Thousands of people are still thought to be stranded in Indian administered Kashmir nearly two weeks after devastating floods there.

There have been clashes in Brazil's largest city Sao Paulo following the eviction of 200 families occupying an old hotel in the city.

Earlier this week SwiftKey announced that they hope to have their keyboard available on the App Store when iOS 8 finally rolls out to users worldwide. They've been kind enough to provide us with a beta version of the SwiftKey keyboard for testing, along with some insight into developing extensions on iOS 8 and their hopes for SwiftKey's future on both iOS and Android.

Assuming that nothing delays Apple's approval for the app, the first step for users who want to get SwiftKey after upgrading to iOS 8 will be to download it from the App Store. Due to the nature of Apple's implementation of extensions, even applications on iOS 8 that are essentially just extensions meant to run in other apps must have a container application that gets placed on the home screen. In the case of SwiftKey this is fine, as the application is home to settings for SwiftKey Cloud, languages, settings, and themes.

Once you've installed SwiftKey from the App Store, you'll need to go into the settings app to add it as shown in the image above. With the app installed the SwiftKey keyboard would show up in the section to add a new keyboard under a header for third party keyboards. Once you've done this you'll be ready to start using SwiftKey. However, you may notice that there's one very important thing missing.

Swiftkey immediately after installation on an iPad

As you can see above, the bar for predictions is covered by a banner asking the user to enable "full access." This is because of the sandboxing that Apple does for third party keyboards on iOS. Third party keyboards are, by default, placed in an extremely restrictive sandbox. They are unable to get information about what words are being inputted or what content is in an app, and they are unable to access networking to do server side prediction. These measures are in place to protect the user's privacy and security. To enable extended functionality, Apple allows users to enable full access for third party keyboards in the settings app. By doing this, SwiftKey is able to grab what characters are being typed to use with their prediction and correction technology which learns more about how a user types and what mistakes they make.

As far as the design of the keyboard goes, its layout is essentially same as the stock iOS keyboard so there's no real learning curve. Users who are familiar with the iOS keyboard can start using SwiftKey and feel at home right off the bat. iPad users will notice that the keys are larger than the stock keyboard, which in my experience made keys easier to hit without causing me to hit the wrong key due to the reduced amount of space between them. In addition to its accuracy, it's also extremely responsive. iOS 8 on the third generation iPad I was using for testing has an enormous delay between when you touch a key and when it actually registers. SwiftKey has no such issue, and for that reason alone it has become my daily keyboard on iPad. As for its appearance, the keyboard currently only comes with the nickel dark and nickel light themes that you see above. 

Swiftkey's application, much like the keyboard itself, fits in very well with the visual style and design conventions of iOS. It's obvious that some care has been put into making it more than a port of the Android version of SwiftKey. The application is home to all the settings for the keyboard, including themes, languages, and SwiftKey Cloud. Currently not all the settings from the Android version have been brought over. Layout options and themes are two notable omissions. However, this is a first release, and I've been told that there will definitely be updates as time goes on.

With iOS including Apple's QuickType keyboard with similar correction and suggestion functionality, some users may be wondering why they even need a third party keyboard like SwiftKey. For me the most obvious reason is SwiftKey Cloud. My current setup is an HTC One (M7) and an iPad. Using SwiftKey on my phone but the stock iOS keyboard on the iPad would mean that the information each keyboard learns about how I type would not available to both keyboards. With SwiftKey on iOS and SwiftKey Cloud, all the information Swiftkey has collected about how I type and what mistakes I often make are available to both of my devices. This is a huge advantage for people who have mobile devices running multiple operating systems.

Another advantage that can be argued is that SwiftKey is a company that has had their keyboard available for 4 years, and specializes only in keyboards. It's not unreasonable to think that SwiftKey's technology for learning from how the user types may be more mature than Apple's which is just now being introduced with iOS 8.

The last advantage simply comes down to features. SwiftKey, and other third party keyboards, can always offer more features than Apple does due to their focus only on keyboards and the ability to ship updates whenever necessary via the App Store. One notable feature that SwiftKey offers is Flow, which is a method of typing by moving your finger from key to key. Users who use Swype by Nuance will be familiar with how SwiftKey Flow works. Unfortunately, I was unable to test Flow as the iPad version of the keyboard does not have it. This is due to memory limitations imposed on extensions. The functionality and visual effects for SwiftKey Flow when run on an iPad exceeds this amount of RAM which is why only the version for iPhone and iPod Touch includes it. Flow is most useful in a one handed situation on a phone so I'm not heartbroken by its omission in the iPad version. That being said, I am still hopeful that SwiftKey will be able to do further optimization to eventually bring Flow to iPad.

