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- One thing was missing from Mark Zuckerberg's big speech — and it signals a major shift for Facebook
- LG G7 ThinQ: A notch, a Google button and more
- New Red Dead Redemption 2 Trailer Delves Into Story And Shows Gameplay
| Posted: 02 May 2018 06:10 AM PDT
On Tuesday, CEO Mark Zuckerberg took to the stage for the keynote presentation at the company's annual F8 developer conference. Confident and cracking jokes , the 33-year-old executive seemed far more at ease than he ever did during his marathon Congressional testimony last month. The social network is attempting to shift the conversation past the Cambridge Analytica scandal and the related privacy woes that have dominated headlines recently. To this end, it made a bevy of big new announcements at the first day of the conference — from a dating app that will rival Tinder, to wild new virtual reality features. But there was one key Facebook product that was almost entirely absent from the speeches and announcements by Zuckerberg and other executives: The News Feed. News Feed sits at the core of the traditional Facebook experience. It's what you see when you open the app, a literal feed of news from all your friends. But it's also a double-edged sword. Though wildly successful, it has created huge issues for the company — including the spread of fake news and the spread of Russian disinformation in the wake of the 2016 US election. Smarting from successive crises, Facebook has already made significant changes to the News Feed, reducing the prominence of news outlets and introducing further context in the feed while cracking down on misinformation. Early in his speech, Zuckerberg recapped these changes among the others it is making as it attempts to fix its laundry list of mistakes. But there was little in the way of new announcements around the News Feed. Just look at what did get announced on Tuesday:
Meanwhile, the main Facebook app got a few notable updates, chief among them a new dating service — news of which sent the stock of Tinder's parent company plummeting. It is also introducing upvotes and downvotes that let users vote on comments Reddit-style, and making Groups its own tab in the app. But the public News Feed itself got very little attention. One of the only announcements directly concerning it was the ability to share augmented reality objects in posts with friends, the ultimate utility of which remains to be seen. Part of this absence of news seems to be a result of the last news cycles of the last few months: Under intense pressure from both media and government, Facebook has been more focused on fixing the News Feed that exists, rather than promising any monumental changes to the technology. But it also points to a broader shift in how Facebook is diversifying its business. The company is no longer a single, monolithic social network — it is a whole suite of disparate apps and service. While the core Facebook service still makes the lion's share of money for the company, Instagram is growing fast, and stands to contribute 18% of the company's overall revenues in 2018. Facebook is now eyeing up the financial possibilities of its other apps. WhatsApp's changes open the door to larger businesses using the platform. The Oculus Go slowly nudges virtual reality closer to proper mainstream adoption, which brings with it the same kind of opportunities that Apple and Google enjoy with smartphones. The last few years burned Facebook, and Zuckerberg and other executives now freely admit they weren't ready for how their platform would be misused. The ultimate result: Facebook seems to be focusing more on products that foster person-to-person and small-group communications, and moves away a little from the grand bazaar that is the News Feed. By broadening its business, Facebook is making sure it isn't keeping all its eggs in its basket — and lessening its reliance on a product that has brought it no end of trouble. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| LG G7 ThinQ: A notch, a Google button and more Posted: 02 May 2018 07:00 AM PDT  LG makes some damn good phones: The LG V30 was one of CNET's favorites last year, along with the LG G6. So will the 2018 LG G7 ThinQ hit the same heights? LG made good headway last year, but the phonemaker faces huge challenges. There's direct competition with the Galaxy S9, Apple's iPhones and the upcoming OnePlus 6. Beyond that, phone sales are slowing down and owners are starting to hold onto their devices longer. LG, which isn't a Top 5 global player, needs to pull out every trick it has to make a dent.  Watch this: LG G7 hands-on: 5 things you need to know 2:17 According to LG, over the next 18 to 24 months, it will make a "change in phone screens," along the lines of a bending or rollable display. LG has teased these types of innovations before. In the meantime, does this make the G7 a mere pit stop on the road to the future? Multiple CNET editors spent some time with a preproduction model of the LG G7 in New York and San Francisco. The G7 looks like a really good phone: Its specs and design line up to suggest it can contend in a matchup against the Samsung Galaxy S9. But does it have an X factor? Maybe not. If I were to describe what excited me about the LG G7 to a friend, I'd have a really hard time. Technically, this is the "LG G7 ThinQ," adding the branding for LG's ThinQ AI initiative, which the V30S ThinQ Edition phone had too, and which is planned for LG's many home devices, from washing machines and fridges to smart TVs. On the G7, the ThinQ AI software doesn't add up to much. It really only comes into play with the camera, which can identify common camera scenes, like close-ups and food, and optimize settings to help you get the best shot. LG hasn't yet announced a price, but odds are you can expect something close to last year's G6, making it more affordable than the Galaxy S9. For the right price, it could be great. But, like a high-end laptop that somehow ends up seeming like all the others, the LG G7 could similarly become one more sharp-looking phone in a big crowd.  It's IP68 water and dust resistant. Andy Hoyle/CNET5 things you need to know about the G7
