Technology News

This is the Evija, an all-electric sports car by Lotus Cars. Making its debut in London tonight, it promises hypercar performance with a target power output of some 2,000ps, zero to 62mph in under three seconds and a top speed of 200mph. The sports car weighs as little as 1,680kg, due largely to the lightweight carbon fiber monocoque structure, for an impressive pure electric driving range of 250 miles. Priced from £1.7m (roughly $2.1m plus duties and taxes), the Evija is a halo product for Lotus; it is the marque’s first hypercar and inaugural all-electric model. What's more, the Evija is the first completely new car to be developed under the tenure of the Chinese car giant and owner of Volvo and Polestar, Geely. The front splitter is in three sections: the central area provides air to cool the battery pack; the air channelled through the two smaller outer sections cools the front e-axle JW Photography     The name means “the first in existence” - a nod to the 71-year-old British brand’s reputation for pioneering technology with road and race cars. The aim is to do something similar with this Evija e-hypercar. Lotus cars are generally quite spectacular to drive - they offer a pretty raw experience - so the anticipation here is for an outstanding yet electrified driving experience on tarmac and track. Crucially, the car we see here signals the start of a new visual theme for Lotus. Design largely follows performance - the marque’s philosophy is centered on stripping the car of unnecessary decoration and for all elements to be functional. This is a theme we see with he Evija but with an added dose of visual drama. For instance, the Venturi tunnel pierces each rear quarter to optimize air flow by directing it through the bodyshell, aiding the delivery to the rear of the car, which in turn counteracts the low pressure behind the car to reduce drag.

No, FaceApp isn't taking photos of your face and taking them back to Russia for some nefarious project. At least that's what current evidence suggests. After going viral in 2017, and amassing more than 80 million active users, it's blowing up again thanks to the so-called FaceApp Challenge where celebs (and everyone else) have been adding years to their visage with the app’s old age filter. The app uses artificial intelligence to create a rendering of what you might look like in a few decades on your iPhone or Android device. But one tweet set of a minor internet panic this week, when a developer warned that the app could be taking all the photos from your phone and uploading them to its servers without any obvious permission from the user.   The tweeter, Joshua Nozzi, said later he was trying to raise a flag about FaceApp having access to all photos, even if it wasn't uploading them to a server owned by the Russian company. Storm in an internet teacup? This all turns out to be another of the web's many storm-in-teacup moments. A security researcher who goes by the pseudonym Elliot Alderson (real name Baptiste Robert) downloaded the app and checked where it was sending users' faces. The French cyber expert found FaceApp only took submitted photos - those that you want the software to transform - back up to a company server. And where's that server based? America, not Russia. A cursory look at hosting records confirmed to Forbes that this was true, the servers for FaceApp.io were based in Amazon data centers in the U.S. And, as noted by Alderson, the app also uses third party code, and so will reach out to their servers, but again these are based in the U.S. and Australia. FaceApp uses Amazon servers based in the U.S. Thomas Brewster Of course, given the developer company is based in St. Petersburg, the faces will be viewed and processed in Russia. It's unclear how much access FaceApp employees have to those images and Forbes hadn't received comment from the company at the time of publication about just what it does with uploaded faces. Permission to land on your phone So is there a privacy concern? FaceApp could operate differently. It could, for instance, process the images on your device, rather than take submitted photos to an outside server. As iOS security researcher Will Strafach said: "I am sure many folks are not cool with that." It's unclear how well FaceApp's AI would process photos on the device rather than more powerful servers. FaceApp improves its face-changing algorithms by learning from the photos people submit. This could be done on the device, rather than the server, as machine learning features are available on Android and iOS, but FaceApp may want to stick to using its own computers to train its AI. Users who are (understandably) concerned about the app having permission to access any photos at all might want to look at all the tools they have on their smartphone. It's likely many have access to photos and an awful lot more. Your every move via location tracking, for instance. To change permissions, either delete the app, or go to app settings on your iPhone or Android and change what data tools are allowed to access. Forbes contacted FaceApp founder Yaroslav Goncahrov, who promised a statement later on Wednesday. This article will be updated when that statement arrives.

