Motorola Moto Z2 Play and JBL SoundBoost2 coming to Canada in July for $800

Motorola's Moto Z2 Play, which is their current Canadian flagship that can take the Moto Mods accessories, will be available in early July for $800  together with the JBL SoundBoost2 in-box (normally priced as $114.99 CAD option), and will be at Freedom Mobile, Bell Mobility, SaskTel Mobility and BellMTS. Moto TurboPower Pack will also be available in early July for $99.99 at Bell Mobility and Staples. Moto GamePad, a Moto Mod that turns the smartphone into a will be available later this summer. 

Some specs on the Moto Z2 Play, it is sized between last year's wafer-thin Moto Z and the larger Moto Z Play. It has a headphone jack, a redesigned and multifunctional fingerprint reader, which doubles as a trackpad. It is powered by SnapDragon 626 octa-core processor, 3 GB of RAM, has a 5.5-inch HD display, 12-megapixel camera with f/1.7 aperture and dual autofocus pixels. Stay tuned for a full review right here.

Popular ‘GTA 5’ modding tool gets shut down, fans react negatively to the news

If you’ve used OpenIV mod for Grand Theft Auto V, we’re sure you’re already aware of the news that publisher Take-Two Interactive served a cease and desist order for the fan-made modding tool. And the developers took it down saying they don’t have the time to try and fight the order. This extremely popular modding tool was used not just create and modify content like vehicles, weapons, gameplay features, and effects, but it also served as an improved video editor. Take-Two reasoned that while they aren’t against modding as a whole, they say OpenIV threatens the security of the GTA Online mode. In a statement they say, “Take-Two’s actions were not specifically targeting single player mods. Unfortunately OpenIV enables recent malicious mods that allow harassment of players and interfere with the GTA Online experience for everybody. We are working to figure out how we can continue to support the creative community without negatively impacting our players.”

The GTA 5 community reacted rather negatively to the news saying there isn’t any evidence that the tool interferes with GTA Online. They’ve flooded the Steam page for the game with negative reviews and started a petition over at Change.org that already has over 20,000 signatures. The petition titled “Save OpenIV,” says “The closing of OpenIV leaves 10,000s of people without access to be able to mod their games, and leaves 10,000s of people without the ability to continue their hobbies.”

Source: SlashGear + PC Gamer

You now have the option to have Cortana as your default assistant on Android

If you rely heavily on Microsoft’s Cortana assistant and use an Android phone, you’re going to like the latest update. The app can now be your default assistant on your smartphone. Much like with Google Assistant, when you long-press your home button, it can pull up Cortana. And if you do enable it, you can carry over the actions you do on your smartphone with your Windows 10 laptop or PC. So if you miss a call, you can be alerted on your PC or if you create a reminder on your laptop, it’ll show up on your smartphone.

It’s pretty simple to change digital assistants. You just let the app walk you through the process when you install and log in. It’ll prompt you to change from the Assist app to Cortana. One downside is Google won’t let you launch Cortana by voice. You’ll still have to do it the old-fashioned way and tap on the button.

Source: Android Police

Google to rely on AI and human oversight to help stop terrorists

Google, like all the other giant tech companies, are under pressure to help get rid of extremists’ online presence. And the tech giant’s response to this includes four steps to help flag and remove pro-terrorism content on its pages, especially on YouTube. One way is to rely on its machine learning tech that can automatically flag and take out terrorist videos. At the same time, it’ll keep up “innocently-posted” clips like news reports. Another way is to build on its counter-radicalization system, which will show anti-extremist ads to would-be terrorist recruits and pull ads from extremist videos.

But artificial intelligence won’t be enough, as Google acknowledges. The company intends to “greatly increase” the number of people who are part of its YouTube Trusted Flagger program to help find these terrorist material faster. The company is also working with anti-extremism groups to help get rid of recruiting-oriented content. Google even wants to take on videos on YouTube it sees as containing “inflammatory” religious or supremacist material. These will come with warnings and Google will stop them from getting ad revenue, viewing recommendations, and comments. Whether these measures will work is an entirely different story, but we appreciate the effort.