 Watch this: LG G7: Three ways its cameras are different 1:37 LG's G7 cameras, in a quick spec list
 AI Camera recognizes what's in-shot (sometimes) to set up automatic settings for photos. Sarah Tew/CNETAI Camera: ThinQ-drivenLG promises that ThinQ will be used in everything from photos to connecting with LG TVs and appliances. Right now, it's most notably used in AI Camera, an intelligent automatic camera mode that debuted on the LG V30S. It scans objects in the environment as well as lighting and distance to determine optimal settings. AI Camera uses onboard machine learning: the test phone I used was offline. The mode recognizes 18 categories of scene information on the G7: person, flower, pet, food, sunset, sunrise, landscape, city, baby, animal, beverage, fruit, sky, beach, snow, people, low-light and "basic." It switches to what's needed. Keep in mind other cameras and phones, like the Huawei P20, have some implicit version of this technology as well. The mode cycles through what the camera sees, flashing words across the screen until a final decision is made and a shooting mode selected. You get a little haptic ping when it's done (you can turn this off), a light tap in the phone. It recognized a bowl of oranges as "fruit," but had a hard time with a row of glasses or other abstract objects. Did the automatic mode help photos look better? I'd say that's impossible to clearly tell in a brief demo with prerelease software.  Notch on, notch off. Sarah Tew/CNETA screen with a notch, but you can make it disappearThe G7's 6.1-inch IPS LCD display is high in resolution (3,120x1,440 pixels) -- but also has a notch, joining many other 2018 phones. It's a bit longer than the 18:9 Samsung GS9 display or most typical 18:9 displays, because of the extra notch. But that notch effect can be made to vanish in some way, similar to the Huawei P20 and upcoming OnePlus 6. Enter the "New Second Screen" settings, and presto, the extra screen on either side of the camera turns black. The information -- time, carrier, Wi-Fi and all of that -- still float there, like the common status bar on most phones. Basically, do you prefer the background black or another color? At least it means the phone's 18:9 display works without the notch intervening. Why not OLED? LG claims the IPS LCD used on the G7 is extra-bright (up to 1,000 nits), plus it has red, green, blue and an extra white pixel for improved display quality. The screen didn't look good in the glare of outdoor light, however, in our brief hands-on time.  The Google button is the bottom one. Sarah Tew/CNETHey look, a dedicated Google Assistant button! (And far-field mic)Even though LG has ThinQ AI, the dedicated assistant-summoning button on the side of the G7 calls up Google, not ThinQ. Pressing it once launches Google Assistant, and pressing and holding skips the need to say "OK, Google." This is similar to squeezing the sides on the Pixel 2 ($649.99 at Amazon Marketplace) and 2 XL. Assistant also responds to 32 commands that do various things on the phone, some camera-related, and you can double-press the button to launch vision search. You just can't customize it to launch anything else. LG also wants you to talk to your phone from far away like a Google Home ($129.00 at Walmart). Improved microphones promise up to a 16-foot (4.9-meter) range and better voice recognition when other audio is nearby. I'm not sure I want my phone to listen to me from that far away, but if you're planning on docking your phone and using it like an Echo or Home, maybe this is useful.  Headphone jack! Sarah Tew/CNETA 'booming' speakerThe LG G7 promises a weird new trick with its audio, turning its insides into a giant resonating chamber for its onboard speaker. The G7 doesn't have stereo speakers, just a single louder one. But when I tried playing music on it during my briefing, and playing back YouTube music videos, it just ended up sounding loud, not good. I've heard better-defined sound on phones. High-end lossless music playbackLG's recent V30 phone had an included built-in DAC for better-sounding audio and the G7's got the same one -- the ESS Sabre ES9218. What it means is if you're interested in high-end lossless audio (like Tidal) and listening to it on your phone, it should sound really good on the G7. LG is also betting on 7.1 surround audio via DTS X support, which would require wired headphones or connected wireless speakers. It promises a "virtual sound bubble." It doesn't work with the G7's one onboard speaker. Probably, you do not need 7.1 surround audio on your phone.  4 colorsThe LG G7 will come in new platinum gray, new aurora black, new Moroccan blue and raspberry rose. In other words: gray, black, blue and pinkish-red. No unicorn. LG G7 ThinQ spec comparison chart
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| New Red Dead Redemption 2 Trailer Delves Into Story And Shows Gameplay Posted: 02 May 2018 08:22 AM PDT |
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