Waymo and Lyft are partnering up to offer more Phoenix passengers a self-driving ride.

Waymo, an autonomous vehicle company from Google parent company Alphabet, launched its self-driving taxi service in the Phoenix area late last year. On Tuesday, Waymo’s CEO John Krafcik announced that 1,000 riders currently have access to the car service, called Waymo One. But now, through a partnership with Lyft, more riders can experience self-driving.

SEE ALSO: Waymo self-driving taxis now let you stream Google Play Music

Over the next few months, 10 Waymo vehicles — the company modifies Chrysler Pacifica minivans with self-driving equipment like cameras and LiDAR sensors — will be available on the Lyft ride-hailing app in the Phoenix area where Waymo’s been operating. Once all the vehicles are available, Lyft will add an option to select a Waymo vehicle from the Lyft ride-hailing app.

These Waymo cars will pick up riders just like they’ve been doing for the past six months through the Waymo app. A safety operator is still in the car. 

Lyft isn’t entirely new to self-driving. Its Level 5 autonomous driving group in Palo Alto has teamed up with various companies to make a self-driving system. Autonomous Lyfts are available in Las Vegas through a partnership with Aptiv. 

During Lyft’s first ever earnings call on Tuesday, Lyft co-founder John Zimmer called the Waymo partnership “an important step” in expanding access to autonomous vehicles. He said the 10 self-driving cars would be available to request on Lyft starting in about three months. 

Well that’s certainly one way to get your point across. 

It was a beautiful Tuesday morning in Mountain View, California, and the troll or trolls looking down on the developers and Google employees at the annual I/O “developer festival” made it all the more so. As a company executive droned on about 3D models, a plane circled above the Shoreline Amphitheater displaying a decidedly non-festive message: “Google control is not privacy.” 

Audience heads turned as the plane made repeated passes above the crowd. Appended to the message was the hashtag #SaveLocalNews — a search of which on Twitter turns up numerous messages related to the plane itself and earlier posts involving World Press Freedom Day. 

Interestingly, privacy appeared to be very much the topic du jour for today’s keynote speakers, who repeatedly assured the audience that it’s an important consideration for Google as well. Clearly, whoever paid for the plane doesn’t exactly buy the messaging. 

SEE ALSO: A year later and Google Duplex is somehow lamer

Speaking of which, who did pay for this thing? Unfortunately, it’s not exactly clear at this moment. We’ll update this post when and if that changes.

But hey, in the meantime, we won’t begrudge privacy advocates their privacy. 

For 11 years the unofficial tagline of the Marvel Cinematic Universe has been “it’s all connected.” As the first, second, and third phases of the MCU introduced the Avengers and their heroic compatriots, that sense of connection increased to create what really felt like a fully realized universe of characters who live and fight together. 

Now that Avengers: Endgame has closed the book on many of those characters’ stories, the question of what will happen to the MCU in Phase 4 is paramount to the future of the franchise. Thankfully, the new and Endgame spoiler–heavy trailer for Spider-Man: Far From Home has the answer, and it’s huge. 

In the trailer, Peter Parker encounters Quentin Beck, A.K.A Mysterio, who Nick Fury introduces as a traveler from another dimension’s Earth. “The Snap tore a hole in our dimension,” Fury explains, and Peter responds with five words that completely change the game for future Marvel movies: “You’re saying there’s a multiverse?” 

SEE ALSO: The new ‘Spider-Man: Far From Home’ trailer has a huge Phase 4 tease

This isn’t the first time multiple dimensions have been alluded to in the MCU — Doctor Strange’s solo movie hinted at there being many dimensions beyond Strange’s own and the time-travel elements of Endgame introduced the idea of creating multiple timelines (which may or may not be splinter universes), but fully acknowledging that there are new and different universes that have access to the MCU’s prime universe is a revelation that makes sense as Marvel intends to introduce new heroes and villains in its fourth phase. 

“Fully acknowledging that there are different universes that have access to the MCU’s prime universe is a revelation that makes sense as Marvel intends to introduce new heroes and villains in its fourth phase”

The existence of the multiverse makes blending the planned Eternals movie into the MCU much easier than it was before — without multiple dimensions it would be difficult to explain a situation in which godlike beings of enormous power didn’t interfere in the catastrophic events of the first 22 Marvel movies. The multiverse also allows Marvel to flex the full power of Disney’s recent acquisition of 20th Century Fox and its stable of X-Men. 

Just as Disney didn’t have the rights to mutant characters until now, so didn’t the Earth of the MCU in Phases 1-3. A big hole in the fabric of the MCU’s reality might be all it takes for Magneto, Jean Grey, and Wolverine to step into the Disney spotlight. 

Aside from expanding the roster of characters available for Phase 4, the Marvel Multiverse also allows for its current heroes to exist as multiple versions of themselves across many universes. Who’s to say that Tony Stark isn’t alive in another universe, or alt-universe versions of Captain America and Black Widow might pop back for a cameo or two down the line? 

Just as the actual theories of the multiverses allow for infinite possibilities, Spider-Man: Far From Home has just made absolutely anything possible. The Marvel Cinematic Universe is dead. Long live the Marvel Cinematic Multiverse.

