Yesterday, XDA Recognized Contributor Tkkg1994 was able to port TWRP 3.0.2-0 to the Huawei Mate 9. The recovery has been tested on the European MHA-L29 variant, but should work on every Mate 9 variant. After installing the recovery, you can follow the instructions to acquire root access as well.
LeEco has been making headlines for a few years now. It was the first video streaming company to go public in China, and since then they've been tapping into multiple markets that help deliver their video streaming service to its customers. They expanded into TVs, smartphones, and have recently started investing in autonomous cars too.
It's clear they were growing fast when they announced the acquisition of Vizio for $2 billion, followed by launching some of their products in the United States.
Last month, though, the chairman of LeEco confirmed they had "overexpanded", and that they were running out of cash. A few days later, LeEco announced they were able to secure $600 million in funding from a dozen investors in China. This is what they needed as a $150 million offshore loan arranged by Credit Suisse Group AG and Deutsche Bank AG was delayed for unknown reasons. Reports say LeEco has also gone to investment banks in Hong Kong to work on fundraising options as well.
Still, this good news hasn't been enough to keep the stock price of LeEco's holding company (known as Leshi Holding) from tanking. Tuesday, they saw its stock price drop 7.9% by the time the markets closed. The closing price landed at 35.80 yuan ($5.20) per share, and this drop resulted in 6 billion yuan ($869.5 million) disappearing from the company's market capitalization.
This is bad in an of itself, but when we consider its shares had traded at 80 yuan ($11.59) in May 2015, we can see how much worse things really have been for the company. It's unclear if the recent expansion LeEco has been making is to blame for this decrease, or if they were planning on this all along. What is known, is that LeEco is currently undergoing a restructuring plan to prevent this from getting any worse. We'll have to wait and see if things improve over time.
Source: The Wall Street Journal
VR used to be an enthusiast's dream, but we're getting closer to the point where it's going to become mainstream. There are still some hurdles that need to be fixed, but companies like Google and Samsung are making VR accessible to more people than ever before.
With it being such an early stage for VR though, big companies like HTC, Acer, Oculus and more are experimenting to find what works and what doesn't.
Instead of making each company waste resources by solving VR developmental issues by themselves, a few of them have banded together to create a non-profit organization called the Global Virtual Reality Association (or GVRA for short). This association currently consists of Acer, Google, HTC, Oculus, Samsung and Sony. On the GVRA website, we're told there are two main goals to the association:
Firstly, companies participating in this organization will actively promote the growth of the global virtual reality industry as a whole. This can consist of advertising, hosting demonstrations, creating content, and helping others who are also in the VR industry. These companies have vested interests in the VR industry as a whole, and each of them will benefit from work that the others are able to do. This is especially true as each company involved currently specializes in certain aspects of the VR industry.
The second goal of the Global Virtual Reality Association is to share best practices for the industry, along with showing public and private stakeholders how VR is a viable business. As mentioned, there are a number of hurdles that need to be tackled in order for VR to be a mainstream success and developing a VR title the proper way is one of them. These companies will also be a resource that consumers and policymakers can turn to when they want to learn more about VR in general.
For anyone interested in VR content, or just seeing the market expand beyond what it's currently at, the GVRA is definitely a big step toward maturing this industry faster than before.
At the Microsoft Windows Hardware Engineering Community (WinHEC) event earlier this week, it was announced that Microsoft and Qualcomm have been working together on a new project. The goal of this partnership is to get Windows 10 running on "premium-tier" Snapdragon chips from Qualcomm.
Microsoft's Terry Myerson (EVP, Windows and Devices Group) even pulled out a thin, fan-less laptop prototype to demo the progress the two companies have made.
We're told that Windows 10 running on Qualcomm's Snapdragon processors will offer the exact same applications and features that people expect from the company's latest operating system. Devices that are using this hardware will be running Universal Windows Platform (UWP) and Win32 apps through emulation. Microsoft and Qualcomm are hoping this process will inspire OEMs to build new devices and offer more choices to the consumer.
