President Obama wants the FCC to abandon plans for tiered ‘net neutrality’
President Obama found a place in the heart of many techies during his first campaign thanks to his staunch support of net neutrality. Six years later the debate still rages on, but Obama’s position hasn’t changed. During a Q&A in California on Thursday the President reiterated his support for the principle saying:
“I made a commitment very early on that I am unequivocally committed to Net Neutrality… Tom Wheeler, knows my position. I can’t-now that he’s there-I can’t just call him up and tell him exactly what to do. But what I’ve been clear about, what the White House has been clear about, is that we expect that whatever final rules to emerge, to make sure that we’re not creating two or three or four tiers of Internet.”
That statement seems to stand in opposition to the current proposal sitting in front of the FCC which leaves plenty of wiggle room and loopholes for creating tiered service. Of course, he stopped shy of calling for broadband to be reclassified as a Title II service, which critics have said is essential for preserving true net neutrality. Reclassifying broadband under Title II would allow the FCC to regulate it as a “common carrier” like telephone lines, and would demand that ISPs act in “the public interest.”
[Photo courtesy of Getty, taken by Kevin Mazur for WireImage]
Filed under: Internet
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Snapchat servers ‘were never breached,’ but your snaps may still be compromised (update)
Snapchat is a photo sharing service known for its temporary nature: you send a photo to a friend, a few seconds later the photo disappears and is erased. If you snap a screen of the image, Snapchat tells the other person. That’s the elevator pitch, anyway. A variety of third-party apps skirt around that temporality, enabling users to secretly save the images they’re sent — occasionally of the nude variety — and anonymous internet forum 4chan is claiming it hacked one of those apps to access hundreds of thousands of images. Worse, those images are allegedly tied to usernames. Yes, that means your images may be at risk of exposure. Snapchat can’t confirm the alleged leak because it didn’t involve the company’s servers if it did happen, but the company says its data centers are secure. Here’s what Snapchat told us:
“We can confirm that Snapchat’s servers were never breached and were not the source of these leaks. Snapchatters were victimized by their use of third-party apps to send and receive Snaps, a practice that we expressly prohibit in our Terms of Use precisely because they compromise our users’ security. We vigilantly monitor the App Store and Google Play for illegal third-party apps and have succeeded in getting many of these removed.”
First things first: don’t panic. The images from the leak aren’t actually online just yet, making the hack a claim at most right now. So, what allegedly went down?
4chan users, posting anonymously, say that the third-party service Snapsave was hacked. Snapsave is a third-party app for both iOS and Android that enables users to save snaps without the other person knowing. The posts allege that Snapsave uses cloud saving, and when it was breached, the cloud database was downloaded with approximately 200,000 images. Snapsave has yet to return our requests for comment, and 4chan says to expect the image database online by October 12th (this Sunday).
Due to the recent hacking of various celebrities and the subsequent leaking of images depicting said celebrities in the nude — which was dubbed “The Fappening,” a reference to an internet term for masturbation — some media outlets are calling this alleged breach, “The Snappening.”
Update: Snapsave rep Georgie Casey says, “Our app had nothing to do with it and we’ve never logged username/passwords.” Moreover, he says that Snapsave doesn’t run on a cloud setup.
A report on Business Insider states the service in question is known as “SnapSaved” (the same name, but in the past tense), a website that enabled Snapchat users to log in and save their images. “The service acted as a web client for the Snapchat app that allowed users to receive photos and videos, and save them online,” BI writes. “What its users didn’t realize was that the site was quietly collecting everything that passed through it, storing incriminating Snapchats on a web server, with the usernames of senders attached.”
The website “www.snapsaved.com” no longer resolves — as of this writing, it’s just a blank white page.
Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds, Internet, Software, Mobile, Apple, Google
Source: 4chan, Business Insider
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Apple Reportedly Preparing to Remove Bose Audio Products From Retail Stores
Apple is preparing to remove all Bose audio products, both demo and sellable, from its retail environment, according to a reliable source who spoke to MacRumors. The inventory change will begin early next week, with instructions for removal being sent to employees in the coming days.
The reasons behind this removal were not disclosed, but it is very likely tied to to Apple’s recent acquisition of Beats Electronics. As part of this deal, Apple obtained the popular Beats headphone division as well as the company’s subscription music streaming service. With Beats now featured prominently by Apple, either Bose or Apple may have decided to end their retail relationship.