With these new Facebook and Instagram tools, why ever log off?

Facebook announced Tuesday that it is rolling out a feature for businesses and their customers that allows users to book appointments directly through Instagram and Facebook. 

Facebook has been testing this feature for a while, but now the ability to request an appointment on the user end, and confirm it on the business end, is going wide. 

Facebook began testing business “action buttons” in May 2018. It specifically rolled out tests of appointment booking buttons in December. Now, the feature will be available on Instagram to all businesses worldwide. To add “Book Now” capabilities, businesses can go to Edit profile, then click “Add Action Button,” and select “Book Now.” 

A demo video shows how a “Book Now” button will appear on business pages. When users click on the button, they’ll be able to select the date, time, and services they want, and then hit “Request Appointment.” 

The process then transfers over to Messenger (coincidentally, Facebook is integrating its messaging platforms), where it connects the user with the business. The two parties will be able to address any questions, and then when the business confirms the appointment request, users will get notified through Messenger. Users then have the option to add the appointment to their calendars, which can connect to the Facebook events calendar, or external apps.

Businesses can use this capability, and manage their appointment schedules, entirely within Facebook and Instagram, or with the third-party software and apps of their choice. George Liang, a product manager at Facebook, also pointed out the ability to consolidate appointment booking and schedule management between Facebook and Instagram, and its benefits to business owners. 

“One of the benefits of enabling Appointments on Facebook and Instagram is that a business can manage all appointments across both platforms on their Facebook page – which saves businesses time and resources of managing appointments across multiple surfaces,” Liang told Mashable over email.

Facebook is also launching a new simplified ad buying tool for businesses, and video creation tools, to help businesses make ads.

Instagram has been steadily rolling out new shopping features, so influencers can turn those likes into dollars. It also makes sense for a discovery platform like Instagram to integrate action buttons, so users can translate their piqued interest in a hair stylist’s skills or tattoo artist’s work into becoming IRL customers. It also incentivizes businesses that don’t necessarily have goods to sell to advertise on Facebook. It’s a win-win for customers and businesses — but a loss for people who actually want to see friends in their feeds, not the increasing presence of ads. 

More than five years after acquiring Nest, Google is officially bringing all of its smart home products together, merging Google Home and Nest into a single division. 

Their first act: the Google Nest Hub Max, a $229 smart display with a built-in speaker and camera with face recognition abilities that goes on sale later this summer. Google unveiled the latest addition to its smart speaker lineup onstage at its I/O developer conference.

At first glance, the device is essentially a larger version of Google’s Home Hub (now called the Nest Hub) with one major difference: it has a camera, the first of Google’s smart speakers to include one. It’s a significant change for Google, and one made possible by the decision to formally bring the Nest and Google Home teams together. (The camera on the Hub Max was designed by Nest engineers.) 

With that change comes a few few tricks not possible on any other Google Home speaker. 

The most interesting is a new feature called Face Match. Similar to Voice Match, which lets you train Google to recognize multiple voices in the same household, Face Match allows it to detect and recognize faces. When enabled, the feature (which is optional) allows you to get proactive notifications based on information tied to your Google account. For example, you may see appointments from you calendar or an alert about traffic conditions in the morning. 

Because Face Match supports up to six different people in the same house, these reminders will be personalized based on who is looking at the device. 

It’s work that started years ago with Google Now, the company’s first attempt at personalized, proactive notifications. Now, by incorporating an in-home display and face recognition, these notifications could make you feel like you have an actual assistant. But putting a facial recognition device in your home raises all kinds of questions about privacy and just how deeply we want to embed one of the world’s largest advertising companies into our lives. 

In an effort to allay some of these concerns, Google says it ensures that none of the face recognition features rely on the cloud, instead happening on the device itself in order to ensure that information is kept private. 

“It happens entirely on device, nothing is sent to the cloud,” says Google’s product lead for smart displays, Ashton Udall. “It’s able to actually process the frame, analyze it and delete it all within a fraction of a second.” He also notes that Face Match is optional, and that there is a mute switch on the back of the speaker that physically disables both the onboard camera and microphone. 

In any case, the camera on the Nest Hub Max does more than just recognize your face. As you might expect, you can also use it for video calls (via Google Duo). The camera, which has a 127-degree field of view, can track your movements as you walk around and will automatically shift and zoom to keep you in the frame, similar to the functionality of the camera on Facebook’s Portal speakers. 

Another handy feature: the camera enables gesture controls for media playback. Looking at the camera and holding up your hand lets you pause/play your music or videos. It’s a small feature, but one that could easily end up being one of the most useful. It’s faster and easier that shouting an “Okay Google,” command, and less disruptive to anyone around you.

Finally, the camera can also double as in-home security camera. When set up, you can check the Hub Max camera while you’re away from home, the way you’d use a Nest security camera. This footage isn’t saved or stored by default, but if you have a Nest Aware subscription, you can opt to hang onto it.

Whether or not all that is enough to sell people on a camera-enabled speaker is another matter. Though security camera functionality and gesture controls are nice additions, people have more privacy concerns surrounding smart speakers. Nest, at least, has been making well-received smart camera for years, which could give Google a leg up on competitors with a more questionable record on privacy.