Incognito Mode for Google Maps is rolling out to Android users to prevent your search queries and real-time tracked location from being recorded onto your Google account. Engadget reports: It's not something you'll want to use all the time as some features will be disabled, and it's important to note that it doesn't turn off all tracking. The places you go won't be saved to your Location History (if you have that enabled), your searches won't be saved to your account and it won't use your information to personalize the experience. Still, you could be tracked by internet service providers, other apps, or if you're using Assistant and other Google services. Similar to incognito on Chrome, it's more useful as a depersonalized look at recommendations than as a full-fledged privacy protector, and a way to make sure that whatever you're searching for in this instance doesn't affect your recommendations later -- don't worry, we're not judging.

DoNotPay, a free chatbot that offers AI-powered legal counsel, is launching a new feature that will call you when it's your turn in a customer service phone queue. TechCrunch reports: The app today is launching "Skip Waiting On Hold." Just type in the company you need to talk to, and DoNotPay calls for you using tricks to get a human on the line quickly. Then it calls you back and connects you to the agent so you never have to listen to that annoying hold music. And in case the company tries to jerk you around or screw you over, the DoNotPay app lets you instantly share to social media a legal recording of the call to shame them.

Skip Waiting On Hold comes as part of the $3 per month DoNotPay suite of services designed to save people time and money by battling bureaucracy on their behalf. It can handle DMV paperwork for you, write legal letters to scare businesses out of overcharging you and it provides a credit card that automatically cancels subscriptions when your free trial ends. For Skip Waiting On Hold, DoNotPay built out a database of priority and VIP customer service numbers for tons of companies. For legality, if you opt in to recording the exchanges, the app automatically plays a message informing both parties they'll be recorded. A human voice detection system hears when a real agent picks up the phone, and then rings your phone. It's like having customer service call you.

Instagram is removing the "Following" tab -- a feed that shows the likes, comments, follows of your friends. "Beginning this week, the heart tab will display only your own activity," reports BuzzFeed News. From the report: Instagram launched its "Following" tab as an early feature back in 2011, long before its Explore tab debuted. At the time, Following was the best way to discover new content, since it would show you things your friends were liking. But that's no longer true now that Explore has established itself as the primary means of discovering new stuff on Instagram.

Now that Following has disappeared, it's likely few people will notice it's gone. Vishal Shah, Instagram's head of product, told BuzzFeed News it wasn't a feature that people used frequently and that the company suspected many users didn't know it existed. And for those that did, it was often a source of unwelcome surprises. "People didn't always know that their activity is surfacing," Shah said. "So you have a case where it's not serving the use case you built it for, but it's also causing people to be surprised when their activity is showing up." "Simplicity was the driving factor," Shah said of Instagram's decision to remove the Following tab.

Freshly Exhumed shares a report from Phoronix, detailing a new set of systemd capabilities shown off by lead developer Lennart Poettering at the annual All Systems Go conference: Improving the Linux handling of user home directories is the next ambition for systemd. Among the goals are allowing more easily migratable home directories, ensuring all data for users is self-contained to the home directories, UID assignments being handled to the local system, unified user password and encryption key handling, better data encryption handling in general, and other modernization efforts. Among the items being explored by systemd-homed are JSON-based user records, encrypted LUKS home directories in loop-back files, and other next-gen features to offering secure yet portable home directories. Systemd-homed is currently being developed in Lennart's Git tree but hopes to see it merged for either systemd 244 (the current cycle) or systemd 245.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Microsoft is planning to redesign the tablet experience for Windows 10. The software giant has started testing a new design for 2-in-1 convertible PCs that will keep the user interface more similar to the existing desktop design. Currently, Windows 10 throws you into a more tablet-optimized UI that removes task bar icons and puts the Start menu full-screen when a device automatically switches into "tablet mode." Microsoft is now walking back some of those changes, while keeping some touch-optimized elements for 2-in-1 PCs.