YouTube is adding more ways for video creators to make money, as the company and its users work toward becoming less reliant on sometimes-uncertain advertising deals. The new features include more subscription options, additional merchandise partners, and another way to receive tips during live streams. Direct monetization features like these, says YouTube’s chief product officer, Neal Mohan, have already started bringing in money for “thousands and thousands of channels.” In particular, YouTube’s Super Chat — a service that allows viewers to pay to pin comments on live streams — has been a growing source of income for creators since its launch in 2017. During a presentation at VidCon today, YouTube announced that more than 90,000 channels use Super Chat, with some streams pulling in more than $400 per minute. “For over 20,000 channels on YouTube, Super Chat is now the primary means of revenue generation,” Mohan tells The Verge. Over the past couple years, YouTube has been expanding the ways creators can make money directly from their viewers. At last year’s VidCon, it unveiled merch opportunities and memberships, allowing some channels to sell T-shirts and offer subscriptions. Features like these can relieve worries around advertisers disappearing, as they occasionally do amid controversial events. The features also allow YouTube to better compete with platforms like Twitch and Patreon, which have been particularly successful in giving creators new ways to bring in money. YouTube takes a cut of money that passes from viewers to creators. Successful YouTubers are earning five to six figures a year on YouTube, Mohan says, and the number of creators in that bracket has grown 40 percent year over year. As part of its efforts to help creators earn more money, YouTube is adding new merch partners for them to work with. Now, YouTubers who partner with Crowdmade, DFTBA, Fanjoy, Represent, and Rooster Teeth will be able to embed a box below their videos where viewers can browse the products they offer. YouTube is also adding a new chat feature called Super Stickers, which fans can buy during live events and premieres to show appreciation for their favorite creators. When purchased, a large animated sticker will appear in the chat. YouTube’s membership feature is expanding, too. Channels that can use memberships will now be able to offer subscription levels at up to five different price points, with varying perks. This makes the feature even closer to Patreon, which similarly lets creators offer a number of membership tiers for subscribers. Mohan says the goal is to create opportunities for its creators to build a community. “And then also, of course, opportunities to build a ... real global business.” Each creator is their own economic engine, he says, developing a burgeoning business on YouTube. As efforts like channel memberships — which are now available to any creator with more than 30,000 subscribers — continue to grow, YouTube has refined its monetization practices to let creators better tailor their experiences to fans. For creators like Nick Eh 30, a Fortnite live-streamer with more than 4 million subscribers, these initiatives have had a significant impact on how he makes money. Nick tells The Verge that about 50 percent of his income comes from Super Chat and memberships. “I’m able to engage with my community because it’s such an interactive product,” he says. Because he focuses mainly on live-streaming, it also gives him an easy way to interact with fans in real time. “It’s because of these features that I was able to go over 4 million subs in the last 10 months,” he says. “I think it’s because it’s such a direct and instantaneous way to get your message heard by your favorite creator ... with Super Chat, you’re on the air. It’s raw. It’s just you and the creator.” The growth of programs like Super Chat is a promising way for creators to earn money directly from fans, rather than through ad money, but it’s not without its problems. In the past, Super Chat specifically has been a way for viewers to spread hateful ideologies by paying to have their comments prioritized and for creators to profit off it. When asked about how YouTube is combating these issues — especially as Super Chat becomes a bigger source of revenue — Mohan pointed to the company’s hate speech policies: “We’ve updated those policies through a lot of hard work over the course of the last several months, and we just announced a new set of policies a couple of weeks ago.” Additionally, he says, YouTube scours on-demand content as well as live streams and live chats. When pressed about exactly how this enables YouTube to fight toxic behavior on its platform more effectively than before, Mohan says that YouTube has expanded what qualifies as hate on its platform. “We’ve always had a set of policies that define what we would consider hate speech,” he says. “Essentially, what we’ve done is we’ve broadened the type of content that now qualifies as hate speech ... That content is now struck from that platform.” YouTube is “continuously at work” building new machine learning and automatic classification tools to help enforce these policies, Mohan says. Mohan says he and his team are still seeking ways to build opportunities for more creators, as well refining the current options. But these new additions, he says, are expansions of features that have already proven to be a success. “These new products are not some small little experiments,” he says.  

The man who enables Yelp to send restaurant reservation reminders and Uber riders to call their drivers is now a billionaire. Jeff Lawson, who cofounded cloud communications services firm Twilio and is still its CEO, is worth $1.2 billion, primarily due to his 5% stake in the company. His fortune has more than doubled in the past three years as the popularity of mobile apps continue to rise. Twilio, which raised $150 million at a $1.2 billion valuation at its June 2016 IPO, is now worth over $19 billion as its share price shot up 66% in 2019 and 146% in the past 12 months. A serial entrepreneur, Lawson got his first taste of success in middle school, when he started an events video business that mostly filmed and edited footage of bar mitzvahs. By the time he graduated high school, the Detroit native was pulling in as much as $5,000 some weekends filming weddings. He launched his first internet startup—Versity.com, which provided lectures notes for college courses—while studying at the University of Michigan and later developed StubHub’s original ticket-selling website as the popular ticket reseller’s first chief technology officer. After finishing college, Lawson interviewed at Amazon in 2004 for a fledgling division that was developing a cloud computing service. He spent 15 months working on what would become the e-commerce giant’s cash cow—Amazon Web Services (AWS)—and was inspired by what he saw there. “This whole idea that you can offer infrastructure as a service was kind of mind-blowing,” Lawson told Forbes in 2016.     Realizing that communication was essential to every business he founded, Lawson decided to apply the AWS model to a cloud communications platform, starting Twilio with friends Evan Cooke and John Wolthuis in 2008. (Cooke left the company several years ago, while Wolthuis still has a role and owns a stake worth more than $250 million.) The San Francisco-based firm provides tools that allow developers to build voice, video or messaging functions into any Web or mobile apps; its first customer, PhoneMyPhone.com, used its products for a website that lets customers input their cell numbers to ring their misplaced phones. Other tech startups noticed the ease and potential of Twilio. When streaming service Hulu was preparing to launch its premium subscription plan, it used Twilio to build a call center to support its new customers. When file-sharing platform Box wanted to enhance user security, it used Twilio to implement a two-factor authentication system with text messages. Twilio has also diversified beyond Silicon Valley—Walmart uses its platform to send “Value of the day” deals to its shoppers’ phones, while the Philadelphia police department used its services to set up an anonymous text-messaging tip line.