Overall, I'm very happy with how SwiftKey has turned out on iOS 8. The SwiftKey Note application makes it clear that the company has wanted to bring their keyboard to iOS for some time now and has just been blocked by the lack of third party keyboard support. The fact that it fixes the keyboard lag on my iPad and syncronizes what it has learned across iOS and Android are enough to make me very happy to use SwiftKey on iOS. I'm very excited to see what future updates bring.

SwiftKey should be available for free on the App Store not long after the release of iOS 8. The application is subject to Apple's approval, and so there could be some delay in its availability to users.

Update: SwiftKey is approved and available on the App Store now. Grab it here.

Scientists have had the extremely rare chance to examine an intact colossal squid after it was accidentally caught in the Antarctic, as Mauricio Olmedo-Perez reports

Scientists have had the extremely rare chance to examine an intact colossal squid after it was accidentally caught in the Antarctic, as Mauricio Olmedo-Perez reports

Juan Vela is one of very few artisans making traditional, handcrafted castanets for Spanish flamenco.

Thanks to a bug in the Android Browser, your cookies aren't safe. Surian Soosay

A bug quietly reported on September 1 appears to have grave implications for Android users. Android Browser, the open source, WebKit-based browser that used to be part of the Android Open Source Platform (AOSP), has a flaw that enables malicious sites to inject JavaScript into other sites. Those malicious JavaScripts can in turn read cookies and password fields, submit forms, grab keyboard input, or do practically anything else.

Browsers are generally designed to prevent a script from one site from being able to access content from another site. They do this by enforcing what is called the Same Origin Policy (SOP): scripts can only read or modify resources (such as the elements of a webpage) that come from the same origin as the script, where the origin is determined by the combination of scheme (which is to say, protocol, typically HTTP or HTTPS), domain, and port number.

The SOP should then prevent a script loaded from http://malware.bad/ from being able to access content at https://paypal.com/.

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T-Mobile's "data strong network." T-Mobile

T-Mobile US’ latest “Un-carrier” move is just about the most amazing thing ever, CEO John Legere said last week.

“This is like adding millions of towers to our network in a single day,” Legere boasted in a press release. “The difference between us and the traditional carriers is that they’ll do everything they can to make more money off you. We’ll do everything we can to solve your problems.”

The innovation is actually something that T-Mobile has had since 2007: Wi-Fi calling. It makes sense for T-Mobile to promote Wi-Fi calling now, given that Apple is adding the capability to iPhones in iOS 8. The initiative has some nice benefits for customers—T-Mobile offered to upgrade all customers to phones that can make Wi-Fi calls and is giving out a free “Personal CellSpot,” a Wi-Fi router that prioritizes voice calls.

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US ground forces could be deployed against Islamic State (IS) militants if the current US-led strategy fails, top US General Martin Dempsey has said.

The Hollywood actor, Leonardo diCaprio, has been appointed as a United Nations representative on climate change.

Apple has put fixes in place to its iCloud cloud storage service that now prevent an attacker from mining data from an iOS device backup stored in the cloud by gaining access to the user’s password—at least if that user has turned on Apple’s new two-factor authentication.

As we reported last week, iCloud previously did not use two-factor authentication to help protect backup data or the Find My iPhone service. This meant that the accounts of victims of social engineering attacks or those who used passwords based on personal data could be harvested of their backup data—allowing the attacker to gain access to photos, call records, SMS records, e-mail, and other personal data. Apple had said that it was moving to provide additional protection through two-factor authentication in advance of the release of iOS 8.

We tried accessing one of the accounts attacked during our testing just prior to the Apple event last week using Elcomsoft Phone Password Breaker, a forensic tool that uses a reverse-engineered version of Apple’s iOS backup protocols to extract backup data from an iCloud account. The account now has two-factor authentication turned on, and the attempt failed—it yielded an unspecified HTTP error.

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A member of the House of Representatives is offering legislation that would make it illegal for businesses to take action against consumers who write "honest" negative reviews online about products and services.

Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) told the National Journal that the forthcoming measure would make it illegal for companies to have non-disparagement clauses in their consumer contracts.

"It's un-American that any consumer would be penalized for writing an honest review," Swalwell said. "I'm introducing this legislation to put a stop to this egregious behavior so people can share honest reviews without fear of litigation."

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Apple

A top appeals court has thrown out a jury ruling that ordered Apple to pay $368 million to VirnetX, a patent-holding company that many consider a “patent troll” because it exists exclusively to enforce patents. On Tuesday, the United States Federal Circuit Court of Appeals remanded the decision back to the lower federal court in East Texas.