In the new tablet experience, the desktop will remain in full view, with the task bar icons visible and increased spacing between them. If enabled, the search box will collapse into an icon, and the touch keyboard will appear when you tap on a text field. File Explorer will also switch to a touch-optimized layout. Microsoft is testing this with Windows Insiders and has marked the design as beta, suggesting it will change and be shaped by feedback. Still, it's hard not to see this as Microsoft walking back from a dedicated tablet experience in Windows 10. These new changes will trigger automatically when you remove a keyboard from a device like a Surface Pro, and Microsoft has confirmed that a dedicated "tablet mode" will remain but you'll have to enable it manually. Microsoft is also testing a cloud download option to reset and restore Windows 10 PCs. "[I]t will allow Windows users to quickly reinstall the OS without needing it to be installed on the local disk or having a recovery USB drive," reports The Verge.

MoviePass reportedly resorted to extreme tactics to prevent users from taking advantage of core features, according to a new report from Business Insider. In particular, the report highlights a strategy the company used to keep users from bankrupting it, by changing account passwords to prevent ticket purchases that might cost it money it didn't have. The Verge reports: Business Insider's report looks at how Ted Farnsworth, CEO of MoviePass parent company Helios & Matheson Analytics, and MoviePass CEO Mitch Lowe, transformed the company from a little-known subscription service to a nationwide sensation. It also delves deep into the questionable business strategies and tactics the duo used to keep the company afloat, all while it hemorrhaged money by fronting subscribers the full cost of a movie ticket. MoviePass was not immediately available for comment.

Business Insider's report outlined how the company took on a more adversarial stance toward power users that were costing it too much money. One employee noted, "Before Mitch came on it was, 'How do we slow down those users?' With Mitch [Lowe] it was just, 'F--- those guys.'" The company tried other tactics to actively make its service hard to use, like when it limited the ability for users to see high-profile films like Avengers: Infinity War and Mission Impossible: Fallout. Employees say Lowe demanded they change the passwords of "a small percentage of power users" ahead of those releases to prevent them from ordering tickets through the app, telling people that it was a "technical issue." The company also implemented a "trip wire," which would cut off users once the company reached a certain monetary threshold each day. Users were told "there are no more screenings at this theater today," when in reality MoviePass was disabling its services to prevent it from burning through too much cash.

Samsung axed the headphone jack from its newest Galaxy Note 10 and Note 10 Plus smartphones, removing a key feature that the company mocked Apple for removing in its iPhones. Samsung declined to mention the fact at yesterday's Note 10 event, and now they are attempting to hide its past advertisements. Android Authority reports: Over the past few years, there have been multiple high-profile Samsung ads that heavily criticized Apple's iPhone design limitations, specifically towards the removal of the headphone jack and the notched display on the iPhone X and XS. These ads are no longer on Samsung's official United States YouTube channel and appear to be erased from other official sources as well. One of the more prominent series of ads -- known as "Ingenius" -- center on an actor portraying an Apple employee as he tries to convince skeptical smartphone buyers to buy an iPhone. The customers all seem confused as they want certain things from the phone that it simply can't do, including headphone jacks, microSD card slots, and notch-less displays.

Another prominent Samsung ad was called "Growing Up." The ad shows a young man going through various iterations of the iPhone over the years, getting increasingly frustrated with the limitations of each one. A memorable scene in the ad shows him using his iPhone with a giant dongle attached to it so he can use his wired headphones and charge the device at the same time. This ad also no longer appears on Samsung's official U.S. channel.

