Techmeme
March 29, 2017, 12:40 PM

Top News

Dieter Bohn / The Verge:
Samsung debuts 5.8" S8 and 6.2" S8 Plus with thin bezels, Snapdragon 835, USB-C, 12MP/8MP cameras, Bixby assistant, face and iris unlock, shipping April 21  —  Preorders begin March 30th, three weeks before the release date  —  The Samsung Galaxy S8 is the nicest phone I've ever held.
Mark Spoonauer / Tom's Guide:
Samsung Galaxy S8 hands-on: great screen, impressive design and good build, but how the Bixby assistant stacks up to rivals remains an unknown  —  The Samsung Galaxy S8 is the sexiest phone ever made, and it also looks to be one of the smartest.  —  With an all-new design …
Dieter Bohn / The Verge:
Samsung's new virtual assistant Bixby aims to let users control apps directly through voice, but currently only works with about 10 Samsung apps  —  Samsung's new virtual assistant, Bixby, is a different sort of thing than what you're used to.  Where Siri, Google, and Alexa are focused …
Cherlynn Low / Engadget:
Hands-on with Samsung's Dex, a dock for Galaxy S8 that lets users work on a desktop display, running a tweaked version of Android 7.0 with multi-window support  —  The road to the perfect phone-desktop hybrid is littered with the carcasses of ambitious failures — just look at Microsoft's Lumia 950 and Motorola's Atrix.
Karl Bode / DSLreports:
House passes resolution that lets ISPs sell customers' browsing history without user permission, 215 to 205 along party lines  —  As most had expected, the House of Representatives today voted 215 to 205 to kill privacy rules protecting US broadband subscribers.
Jon Brodkin / Ars Technica:
Inside the privacy vote: Democrats said it would make ISPs “more powerful than Amazon and Google”, GOP said rules “unfairly skew advertising market”  —  Congress passes bill allowing ISPs to sell customer Web surfing data.  —  The House of Representatives voted today …
Yusuf Mehdi / Windows Blog:
Microsoft announces Windows 10 Creators Update will roll out on April 11 as a free update, Surface devices will arrive in more countries on April 20  —  Creativity has led the inspiration of our world's greatest inventors, architects, educators, entrepreneurs, developers, and students …
Brian Heater / TechCrunch:
Samsung's Oculus-powered Gear VR headset will now ship with a bundled controller, for $129 starting April 21  —  Samsung wasn't going to get out of today's Unpacked event without an update on the VR front.  The company has long had the best low-cost VR headset (courtesy of a partnership with Oculus) …
Michael Liedtke / Associated Press:
Google begins testing order-ahead feature on Waze, announces Dunkin' Donuts as first partner, says it plans to team up with other merchants if test goes well  —  A customer enters a Dunkin' Donuts store in New York City.  —  Waze's traffic navigation app already shows ads prodding drivers …
Will Norris / Google Open Source Blog:
Google launches new site to detail how it uses, releases, and supports opens source, includes internal documentation and processes for projects  —  Free and open source software has been part of our technical and organizational foundation since Google's early beginnings.

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