Bose also has a new sponsorship deal with the National Football League that has seen the league prohibit players from wearing Beats headphones while in the presence of television cameras at practice and on game days. San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick defied the ban by wearing bright pink Beats headphones at a postgame press conference last Sunday, a move that saw the league hit Kaepernick with a $10,000 fine.
Apple acquired Beats Electronics earlier this year in a deal worth $3 billion. Beats co-founders Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre reportedly have assumed senior roles within the company and are said to be working to improve Apple’s influence in the music industry. This partnership may help Apple as it supposedly negotiates with music labels in order to lower the price of its Beats Music service ahead of a planned revamp rumored for February of next year.
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Accessory of the Day: Trade in your old smartphone or tablet for Amazon cash
Have old devices lingering around the house, just taking up dust while you’re salivating for an upgrade? The Amazon Trade-In Program allows folks to turn their tablets, phones, and other electronics into an Amazon Gift Card with ease.
It’s a convenient process. Potential traders simply visit the program’s page and will immediately receive an offer for their goods. Amazon pays for the shipping and you don’t have to hassle with auctions, transaction fees, or unsatisfied customers. You’ll receive your Amazon Gift Card within 10 days of trade-in, allowing you to leverage your old goods toward better buys! Plus, with the ability to gift Prime Memberships now, you could turn your outdated devices into incredible holiday presents this year.
We frequently get inquiries from readers looking for advice on the best platform to sell their used devices, safely. While we usually reserve Accessory of the Day for gadgets, enhancements, or add-ons for your devices, this is a great deal that could put money in your pocket and de-clutter your home. And let’s be honest: what’s a better accessory than extra cash?
Deals, Discounts, Freebies, and More! Click here to save today! |
The post Accessory of the Day: Trade in your old smartphone or tablet for Amazon cash appeared first on AndroidGuys.
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London Zoo’s otters now livestreaming to YouTube using leftover TV signals
Like most residents of The Smoke, you probably don’t visit tourist attractions like London Zoo unless out-of-towners (or your sprogs) require entertaining. Now, though, you don’t even need make the trip to Regent’s Park to gawk at some of the zoo’s cutest critters, with new livestreams that send footage from several enclosures straight to the screen in your bleak office cubicle. The Zoological Society of London (ZSL) has teamed up with Google to make this so, in a two-month trial that’s testing video broadcasting over TV white spaces (vacant frequencies in the TV spectrum). Live footage from the meerkat, otter and Galapagos tortoise enclosures is being sent over these idle frequencies to a central location, which forwards them on to YouTube (streams embedded after the break). This isn’t just so you’ve got something to stare at during your 15-minute sandwich break, though, as the main aim of the trial is to figure out how white space transmissions could be used by conservationists out in the field.
ZSL hope that within the next couple of years, small cameras that send imagery over white space frequencies can be used to assist conservation efforts in remote locations — think endangered species monitoring, and poacher thwarting. It’s one of many white space trials being conducted in collaboration with Ofcom, the UK communications regulator. Ofcom expects that off the back what’s learnt from these trials, dormant spectrum will begin being used for reals next year, for applications such as providing internet connectivity in hard-to-serve locations.
Filed under: Google
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Honda’s latest robotic stool is fun to ride, still impossible to buy
One of the several reasons for why we love CEATEC is that we get to test ride human transporters there (as well as meeting robots of all sorts). Last year we came across Honda’s stool-like UNI-CUB, and this year, the company is back with a new and improved model dubbed UNI-CUB Beta, and it even let attendees ride the vehicles — while wearing Epson’s smart glasses, no less — around the show floor under staff supervision. It should be noted that the Beta was actually first unveiled at the Tokyo Motor Show last November, but that didn’t kill our curiosity. Read on for our impression and hands-on video.
While both the original UNI-CUB and its successor have the same 6 km/h top speed and 6 km range, the main difference between them is that the latter is lower and lighter, with the trade-off being the seat is no longer adjustable. Honda doesn’t consider this a problem, and after our own test rides, both we agree that this is more stable and comfortable to ride on thanks to the lower center of gravity; and the softer seat is a bonus as well.
Another notable change is that the footrests have been redesigned to serve as support stands. When you want to park the vehicle or use it as a stationary stool, pull up the lever beneath the back of the seat and the footrests will flip to stand mode. Similarly, to get on the Beta, simply sit down on it, push the lever down and then place your toes on the footrests. Compared to the original UNI-CUB, we felt more confident when getting on and off the new model thanks to the extra support.
As impressive as the UNI-CUB Beta is, a Honda rep told us that there’s still no launch date in sight as the company continues to explore potential use cases, as well as to make the product more affordable by constantly refining the design. Having said that, we’re certainly getting close to the day when these mobility devices become an acceptable and legal means of transportation, which is great news for those suffering from mobility difficulties.
