Technology - Google News |
- Amazon now delivers packages to your car trunk
- Facebook reveals its internal rules for removing controversial posts
- Spotify launches a redesigned app with on-demand playlists for free users
Amazon now delivers packages to your car trunk Posted: 24 Apr 2018 07:39 AM PDT Fed up with your Amazon packages being taken off your doorstep? Now you can get them delivered to your trunk. Amazon has launched "In-Car delivery" for millions of Prime members with certain vehicles who take advantage of Amazon Key. Amazon Key has been giving Prime members the option to have their packages left inside their home since last October, but many don't feel comfortable allowing delivery drivers through their front door when no one's home. Now there's another option if you own a compatible vehicle from Chevrolet, Buick, GMC, Cadillac, or Volvo manufactured in 2015 or later. With Amazon's new In-Car delivery service, you can have your packages left inside your trunk where no one else can get their grubby mitts on them. They can be delivered to your home, your office, or any other address in your Amazon address book within 37 cities and surrounding areas across the United States. The service is free to Prime members and available on tens of millions of items on Amazon. To get started with In-Car delivery, you'll need to download the Amazon Key app and link your Amazon account with your connected car account. Once setup is complete, your car will be available as a delivery option. On the day your delivery is due, you'll be able to use the Key app to ensure your vehicle is parked within range of the delivery location, and you'll be given a four-hour delivery window. You'll also get a notification when your parcel is on its way, and you'll be able to track when your car was unlocked and relocked in the activity feed. "Amazon uses multiple layers of verification to ensure the security of in-car deliveries," the retail giant says. "Each time a delivery driver requests access to a customer's vehicle, Amazon verifies that an authorized driver is at the right location with the right package, through an encrypted authentication process. Once this process is successfully completed, the car is then unlocked. Customers receive a notification via the Amazon Key App after the delivery is completed and the vehicle is relocked. No special codes or keys are ever provided to delivery drivers." You shouldn't have to worry about anything shady happening to your car or your parcels, then. This certainly sounds better than letting them sit on your doorstep all day while you're at work. |
Facebook reveals its internal rules for removing controversial posts Posted: 24 Apr 2018 02:57 AM PDT Facebook is trying to be more transparent about how it decides what content to take down or leave up.On Tuesday, the company is making public for the first time its detailed internal community standards policies. The document is what Facebook's(FB) 7,500 content moderators use when deciding what is and isn't acceptable content, including hate speech, nudity, gun sales and bullying. A shorter version was previously available online. Facebook is also adding a way for individuals to appeal when it removes one of their posts because of sexual content, hate speech or violence. Appeals will be reviewed by a moderator within a day, the company promises. Eventually, it will add appeals for more types of content and for people who reported posts that weren't taken down. Every week, Facebook sifts through millions of reports from users about inappropriate posts, groups or pages. Additional posts are also flagged by Facebook's automated systems. A member of the team of moderators — a combination of full-time and contract employees around the world — reviews each post. Related: YouTube took down more than 8 million videos in 3 months The expanded guidelines fill 27 pages and include the reasoning behind each policy, along with detailed examples. They include the company's full definitions for terrorist organizations and hate groups. Hate speech is divided into three levels, and includes "some protections for immigration status." There's a detailed policy on the sale of marijuana (not allowed, even where it's legal) and firearms (only shown to adults aged 21 or older -- and no sales between individual people). Bullying rules don't apply to comments made about public figures. The document is filled with striking details about very specific issues. For example, you can't post addresses or images of safe houses, or explicitly expose undercover law enforcement. You can only show victims of cannibalism if there's a warning screen and age requirement. And photos of breasts are allowed if they depict an act of protest. Related: EU gives tech companies 1 hour to remove terrorist content Facebook has come under criticism for not being transparent enough about how it decides what is or isn't banned. And it has at times appeared inconsistent in the applications of its own rules. Most recently, Facebook fought accusations that it censored conservative personalities like Diamond and Silk in the United States. Human rights groups have complained about its handling of hate-filled posts linked to violence in countries like Myanmar. "Our enforcement isn't perfect. We make mistakes because our processes involve people, and people are not infallible," Monika Bickert, Facebook's head of product policy, said in a blog post Tuesday. Related: Facebook is offering facial recognition again in Europe The guidelines are global and will be released in 40 different languages. Facebook says it has detailed local information to help moderators handle the nuances of different locations and languages. It will not make all of its moderator guides public, such as lists of hate-speech words, as releasing them could make it easier for people to game the system. To keep up with changes in language and behaviors, the guidelines are updated regularly. A policy team meets every two weeks to review potential additions or edits. "We've promised to do better and we hope that sharing these details will serve as the basis for increased dialogue and input," Bickert said. |
Spotify launches a redesigned app with on-demand playlists for free users Posted: 24 Apr 2018 07:17 AM PDT At an event in New York City today, Spotify revealed a redesigned app experience for its 90 million free customers. It's the first major change to Spotify's free tier since 2014, and visually it looks a lot like what The Verge reported earlier this month. Free listeners will now get on-demand access to 15 "select" playlists; you can play any song you want inside those playlists and are no longer stuck in a world of shuffled playback. You'll have to deal with shuffle beyond those 15 playlists, but this is still a significant improvement over how things have been until now. Those aren't playlists you make yourself, however. The 15 full-control playlists are generated by Spotify based on your listening habits and are constantly updated — most of them daily. They include a total of 750 songs. Spotify says users have created over 2 billion playlists. The updated app will help assist users with this "playlisting" process by suggesting songs that are similar to those they've already added right below the search bar. Also, Spotify will now ask free customers to choose their favorite artists as soon as they get started with the app, allowing the service to immediately provide personalized playlists tuned to their tastes. The new Spotify also has a "data saver" mode that's meant to make life easier for people on capped data usage plans. Spotify says it's currently in the process of rolling out the redesigned app experience to everyone. At the start of today's event, Spotify's chief R&D officer Gustav Söderström touted the three tentpoles that have brought Spotify success: ubiquity (availability across popular devices), personalization (Discover Weekly, etc.), and freemium. "Spotify is both the radio station and the record store," he said. The freemium aspect is particular important; Spotify has over 90 million free users. It's where 60 percent of paid users start out. The company's goal is to keep free users satisfied and not have them feeling like second-class listeners. But the company is aware that in recent years, it has prioritized monthly subscribers over free listeners. "Over the last several years, we've made Spotify's premium mobile experience top notch," Söderström said. "The mobile free tier has stayed exactly the same since 2014," he said, adding that "discovering music in shuffle mode is a tricky proposition." But that's changing with this revamped experience. One thing Spotify didn't discuss much today was voice. The company has been testing voice commands inside its mobile app, giving users a route to music that's faster than thumbing out whatever it is they're looking for. Söderström said Spotify is investing in voice, but it didn't have any news to share today. And in a very small international rollout at the start of 2018, Spotify released a standalone "Stations" app that's exclusively dedicated to playlists. He didn't comment on how that factors into the overall strategy. Nor did executives on stage make any mention of hardware ambitions. The mysterious in-car player was a no show, but we didn't expect to see it after Spotify emphasized this would be a software-focused event. Voice and hardware will have to wait for another event, apparently. |
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