LG V30 will come with an f/1.6 lens, a first for smartphones

LG just doesn’t want anything to do with leaks anymore so ahead of its August 31^stlaunch of the V30 the company is sharing more information about the upcoming device. Hoping to give an even better photography experience, the V30 will be the first smartphone with an f/1.6 lens aperture. This means it’ll let in 25 percent more light than phones that have f/1.8 aperture (like the iPhone 7). Aside from this, LG says a glass lens will be added to the internal construction of the new camera to deliver more faithful and sharper images. We can’t say though if LG plans to bring it to both of its dual-camera setup. But it is clearer now that LG is making sure you still recognize the great multimedia capabilities of its V series.

As a recap, the V30 promises to be a smaller device than the V20 but will still sport a 6-inch OLED display with a 2:1 aspect ratio and 2,880 x 1,440 resolution. LG also claims it’s reduced the edge distortion of its wide-angle camera to lessen that fisheye effect.

Source: The Verge

Google rebrands its security features and calls it Play Protect

Some of you might notice something new in your Play Store app. Google announced back at I/O 2017 a new rebrand of its security features, which they’ve called Play Protect. Now, we’re seeing an instance of this show up on Google Play Store. Play Protect will be scanning apps before you download them to make sure you download apps that adhere to Google’s rules. At the same time, it watches the apps that run on your devices to see if they’re doing anything dodgy. If they are, you’ll get a notification and the app will be booted from the Play Store. You can see this in action or at least know you have it working on your phone under the “Updates” section of “My apps & games.” There you can manually scan apps and see if any of them have any issues. Some Play Store listings have also started to get “Verified by Play Protect.”

If you select the Play Protect button that has started to show up in the Play Store’s hamburger menu, it’ll then take you to the Play Protect settings page. From there you can opt to disable device scanning as well as the sending of unknown apps to Google. Now, if you disable this feature, the card under Updates will vanish but the menu items stay.

Source: 9to5Google

Coldplay will livestream its August 17th concert in virtual reality

Can’t be in Soldier Field in Chicago on August 17^th for Coldplay’s “A Head Full of Dreams Tour” concert there? It can seem like you’re there, if you have a Samsung Gear VR. Coldplay will be streaming its show there in virtual reality using Samsung’s VR headset. The live broadcast will be available on Samsung Gear VR service for 51 countries (including Canada). The show will stream on the 17^th starting at 8:30 p.m. CT. A replay of the concert will be available for a limited time on Samsung VR. 

Google engineer who penned ‘anti-diversity memo’ gets fired, files labor complaint

If you’re paying close attention to the recent tech news, one of the biggest things to come out of Silicon Valley, or Google to be more specific, is this “anti-diversity memo,” as it’s being called, written by a now ex-Google engineer. James Damore, who’s written the manifesto, was just fired by the company on Monday for “perpetuating gender stereotypes” and violating Google’s code of conduct. Damore was arguing in the memo that the biological differences between men and women are the cause of the gender gap at Google and in the tech industry in general. And he puts to question Google’s diversity efforts. Google CEO Sundar Pichai spoke up, or rather wrote down his thoughts in a note to employees saying, "To suggest a group of our colleagues have traits that make them less biologically suited to that work is offensive and not OK."

On the day Damore was fired, he also filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board in the US saying that Google’s upper management has been “misrepresenting and shaming” him. “I have a legal right to express my concerns about the terms and conditions of my working environment and to bring up potentially illegal behavior, which is what my document does,” Damore told The New York Times. And he seems to have a case on his hands, at least enough to “get through the courtroom door,” as one lawyer points out to Wired that “Damore's lawyer might argue that his memo was protected under California law, because it related to allegedly unequal treatment of employees.”

Source: The Verge