Qualcomm's Snapdragon SoCs have a number of features baked into them that can expand the current feature list of portable and desktop hardware. The examples they gave were "Gigabit LTE connectivity, advanced multimedia support, machine learning and superior hardware security features." With all of this being possible in devices that do not need to be cooled off by fans. They're hoping to see some new tablets, notebooks, laptops and even miniature PCs using this combination of hardware and software.
The demo Myerson showed on stage had Windows 10 running on the Qualcomm-powered laptop. On the screen, we can see applications like Microsoft's new web browser, Edge, and Adobe Photoshop running on it without any lag or jitters (you can watch a clip of this down below). The two companies also announced that commercial devices using this hardware and software are currently scheduled to be available to the public during the second half of 2017.
Other than saying "next generation Qualcomm Snapdragon processors", they didn't specify which Snapdragon processors would be capable of running Windows 10 in this way.
To this day, there are still customers who insist on keeping their Samsung Galaxy Note 7, despite knowing the risks.
Samsung has been continuously taking steps in an attempt to force people to abide by the recall. We've covered the explosiveness of this phone in depth here at XDA, so it shouldn't be of any surprise as to why Samsung is so desperate to pry these smartphones out of the hands of the few remaining Note 7 owners. Samsung has repeatedly made it clear that all Note 7 devices need to be returned by sending notifications to all remaining devices and even pushing an OTA update that limits the charging capacity of the phone. But, despite Samsung's attempts, many users still cling to their device thinking that the issue won't affect their device.So now Samsung is taking things a step further by cutting off cellular access for Galaxy Note 7 devices. We saw Samsung employ a similar strategy at the beginning of the month for Australian Note 7 owners, and now it's been confirmed that the move will be happening in Canada as well. Both reports state the Galaxy Note 7 will no longer be able to connect to cellular providers on December 15th.
The press release for Canadian Note 7 owners also goes into more detail and mentions that even WiFi as well as Bluetooth connectivity will be disabled as early as December 12th. Apart from sending an update to brick the device (and hoping the consumer will accept and install the OTA update), there's not much else Samsung will be able to do here. Without network access of any kind whatsoever, the Note 7 can do nothing more than play a few offline games or act as a calculator. It's unclear if this strategy will roll out in other markets such as the U.S. or Europe, but we'll have to wait and see if this strategy is effective in Australia and Canada.
When Google took the stage on October 4th to unveil the highly anticipated Pixel and Pixel XL smartphones, many users were thrilled at the apparent renewed attention that Google was giving to their hardware line-up.
However, if one were to pay attention to the plethora of other products and services announced at the Google Event, it's clear that Google's true focus was aimed towards Artificial Intelligence (AI), with its new Google Assistant at the forefront.The software addition to Google's product suite was a culmination of their existing work on Search technologies, Knowledge Graphs, Natural Language Processing, and Big Data analysis. One of the most enticing aspects of Google Assistant was its ability to contextually understand situations and respond appropriately, hence taking on an "Assistant" role.
However, a product like Google Assistant can only hold a conversation so long as the answer is readily available based on simplistic Google Search queries. Eventually, Google Assistant would fail to understand more complex queries, and consumers would arrive on Google search's landing page to manually search for an answer. Forcing a user to leave the confines of AI-based understanding and contextualization represents a failure in Google Assistant, one that severely limits its potential as an Assistant. An Assistant that forces the user to manually query Google Search is basically a glorified Voice Search.
This is where Actions on Google comes in. Actions on Google is a Developer Platform that will allow third party developers to create conversational reply-based actions on Google Assistant. What was previously impossible for Google Search to answer can now be handled by a third-party Assistant plug-in, further filling in the gaps of Assistant's functionality. As Google had promised during the October 4th Google Event, Actions on Google is being launched right on schedule.
These actions will be available on any platform that supports Google Assistant exists, which currently includes Google Home, Google Allo, and the Google Pixel and Pixel XL. However, today's launch is centered around Google Home, with integrations for Allo and Pixel at a later date.
We'll continue to add more platform capabilities over time, including the ability to make your integrations available across the various Assistant surfaces like Pixel phones and Google Allo
To get started as a developer, visit the Actions on Google website. In addition to the Actions API, Google has also worked with a few development partners to provide conversational development tools like API.AI and GupShup, analytical tools like DashBot and VoiceLabs, and consulting companies like Notify.IO, Assist, Witling and Spoken Layer. Furthermore, developers can get started by accessing samples and Voice User Interface resources as well as integrations from early access partners when they roll out.