According to 9to5Google, Google's upcoming Pixel 4 and Pixel 4 XL smartphones will feature 90Hz refresh rates, 6GB of RAM, and a DSLR attachment, among other features not reported until now. From the report: First, the basics: There will be a Pixel 4 and Pixel 4 XL, and they will both more or less have the same features. They are phones. As we've already seen, they will have glass on the front and back, and a large camera bump. The have a sizable top bezel on the front housing the Soli radar chip, the speaker, a single front shooter, and the suite of sensors for face unlock. Other familiar aesthetic flourishes like a colored lock button and the usual 'G' logo on the back are also in tow. Things get a little interesting with the display specs. Pixel 4 and Pixel 4 XL will have 5.7-inch and 6.3-inch OLED displays, respectively -- the smaller is Full HD+, while the larger is Quad HD+. We can confirm now, though, that both will be 90 Hz displays, a feature Google is planning to call "Smooth Display."

We also have word on the Pixel 4 and Pixel 4 XL camera specs. There are two sensors on the rear, one of which is a 12MP shooter with phase-detect auto-focus. Also, confirming details that we unearthed in the Google Camera app, the other rear sensor on the Google Pixel 4 and Pixel 4 XL is a 16MP telephoto lens. Another interesting tidbit on the camera side: We're told Google is developing a DSLR-like attachment for the Pixel 4 that may become an available accessory. In other Pixel 4 specs, the smaller 5.7-inch Google Pixel 4 will have a 2,800 mAh battery, while the larger model will have a 3,700 mAh battery. That means, compared to last year, the smaller Pixel will have a slightly smaller battery (down from 2,915 mAh), while the larger Pixel will have a notably beefier one (up from 3,430 mAh). Both devices will pack the Snapdragon 855, get an appreciated bump to 6GB of RAM, and will be available in both 64GB and 128GB variants in the United States. Finally, we can confirm that both Pixel 4 models will have stereo speakers, the Titan M security module that was introduced with the Pixel 3, and of course, the latest version of Android with 3 years of software support. We're also told to expect that, like previous years, Google will show off some new Assistant features that will be exclusive to Pixel 4.

An anonymous reader shares a report from VentureBeat: Google today launched Chrome 76 for Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, and iOS. The release includes Adobe Flash blocked by default, Incognito mode detection disabled, multiple PWA improvements, and more developer features. You can update to the latest version now using Chrome's built-in updater or download it directly from google.com/chrome. Google has been taking baby steps to kill off Flash for years. In 2015, Chrome started automatically pausing less important Flash content. In 2016, Chrome started blocking "behind the scenes" Flash content and using HTML5 by default. In July 2017, however, Adobe said it would kill Flash by 2020. With Chrome 76, Flash is now blocked by default. Users can still turn it on in settings, but next year, Flash will be removed from Chrome entirely.

In a YouTube video and blog post, Google revealed that its upcoming Pixel 4 smartphone will feature face unlock technology and a feature called "Motion Sense," which confirms that it will have a Project Soli chip that uses radar to detect hand gestures near the phone. The Verge reports: Adding face unlock puts the Pixel 4 on par with modern iPhones for unlocking, and it's (at least in theory) more convenient than an in-screen fingerprint sensor. Google also confirmed that the Pixel 4 will use the face unlock feature for payments: "face unlock works in almost any orientation -- even if you're holding it upside down -- and you can use it for secure payments and app authentication too." As with the iPhone, Google says that biometric data will be stored locally in a secure chip and never share with other Google services. The Pixel 4's face unlock feature will use a variety of sensors to identify your face, including depth, infrared, and RGB. That should mean that it will work in a variety of lighting situations and also work with a diverse set of faces. Google has told me that it has done "field research" to ensure both of those things.

As for the "Motion Sense" feature, there's not a ton that we can glean from Google's article. Earlier rumors have pointed to it being related to Project Soli, which uses radar to detect tiny hand or finger movements above the device. For example, Google has demoed rubbing your thumb and index finger together to simulate turning a dial on a smartwatch. Some code found in the next version of Android has suggested it could be used for media controls at the very least. Google's post cites a possible use case where the Soli chip could detect your hand reaching for the phone, which would automatically turn on "the face unlock sensors." If it all works, the phone would automatically unlock itself and be ready by the time you're looking at it.

