Technology - Google News

6 months later, Google's Pixel 2 is still one of the best phones in the world
How to hear (and delete) every conversation your Amazon Alexa has recorded
The 512GB Galaxy Note you've been waiting for is in the works

6 months later, Google's Pixel 2 is still one of the best phones in the world

Posted: 28 May 2018 06:56 AM PDT

It's hard to overstate how good Google's Pixel line of smartphones are. For my money, they're the best smartphones available.

Google Pixel 2 The gorgeous Pixel 2.Ben Gilbert / Business Insider

They run a clean, sleek, fast operating system. They have great cameras for capturing sharp, vibrant photos and video. They cost far less than the competition — literally hundreds of dollars less than the closest equivalent Apple iPhone. The Pixel line looks great, but still prioritizes function over needless visual upgrades.

I've been using the Pixel 2 for a few weeks now, transitioning from the Pixel 1 directly, and I'm convinced it's the best smartphone available — with one caveat.

Here's why:

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How to hear (and delete) every conversation your Amazon Alexa has recorded

Posted: 28 May 2018 07:11 AM PDT

Digital assistants like Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant are designed to learn more about you as they listen, and part of doing so is to record conversations you've had with them to learn your tone of voice, prompts, and requests. Recently, this feature-not-a-bug has landed Amazon in a string of bizarre headlines; in March users reported that their Echo speakers began spontaneously laughing, while last week a family in Portland said their device recorded and sent conversations to a colleague without their knowledge. For these instances, Amazon claims that the devices were likely triggered by false positive commands.

It's not uncommon for smart speakers to pick up random parts of your everyday conversation and misunderstand it as a wake word (especially if you may have changed the Alexa trigger to a more common word, like "Computer.") If you're curious what Alexa has been hearing and recording in your household, here's a quick way to check.

First, open the Alexa app on your smart device. Tap the hamburger icon on the top left side of the screen to open the menu options. Click on the Settings menu, then find History.

Here, you'll be able to browse all the commands you've ever asked of Alexa, from timers to music requests to general internet queries. You can also sort the results by date. Sometimes you may even see just a line item that says "Alexa," for those times you may have mentioned the assistant's name but didn't mean to actually use it.

You may notice a few instances where the Alexa app notes a "text not available." Click on this and you can listen to a recording of what you or someone in your household may have said that prompted the Echo to listen to your current conversation. In the case of our Weekend Editor, Andrew Liptak, his Echo device recorded a snippet of his mother-in-law teasing his son, saying "Alexa is going to take over your house." In the app, the Echo device concluded that the audio was not intended for the assistant, and it did not return a response.

If you are uncomfortable having any particular recording in your Alexa history, you can delete it on an individual basis, or go to the Amazon's Manage Your Content and Devices page to wipe it entirely. The company, of course, cautions that doing so "may degrade your Alexa experience."

As noted above, Amazon keeps these recordings to personalize the Alexa experience to your household and uses them to create an acoustic model of your voice. While it does automatically create a voice profile for each new user it recognizes (or ones you've manually added), the company says it deletes acoustic models if it has not recognized the particular user for three years.

For heavy Alexa users, going through all of these commands to find egregious conversations to delete might be too much work — but if you're nervous about what the Echo has been listening to you say, it may be worth browsing to make sure nothing it has recorded is something you want transmitted elsewhere.

Photos by Andrew Liptak / The Verge

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The 512GB Galaxy Note you've been waiting for is in the works

Posted: 28 May 2018 04:45 AM PDT

If you’re looking for a smartphone with 512GB of built-in storage, there’s only one such device to buy right now, and it’s hardly affordable. But that might change later this summer when the Galaxy Note 9 arrives.

A new report says that “lucky” buyers will be able to score Galaxy Note 9 versions sporting 8GB of RAM and 512GB of storage, which would be a notable achievement for Samsung.

The news comes from a well-known Chinese leaker that goes by the name of Ice Universe on Weibo and Twitter.

If you are lucky, you will see 8GB RAM and 512GB ROM Galaxy Note9

— Ice universe (@UniverseIce) May 26, 2018

The “lucky” part seems to suggest that only specific markets will receive this particular version, with China likely being one of them. After all, Samsung did make custom phones for China, whether we’re talking about colors or memory and storage upgrades.

If the report is accurate, this Galaxy Note 9 model will have as much RAM as the OnePlus 6, which currently outperforms the Galaxy S9 in benchmark tests. As for total storage, the Galaxy Note 9 is likely to support microSD cards of up to 400GB, which means the maximum storage would be at almost 1TB for the 512GB model.

The 512GB Galaxy Note 9 will be the most expensive Galaxy Note 9 option in those markets where Samsung will make it available.

A few days ago, a recent benchmark test for the Exynos 9810 version suggested that the base Galaxy Note 9 model will have 6GB of RAM. It’s likely that the cheapest Galaxy Note 9 will have 64GB of storage.

The Galaxy Note 9 is expected to be unveiled this summer, with some reports saying the phone is coming earlier than anticipated.

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