In the future, Google is also planning to enable support for purchases and bookings, along with "deeper Assistant integrations across verticals". If you wish to make use of these upcoming features as a developer, you will need to register for Google's early access partner program.
ArsTechnica and The Verge had an early hands-on with the platform. Currently, only Conversational Actions (requiring multiple back-and-forth conversations) are demoed, while the other "Direct Actions" that interact with Assistant's IoT-hub nature (like switching on a light) are not yet available.
Actions created with the API will be triggered by using certain distinct keywords. These voice triggers will then switch out Google Assistant with a new chat personality created by the third-party developer. The third-party chat bot will be able to handle commands that are not available to Google – such as ordering going through the process of calling an Uber. While in conversation with this new chat bot, standard Google Assistant commands will remain inaccessible to the end user until they exit the interaction or let the conversation time out.
End users will not have to configure anything on their end to install or utilize these bots, as everything will be enabled from a server side switch. The Verge mentions that Google will not be creating an "Action Store", effectively making all actions available to all users regardless of their input. Google will be involved with curating the list of keywords that developers can use to invoke their chat bot to prevent conflicting commands. There will be app-store-like policies in place that will work to prevent keyword camping (one company using another's name as their keyword) and to safeguard important generic keywords such as "shopping". Full policies and guidelines will eventually be published to maintain a level of transparency in the process.
With the lack of a "Store", there are questions that remain unanswered regarding the discovery of new services on the Assistant platform. Ultimately, there are two things we are currently concerned about. First, how will Google provide equal or equitable access to lesser used services? Next, how will Google inform the user of the existence of every new keyword? These are immediate concerns that we do not see an answer to in the initial press release, but we will be waiting to see how Google is planning to address these issues.
As an entirely new product segment with the only decent competition coming from the likes of Amazon Echo and its Alexa AI, Google Assistant has a lot of catching up to do. The initial difficulty will be in creating a product that an end user would want, and API support is the first step towards attracting the right services to a young platform.
What are your thoughts on Actions on Google platform? Let us know in the comments below!
Accelerated Mobile Pages are a brilliant way of browsing sites, by stripping away unnecessary content sites with AMP enabled can appear to load almost instantly. Recent changes mean that now the Google AMP cache will now serve each site from its own subdomain http://ift.tt/1os2VlF. This allows AMP content to be protected by the HTML5 origin, improving security. To benefit from the improved security, web developers working with AMP will need to update their CORS implementation. The AMP cache will still support existing URLs but they will soon redirect to the new URL scheme.
The Google AMP cache will begin to create subdomains that are human readable when character and technical limits allow and will resemble the publisher's domain, The Cache will create each subdomain by:
For instance, xda-developers.com will map to xda–developers-com.cdn.ampproject.org. If technical limitations don't allow for a human readable subdomain, a one-way hash will be used instead. Because of this CORS endpoints will start to see requests with new origins which will require you to implement the following changes.
Expand request acceptance to the new subdomain: Sites that currently only accept CORS requests from http://ift.tt/1os2VlF and the publisher's own origins must update their systems to accept requests from https://[pub-com].cdn.ampproject.org, http://ift.tt/1os2VlF, and the AMP publisher's own origins.
Tighten request acceptance for security: Sites that currently accept CORS requests from http://ift.tt/2gJHzzt as described in the AMP spec, can improve security by restricting acceptance to requests from https://[pub-com].cdn.ampproject.org, http://ift.tt/1os2VlF, and the AMP publisher's own origins. Support for http://ift.tt/2gJHzzt is no longer necessary.
Support for new subdomain pattern by ads, analytics, and other technology providers: Service providers such as analytics and ads vendors that have a CORS endpoint will also need to ensure that their systems accept requests from the Google AMP Cache's subdomains (e.g.http://ift.tt/2gJKTuJ), in addition to their own hosts.
Haven't enabled AMP on your site yet? Head to the link below to read our full guide on what it is and how to implement it fully!