"Tech workers' favorite communications tool, Slack, is losing ground to its biggest rival, Microsoft Teams, which has copied its way into popularity," writes Rani Molla for Recode. "In other words, Slack has the same problem as Snapchat, which has suffered from its bigger rival Facebook's relentless appropriation." From the report: Slack's market share among the world's largest companies is mostly flat, adoption rates are declining, and a bigger portion of these companies indicate they plan on leaving the service, according to a new survey by market research firm ETR, which asks chief information officers and other leaders at the world's biggest organizations* where they plan to spend their company's tech budget. Meanwhile, Teams is seeing increased market share, relatively higher adoption rates, and low rates of defection, according to the data.

Slack, which is currently trading below its first-day opening price, has been beset both by smaller companies hoping to improve upon it and tech giants trying to copy and replace it. Microsoft, at one point, had even considered buying Slack. Instead, nearly four years after Slack's debut, Microsoft launched Teams, which has since adopted many of its competitor's functions, including the basic premise of creating an online office space for coworkers to collaborate and communicate. The situation was similar with Facebook, which after failing to buy Snapchat began to copy it, feature by feature. Facebook did this with impunity because it's not really possible to copyright what software does -- you can only copyright the code itself. Since products like Slack and Microsoft Teams or Facebook and Snapchat are built on different platforms, the code for each is likely distinct, so copying features is fair game.

The Chromium-powered Edge browser is now available on both Windows 7 and Windows 8 for testing today. The Verge reports: The release comes two months after Chromium Edge first debuted on Windows 10, and a month after it appeared on macOS. Microsoft is releasing the daily Canary builds initially, and plans to support the weekly Dev channel "soon." You can download the installer over at Microsoft's Edge Insider site. "You will find the experience and feature set on previous versions of Windows to be largely the same as on Windows 10, including forthcoming support for Internet Explorer mode for our enterprise customers," explains a Microsoft Edge team blog post. While most features will be the same, dark mode is missing and Microsoft says there is no support for AAD sign-in.

In an effort to create a "simplified experience," Google said in a blog post today that Google Photos will stop syncing to Drive in July. Digital Trends reports: The change is sure to be controversial. For many, the fact that Photos automatically syncs to Google Drive is a favorite feature, as it allows for much easier organization of photos. Of course, the change will avoid some confusion. According to Google, the change is aimed at helping "prevent accidental deletions of items across products." In other words, it seems like some users were confused about the fact that deleting a copy of a photo in Photos also means that the image is deleted in Drive, and vice versa. The blog post notes that the two services will still work together to an extent. The company announced a new feature called "Upload from Drive," which will allow users to manually select photos and videos to be imported into Photos. Once the items are uploaded, the files won't be connected, so you can delete the file in one without it being removed in the other.

Additionally, Backup and Sync will continue to work on both Windows and Mac, "so if you store your photos locally and want to then sync them to either Google Drive or Google Photos, you'll still be able to do so," reports Digital Trends. Google also notes that existing photos and videos will stay in both Photos and Drive, but the Google Photos folder in Drive will no longer update automatically.

The human rights and war crimes community is up in arms over Facebook's decision to turn off a set of advanced features in its graph search product, which is "a way to receive an answer to a specific query on Facebook, such as 'people in Nebraska who like Metallica,'" reports BuzzFeed News. "Using graph search, it's possible to find public -- and only public -- content that's not easily accessed via keyword search." The decision, which was not announced publicly, was likely made in an effort to limit data scandals and improve privacy. From the report: When Mark Zuckerberg personally introduced graph search in early 2013, he billed it as equal in importance to Facebook's News Feed and profile timeline. On launch day, the company also published a post offering journalists tips on how to use graph search. Over the years, graph search became a valuable tool for investigators, police officers, and journalists. At the same time, social media became a key source for uncovering war crimes, disinformation campaigns, child exploitation, and other crimes and abuses.