The four patents (1, 2, 3, and 4), which relate to FaceTime and VPN On Demand functions in Apple's iPhones, iPads, and Macs, were developed by a company called Science Applications International Corporation. Apple reportedly spent tens of millions of dollars to design FaceTime around the VirnetX patents, but it ultimately found itself embroiled in litigation anyway. The company also tweaked its VPN On Demand product to avoid infringement in 2013 after the lawsuit was well underway.

In its ruling (PDF), the appeals court did not rule that any of VirnetX's patents were invalid, and it only reversed the finding of infringement on one claim pertaining to a VPN On Demand patent. The court also said that the Texas District Court had not correctly defined a term that appeared in two of the patents, and it sent the decision back to Tyler, Texas so the court there can reassess the patent claims based on the appeals court's new term construction.

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Just grab a rating from that pile and slap it on.

On September 16, 1994, the newly formed Entertainment Software Rating Board handed out its first ratings certificates, including its first M rating for the 32X version of Doom. Since then, the organization has taken on the Herculean task of assigning a content-based age rating to practically every commercial video game released in the United States.

For the most part, the organization has done an admirable job of accurately evaluating the content of thousands of games based on brief video montages provided by publishers. The ESRB should also be commended for educating the public about the meaning of its ratings—73 percent of parents say they check ratings before buying games, according to the ESRB—and of getting retailers to comply with voluntary age-based sales restrictions—87 percent of stores refused to sell M-rated games to minors in a 2011 FTC investigation. Despite some concerns surrounding transparency and rating methodology, the industry-wide self-regulation of the ESRB has been a boon to those trying to hold off continual efforts at government restrictions on game content and sales.

Still, among the thousands of ESRB ratings issued over the years, there are quite a few that have us wondering what the group was thinking. Here’s a chronological collection of some of the most baffling ESRB ratings decisions we’ve come across over the years, ranging from too lenient to too harsh to just plain hilarious.

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Part of a bridge has been demolished near Paducah in Kentucky, in the US.

National Institutes of Health

The Federal Bureau of Investigation says its facial recognition project that stores millions of mug shots and other photos is out of the pilot stage and is at "full operational capability."

The Next Generation Identification system, combined with criminal fingerprints, "will provide the nation's law enforcement community with an investigative tool that provides an image-searching capability of photographs associated with criminal identities," the FBI said in a statement Monday.

The full deployment of the program comes three months after James Comey, the bureau's director, announced that the agency was "piloting the use of mug shots, along with our fingerprint database, to see if we can find bad guys by matching pictures with mug shots."

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SpaceX's Dragon V2. Megan Geuss

Today, NASA administrator Charles Bolden announced that there were two winners in the campaign to become the first company to launch astronauts to low-Earth orbit: Boeing and SpaceX. The two will receive contracts that total $6.8 billion dollars to have hardware ready for a 2017 certification—a process that will include one crewed flight to the International Space Station (ISS).

In announcing the plan, Bolden quoted President Obama in saying, "The greatest nation on earth should not be dependent on any other nation to get to space." And he promoted the commercial crew program as a clear way of ending a reliance on Russian launch vehicles to get to the ISS. But Bolden and others at the press conference were also looking beyond that; several speakers, including Kennedy Space Center Director Bob Cabana and astronaut Mike Fincke, mentioned that the ultimate goal is Mars.

To that end, Bolden emphasized that NASA is still doing its own vehicle and rocket development. The Orion crew capsule, intended to be suitable for missions deeper into the Solar System, recently underwent a splashdown test in the Pacific. Its first test flight aboard a Delta IV rocket is scheduled for this December. Work on the Space Launch System, a heavy lift vehicle that can transport the additional hardware needed for deep space missions, was also mentioned.

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Audi

On Tuesday, permits for self-driving cars issued by the California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) took effect for the first time.

Applications for the permits began in May 2014. Only the Volkswagen Group (which includes Volkswagen and Audi cars among others), Mercedes Benz, and Google have been issued permits for their 29 total vehicles. Overall, that represents a miniscule fraction of all 32 million registered cars in the Golden State.

Bernard Soriano, a DMV spokesman, told Ars that Tuesday also marked the first time those numbers had been disclosed outside of the agency. "There are a handful of different companies that are completing their application," he added, noting that the DMV expected to issue more permits soon. "They’re all large automakers."

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Fergus Walsh reports from Malawi on how the country has worked to reduce infant mortality.

I am a visual learner. When I try to teach something, I naturally like to use visual examples. That usually involves me working for hours to create flowcharts in Google Docs using the drawing program. Yes, it works, but it's a very cumbersome way to create a flowchart. Thankfully, I recently discovered Lucidchart. more>>