Filed under: Robots, Transportation
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Researchers manipulate electrical signals to give prosthetic limbs a sense of touch
Adding the sense of touch to prosthetic limbs could significantly improve an amputee’s quality of life, so there’s a long list of researchers trying to make it happen. Some of those scientists make up one team out of Cleveland, who — according to their paper recently published in Science — have successfully recreated the sense of touch for two men missing an arm in a lab setting. Just like a recent experiment conducted by a team from the EU, this group implanted electrodes around three main nerves in the test subjects’ arm stumps. A machine then sends electrical signals between the electrodes and the prosthesis when it’s attached, something which, the subjects said, felt like electric tingles at first.
After a while, though, the researchers learned how to control the patterns and intensities of those signals. Doing so allowed the subjects to recognize the texture of cotton and even sort berries without crushing them — a really big deal, since many other studies are still stuck at the “tingling” stage. Sadly, the researchers still need to better understand how they can manipulate the signals before they can make prostheses that can feel everything: even their two subjects only get to use their high-tech limbs once or twice a month, and only inside the lab. For now, you can watch some of the experiments they’ve conducted in the video below.
Filed under: Science
Via: Popular Science, AP
Source: Science
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New Words with Friends lets you play solo even when you’re offline
Still playing Words with Friends? Well, then Zynga’s rewarding your loyalty with a huge update on the app’s fifth birthday, complete with a redesigned interface and new features. The New Words with Friends (yes, it’s been renamed, as well) doesn’t only look flatter than its predecessor, it also comes with a new feature called Solo Mode, which lets you play on your own without internet connection. It’s apparently the game’s most requested feature, most likely by folks who spend a lot of time outside coverage area… or those whose friends have abandoned the game years ago.
There’s also a new Community Matches section, which was obviously inspired by dating app Tinder, as you can swipe other players’ profiles either left or right to build a more personal list of potential opponents. Finally, you’ll notice that there’s now a dictionary and a word of the day section, and that you can now access your detailed stats, including the number of wins, losses and uniques from the time you started playing. You can download the New Words with Friends from either Google Play or iTunes anytime, though you may want to hurry and catch your pals while they’re still interested — solo mode can wait until everyone gets bored (again) and leaves your matches hanging.
Via: Droid Life
Source: Google Play, iTunes
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Norway’s new bank notes are pixel art dreams
Norway’s new banknotes are quite literally works of art. After inviting submissions from a number of design houses, the country’s Norges Bank has chosen just two. While the front of the new notes will display traditional imagery, the rear will feature conceptual designs that transform Norway’s costal landscapes into pixels. The artworks, created by Oslo-based Snøhetta, become progressively more abstract as the value of the notes increase, with the 50 kroner note depicting an idyllic scene and the 1000 kroner note a windswept sea of purple. The new designs will go into circulation in 2017, and you can squint at the rest of them after the break.
Via: It’s Nice That
Source: Snøhetta
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HTC Nexus 9 to cost $399 USD, announced Oct 15th, released Nov 3rd
October is turning into Christmas for Android lovers. Among the various releases rumoured to be happening this month, the HTC Nexus 9 is the most concrete of these after HTC themselves confirmed that the Nexus 9 tablet is their commitment to return to the tablet market. The announcement date for the device has been suggested as either October 15th or 16th, however the former has gotten another vote of confidence thanks to today’s information. According to a source speaking with Bright Side of News, the Nexus 9 is going to be announced by Google on October 15th, where preorders for the device will start, and the full release of the device will happen on November 3rd. That’s a bit under three weeks you’ll be waiting from the announcement. This information vaguely fits in with a previous rumour we heard that the Nexus devices would be announced in mid October, followed by the full release of Android L at the start of November.
Another bit of information that this latest report has divulged is an alleged price for the Nexus 9, putting it at $399 USD. This of course is a bit expensive considering the pricing of the Nexus 7, but given that the Nexus 9 contains some of the best technology available at the moment, that price isn’t surprising, although we’re not sure which model this might be. What’s also interesting is that this report suggests that the Nexus 9 won’t only be available from the Google Play Store come November 3rd – major retailers are said to also be stocking the device as well for sale. This means you should be able to get your hands on the Nexus 9 pretty easily even if the preorders run out.
What do you think about this latest news about the HTC Nexus 9? Is $399 USD too expensive for you? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
Source: Bright Side of News via Phone Arena
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