The Morning After: Your weekend edition

August 18, 2018

Hey, good morning!

Welcome to your weekend. This week included our full review of Samsung's new Galaxy Note 9, Google's opaque location tracking and just a lot of bad news for MoviePass. Elon Musk also talked about his tough year heading up Tesla and everything else.

Bigger and more useful than before.
Samsung Galaxy Note 9 review: A better Note for most of us

Need a new big phone? Samsung continues its nearly spotless history of delivering excellent big-screen phones with the Note 9. It offers powerful performance, a long-lasting battery and a brilliant display. The cameras aren't the best in class, but the Note 9 still takes great photos, and the new S Pen remote controls make the stylus useful for more than just doodles. This is hands-down one of the best phones of the year.

Thieves hit the National Bank of Blacksburg for $2.4 million in a pair of attacks.
FBI warns banks about ATM cash-out scheme

The FBI is warning banks about a fraud scheme called an ATM cash-out, Krebs on Security reports. With this type of heist, attackers typically compromise a bank or payment card processor with malware, disable fraud controls and withdraw large sums of money -- sometimes millions of dollars -- with cloned bank cards.

It's a great update that will get even better soon.
Android 9 Pie review: Google gets more thoughtful

Mobile Editor Chris Velazco says Android 9 Pie is a massive, AI-infused update which is generally a pleasure to use. The handful of features made possible by machine learning are helpful additions, but there's much more to Pie than that. Google has done a lot nipping and tucking to make Android itself easier to use, and some system-level changes give the platform room to grow in some important ways.

So far, all it's done is update the location help page information.
Google clarifies how it tracks users even with Location History off

So, certain Google apps still track you even if you turned off location history, Google has changed its help pages and tried to clarify the issue. "We have been updating the explanatory language about Location History to make it more consistent and clear across our platforms and help centers," Google told the AP in a statement. The company has now removed the misleading language on the Location History help page. It used to state that "With Location History off, the places you go are no longer stored."

More issues.
In 'Iron Fist' season two, Danny must battle a familiar enemy

Yep, Danny Rand is back to show that two fists make for more fights. This time, he's not the only one with a glowing hand of mystic power.

Do your research.
How to better secure your smart home

The security of your smart home relies entirely on how much research and care you take before setting up too many devices. From your smart speaker to router security, we have some advice for staying safe with connected devices.

It places more limits on movie viewing and saw massive losses.
MoviePass has another bad week

MoviePass is changing its service yet again and for the foreseeable future, it will significantly limit which films its customers can see on any given day. Following news of huge loses, the company sent a letter to its users, saying that as it transitions to the new subscription plan it began imposing yesterday -- limiting monthly subscribers to just three films per month -- it will offer a limited selection of movies and showtimes each day.