As many as 25 million Android phones have been hit with malware that replaces installed apps like WhatsApp with evil versions that serve up adverts, cybersecurity researchers warned Wednesday. Dubbed Agent Smith, the malware abuses previously-known weaknesses in the Android operating system, making updating to the latest, patched version of Google's operating system a priority, Israeli security company Check Point said. Most victims are based in India, where as many as 15 million were infected. But there are more than 300,000 in the U.S., with another 137,000 in the U.K., making this one of the more severe threats to have hit Google's operating system in recent memory. The malware has spread via a third party app store 9apps.com, which is owned by China’s Alibaba, rather than the official Google Play store. Typically, such non-Google Play attacks focus on developing countries, making the hackers' success in the U.S. and the U.K. more remarkable, Check Point said.     Whilst the replaced apps will serve up malicious ads, whoever's behind the hacks could do worse, Check Point warned in a blog. "Due to its ability to hide it’s icon from the launcher and impersonates any popular existing apps on a device, there are endless possibilities for this sort of malware to harm a user’s device," the researchers wrote. They said they’d warned Google and the relevant law enforcement agencies. Google hadn't provided comment at the time of publication. Typically the attack works as following: users download an app from the store - typically photo utility, games or adult themed apps (one called Kiss Game: Touch Her Heart is advertised with a cartoon of a man kissing a scantily clad woman). This app then silently installs the malware, disguised as a legitimate Google updating tool. No icon appears for this on the screen, making it even more surreptitious. Legitimate apps - from WhatsApp to the Opera browser and more - are then replaced with an evil update so they serve the bad ads. The researchers said the ads themselves weren't malicious per se. But in a typical ad fraud scheme, every click on an injected advert will send money back to the hackers, as per a typical pay-per-click system.

If you’ve been following phone news even a little bit, you know that Samsung’s flagship, stylus-equipped Galaxy Note 10 is coming August 7th. You know it’ll have 5G, and you even have a decent idea what it looks like thanks to these estimated renders from June. But now, we may be getting our best look at the Galaxy Note 10 — the first official photos of the phone have reportedly leaked out. The images come from both the typically reliable Roland Quandt at WinFuture and MySmartPrice contributor Ishan Agarwal, so we’ve got little doubt they’re legit. And if so, they reveal that Samsung plans to not only produce the Galaxy Note 10 in black, but also an attractive, shiny blue-purple pearlescent color scheme that’s a dead ringer for the Huawei P30 Pro. Interesting. As rumored previously, we can clearly see a triple-camera array around the back of the phone, exceptionally thin bezels and a hole-punch camera that each barely disturb the screen around front, and all the curved glass you’d expect from a Samsung flagship in 2019. But what’s missing may be just as interesting as what’s included in the photo — namely, there’s no visible fingerprint sensor (suggesting it’s inside the display), and this phone has one fewer physical button than we’d typically expect on a Galaxy Note. Did Samsung do away with the power button, or did it finally get rid of the oft-hated Bixby button? (We ask because the button beneath the volume rocker is typically Bixby, not power, in recent Samsung designs.) If the power button did simply switch sides, that’s still something users would have to get used to. And though we can’t see it in these images, we’d previously heard that Samsung would probably be ditching the 3.5mm headphone jack with the Note 10 as well — maybe not surprising if you expect a premium phone to be paired with premium Bluetooth headphones, but a little odd since the Note has always been the everything-and-the-kitchen-sink device when it comes to features.   The Huawei P30 Pro, for comparison. Photo by Vlad Savov / The Verge   The other thing we’re not seeing, of course, is that Samsung is rumored to have a second, larger version of the new Note. Quandt says that we’re looking at the small version which will supposedly have a 6.3-inch screen. If you believe the rumors, you can also look forward to a giant 6.75-inch Note 10 Pro when Samsung officially announces this August — and possibly a 5G variant as well, if Samsung decided that 5G was too tough to fit into the standard Note.