qualcomm-designed memory module that draws a mere 0.6 volts of power, and it's altogether 20 times more power-efficient than the A7 cores.

It's principally meant for light workloads like listening for the wake phrases that precede voice commands ("OK, Google"), streaming music in the background, and updating digital watch faces. However, it's designed to be extensible -- OEMs can tap the coprocessor for real-time sleep and activity monitoring, for example, or for heart rate tracking. The coprocessor -- along with the DSP and A7 cores -- drive three smartwatch operating modes intended to boost battery life. Enhanced ambient mode displays a basic watch face UI in up to 16 colors, with a smoothly animated second hand, live complications, and ambient brightness. Traditional watch mode dispenses with those bells and whistles in favor of a basic analog watch face. Dedicated sports mode -- which isn't available at launch, but will arrive later with sports OEMs, Kedia said -- enables core features like heart rate and GPS tracking, but nothing else. When compared to the Wear 2100, the Wear 3100 offers significantly improved battery life. Here's a comparison (from Qualcomm) of the Wear 3100 and Wear 2100's power consumption:

-Lowest power mode: 67 percent lower
-GPS and location batching: 49 percent lower
-Keyword detection: 43 percent lower
-Clock update once per minute: 35 percent lower
-MP3 playback: 34 percent lower
-Voice queries over Bluetooth or Wi-Fi: 13 percent lower

"The translates to gains of about four to twelve hours in practice (depending on the form factor), or between a day and a half to two days of battery life," reports VentureBeat. "In traditional watch mode, Wear 3100 devices can last up to a week on a charge with 20 percent battery (or up to 30 days with full battery), according to Qualcomm, or 15 hours in dedicated sports mode (with a 450mAh battery)." Some other features include a new more-accepted NFC chip, an improved 4G LTE modem, and a new power management system to improve the efficiency of charging. We can expect the 3100 to appear in smartwatches "this holiday season."

Vizio is reportedly working on a way to let TV owners know when it spies on their viewing habits. According to The Verge, the company is developing a "notice program with direct notification to the class through Vizio Smart TV displays." The Hollywood Reporter first spotted the news. From the report: The news popped up in a request to extend the time needed to submit a motion for a preliminary settlement in a class action lawsuit against the company. So basically, it's possible that Vizio users will get a pop-up notification that explains what the company is doing and when. The TV company already previously settled with the Federal Trade Commission for $2.2 million in 2017, along with the agreement to get users' consent before collecting data. The company was caught in 2015 tracking users' viewing habits and demographic data, which it combined to then sell to analytics and ad companies, thereby allowing them to better target their messaging.