The move raised even more concern in the human rights and investigative journalism communities because Facebook appeared to thwart attempts to find workarounds. Henk van Ess, an investigator and trainer who works with Bellingcat, operates a tool that uses graph search to enable powerful searches of public content. After Facebook turned off some searches, he was able to find workarounds -- until the company blocked them. "I patched my tools 5 times and each time, after 2 hrs, the tools were crippled by FB," he wrote in a Twitter direct message. "Other toolmakers experienced the same." Van Ess now requires people to request permission from him to use his tool; he says he's been flooded with requests from people pursuing investigations "involving human rights abuses, war crimes, terrorism, extremism, white collar crime ... corruption, disinformation campaigns, environmental crimes, cybercrime -- the list just keeps on going." A Facebook spokesperson said in a statement to BuzzFeed News: "The vast majority of people on Facebook search using keywords, a factor which led us to pause some aspects of graph search and focus more on improving keyword search. We are working closely with researchers to make sure they have the tools they need to use our platform."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica, written by Wired's . Andy Greenberg: In upcoming versions of iOS and macOS, the new Find My feature will broadcast Bluetooth signals from Apple devices even when they're offline, allowing nearby Apple devices to relay their location to the cloud. That should help you locate your stolen laptop even when it's sleeping in a thief's bag. And it turns out that Apple's elaborate encryption scheme is also designed not only to prevent interlopers from identifying or tracking an iDevice from its Bluetooth signal, but also to keep Apple itself from learning device locations, even as it allows you to pinpoint yours.

In a background phone call with WIRED following its keynote, Apple broke down that privacy element, explaining how its "encrypted and anonymous" system avoids leaking your location data willy nilly, even as your devices broadcast a Bluetooth signal explicitly designed to let you track your device. The solution to that paradox, it turns out, is a trick that requires you to own at least two Apple devices. Each one emits a constantly changing key that nearby Apple devices use to encrypt and upload your geolocation data, such that only the other Apple device you own possesses the key to decrypt those locations. That system would obviate the threat of marketers or other snoops tracking Apple device Bluetooth signals, allowing them to build their own histories of every user's location. In fact, Find My's cryptography goes one step further than that, denying even Apple itself the ability to learn a user's locations based on their Bluetooth beacons. That would represent a privacy improvement over Apple's older tools like Find My iPhone and Find Friends, which don't offer such safeguards against Apple learning your location.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from VentureBeat: Mozilla today announced a slew of privacy improvements. The company has turned on Enhanced Tracking Protection, which blocks cookies from third-party trackers in Firefox, by default. Mozilla has also improved its Facebook Container extension, released a Firefox desktop extension for its rebranded Lockwise password keeper, and updated Firefox Monitor with a dashboard for multiple email addresses.

If you download a fresh copy of Firefox today, Enhanced Tracking Protection will be on by default as part of the Standard setting. That means third-party tracking cookies are blocked without users having to change a thing. You will notice Enhanced Tracking Protection working if there is a shield icon in the address bar. If you click on the shield icon and open the Content Blocking section and then Cookies, you'll see a Blocking Tracking Cookies section. There you can see the companies listed as third-party cookies and trackers that Firefox has blocked. You can also turn off blocking for a specific site. The feature focuses on third-party trackers (the ad industry) while allowing first-party cookies (logins, where you last left off, and so on). Mozilla says it is enabling Enhanced Tracking Protection by default because most users don't change their browser settings.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: iOS 13 will introduce Dark Mode to iPhones, iPads, and iPods for the first time. Apple brought Dark Mode to Macs via macOS Mojave last year, to much fanfare. As was the case there, Dark Mode doesn't actually change anything about the interface -- just the aesthetics. Apple showed Dark Mode running on the company's first-party apps for news, calendar, messages, and more. Dark Mode may also save battery life on devices with emissive OLED displays -- savings like that were discovered in our own tests comparing Android devices with LCD and OLED displays. But we'll have to test the new OS to be sure.

Every iOS update brings changes to key apps made by Apple itself, and most of the apps included with a new installation of iOS have seen some changes. Mail now allows you to mute certain conversations. Maps has a new, easier way of accessing saved locations. The upgrade to Apple Maps will bring far more detail to the overhead view of roads and landmarks, with this rolling out to the entire United States by the end of 2019 and "select countries" next year. Reminders has seen a ground-up interface overhaul, with natural-language processing similar to what's seen in third-party apps -- you'll be able to type the relevant details and Reminders will understand when and where the reminder should be set for. Apple is also adding a swipe-typing ability to its iOS keyboard for the first time, replicating something that has been available in third-party keyboards for years. Notes will have a new gallery view and support for shared folders. Safari will have new options to change text sizing, with per-website settings. The iPad's multitasking UI has also been overhauled, bringing a new window-based experience and an easier way to switch between apps in Slide Over mode. You'll also be able to plug thumb drives into newer iPads with USB-C.

Google's new confidential mode is rolling out to G Suite users and will be turned on by default starting on June 25th. Personal account holders have been able to use this feature since Gmail's mid-2018 redesign, but Gmail users at work have not.

"Confidential mode is a powerful tool that will come in handy at work if you send messages containing sensitive details," reports The Verge. "It lets you set an expiration date for your message, which cuts off access when that day arrives. While the message is available, recipients won't be able to forward your message to others, copy its contents, or download it, and the sender can revoke access at any point. To add another layer of security, you can set the message to only unlock after the recipient types in an SMS verification code that's sent to their phone number." Slashdot reader shanen reacts: Apparently the Google of supreme evil has decided they need to try to force this confidential-mode email down people's throats. I think that's actually a gigantic business opportunity for Outlook, assuming they actually want to offer a superior email system. The fundamental premise of confidential mode is "We want to communicate with you, but we don't trust you," and my fundamental response is GFY. The ONLY thing I want is an option to reject all confidential-mode email. (However, I'm sure Microsoft is too evil to offer that option because they don't trust their own employees and have to eat their own poison dog food.)

(Well, actually there are several other improvements I want from email, such as a bounce for no-reply email.)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Thurrott: Microsoft started testing a new Microsoft Edge browser based on Chromium a little while ago. The company has been releasing new canary and dev builds for the browser over the last few weeks, and the preview is actually really great. But if you watch YouTube quite a lot, you will face a new problem on the new Edge. It turns out, Google has randomly disabled the modern YouTube experience for users of the new Microsoft Edge. Users are now redirected to the old YouTube experience, which lacks the modern design as well as the dark theme for YouTube, as first spotted by Gustave Monce. And when you try to manually access the new YouTube from youtube.com/new, YouTube simply asks users to download Google Chrome, stating that the Edge browser isn't supported. Ironically, the same page states "We support the latest versions of Chrome, Firefox, Opera, Safari, and Edge." The change affects the latest versions of Microsoft Edge Canary and Dev channels. It is worth noting that the classic Microsoft Edge based on EdgeHTML continues to work fine with the modern YouTube experience.

Chevrolet is introducing a feature, specifically for teen drivers, that will temporarily block the auto from shifting into gear if their seat belt isn't buckled. A message will alert the driver to buckle up in order to shift into gear. After 20 seconds, the vehicle will operate normally. NPR reports: The feature, which Chevrolet says is an industry first, will come standard in the 2020 models of the Traverse SUV, Malibu sedan and Colorado pickup truck. It will be part of the "Teen Driver" package, which can also be used to set speed alerts and a maximum speed, among other controls, and give parents "report cards" tracking a teen's driving behavior. Chevrolet explains how it works: "To use Teen Driver mode, a parent can enable the feature by creating a PIN in the Settings menu that allows them to register their teen's key fob. The Teen Driver settings are turned on only when a registered key fob is used to start the vehicle."