VW agrees to $14.7 billion settlement over US diesel claims
After news of a settlement broke yesterday, Volkswagen’s diesel emissions scandal settlement will indeed hit $15 billion in the US. The official paperwork was filed with the Justice Department today, the automaker will shell out $14.7 billion in two separate settlements — one with the United States and the state of California and another with the Federal Trade Commission. Figures have continued to rise since the initial reports of $5,000 per vehicle in April rose to $10,000 each. That money, which totals just over $10 billion, will be used to buy back affected vehicles at their pre-cheating scandal price. The actual payouts will range from $5,100 to $10,000 plus the value of the car before news of the emissions test first broke.
For former owners who sold their cars after news of the scandal broke, VW will offer half the rate that it’s set to shell out to folks who still have one of its vehicles in their driveway. $2.7 billion will be dedicated to an EPA fund to projects that will offset the environmental impact that its faulty emissions testing caused. $2 billion will be used for the company’s own clean driving projects, including infrastructure and education. The automaker estimated back in April that the total cost of resolving the issue would hit $18.2 billion.
Volkswagen still faces settlements with 44 individual states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. Reuters sources claim that the total from those cases could hit $600 million. Reuters notes that if owners opt to have their vehicles repaired rather than selling them back to the company, the actual amount VW stands to pay could be less than these reported figures. The EPA still has to approve Volkwagen’s repair plans, so owners who want to keep their cars will have to wait a while to get them fixed.
During a press conference announcing the settlement, the DOJ offered the reminder that this is just the beginning of resolving the wrong doing by Volkswagen. There are still pending civil and possible criminal charges the automaker faces as part of putting 500,000 model year 2009-2015 2.0 liter diesel vehicles that emitted NOx gas at 40 times the EPA-compliant levels. Today’s settlement also doesn’t include 3.0 liter cars that are also included in the scandal.
“While this announcement is an important step forward, let me be clear, it is by no means the last. We will continue to follow the facts wherever they go,” said Deputy Attorney General Sally Q. Yates. If you thought this was the last you’d hear about the VW, there’s likely more news to come.
Via: Reuters
Source: Justice Department
Hacker claims to have 655,000 health care records for sale
Hackers are getting all too creative in their bids to hold health care data for ransom. An intruder is selling records for 655,000 patients from three US health care organizations (in Atlanta, the central US and Farmington, Missouri) on the Dark Web as part of a ransom attempt. Details of what happened aren’t clear, but the hacker claims to have exploited flaws in the Remote Desktop Protocol to perpetrate the heists. Also, this person maintains to DeepDotWeb that the companies had a chance to “make it go away” for a “small fee,” but didn’t — the sale is upping the ante.
The culprit is telling Motherboard that there are already prospective buyers for the authentic (if possibly outdated) info, which is selling for between $100,000 to $411,000 in bitcoins. Either way, the incident highlights the increasing dangers of lax security for health care records. In all three breaches, the organizations’ internal networks were not only accessible, but stored login details in plain text — these were entirely avoidable incidents. Until security is more of a priority, stunts like this could easily happen again.
Via: Motherboard, BBC
Source: DeepDotWeb
Ask Alexa to add new features to your Amazon Echo
Amazon opened up Alexa to developers a year ago, and there are now over 1,400 apps or “skills,” as the company calls them. To take the hassle out of installing those on your Echo product, it now lets you do it automatically just by asking Alexa. For instance, if you want to test your trivia skills, you say “Echo, enable Jeopardy” and it’ll add that third-party app. Up until today, you had to go to the Alexa app, find the skill and then add it manually, so the new feature will save you some time.
Amazon says that around 10,000 registered developers are working on Alexa projects, meaning you’ll soon have even more choice. It’s also invested in 16 startups to help them build wearables, smart home devices and other products via the Alexa Fund.
The company has also redesigned the skills section of the Alexa app, letting you browse by categories like “Lifestyle” and “Smart Home.” It revealed a pair of new skills from Lyft and Honeywell that will let you order a car and turn down the thermostat, I assume. Some of the most popular are Jeopardy, Daily Affirmation, Magic 8 Ball, Fitbit, and The Bartender, a skill we all can use in these trying times.
Source: Amazon
New 3D Touch Action in iOS 10 Lets You Prioritize App Downloads
After a few weeks of new iOS 10 features slowly being discovered by beta testers, one new 3D Touch-enabled shortcut was stumbled upon recently that will let users prioritize the bulk download of apps. When more than one app is installing, users on iOS 10 can 3D Touch to select “Prioritize Download” and temporarily pause the installation of other apps while the selected one gains favor.
On devices running iOS 9 and earlier, bulk downloads require users to run through every app downloading and tap to pause them, leaving only their favored app downloading. Apple’s streamlined process in iOS 10 should greatly alleviate the frustration in moments where multiple apps are waiting to be downloaded and installed onto an iPhone.
(Thanks, Eric!)
Related Roundup: iOS 10
Tag: 3D Touch
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Amazon Debuts Book-Skimming ‘Page Flip’ Feature for Kindle Devices and Apps
Amazon has announced that a new feature called “Page Flip” will be rolling out to its iOS and Android apps, Fire tablets, and Kindle e-readers as a free, over-the-air update beginning today. The feature gives users a digital approximation of skimming through a book, making “it easy to explore books while always saving your place.”
When activated, Page Flip pins the current page to the bottom left of the screen to remember your current reading spot, allowing you to skim through the rest of the book to find a specific passage, map, or simply peek ahead at what’s next. A new “bird’s eye view” feature truncates an entire book into a scrollable column of pages, making it easier to find highlighted passages from previous pages.
Page Flip is a reimagined Kindle navigation experience that makes it easy to explore books while always saving your place
At a glance, easily recognize specific pages as you jump around. Pictures, charts, your highlights, and the layout of each page are easy to see with Page Flip’s pixel-accurate thumbnails that automatically adjust as you change your font and margin settings.
At launch, Amazon says PageFlip is available “on millions of books,” with plans to continuously add new entries “every day.” Similar to Kindle’s X-Ray feature, supported books will be identified on their eBook store page with a “Page Flip: enabled” marker in the feature list.
The Amazon Kindle app is available from the App Store for free. [Direct Link]
Tags: Amazon, Kindle
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G2A attempts to appease game publishers with royalty payments
After coming under fire for how it handles sales of illegal video game keys, reselling website G2A has introduced a number of new policies that it hopes will appease developers affected by the practice. The company announced that it will let game makers apply for royalty payments for any titles that appear on its marketplace. It comes after SpeedRunners publisher TinyBuild accused G2A of failing to act on $450,000 in potential lost sales, after scammers used stolen credit cards to buy legitimate keys and auction them off for profit.
G2A says that when the Game Developer Support System goes live on July 29th, registered developers will receive up to 10 percent on third-party sales, allowing them to monetize third-party transactions, whether they’re legitimate or downright shady. The company has also committed to prioritizing developer-managed auctions, ensuring that publishers will be ranked above third-party resellers, and will offer free chargeback protection as well as access to its game key database to identify dodgy keys.
“As a leader in the digital gaming marketplace, we recognize our responsibility to serve the greater good for the entire gaming industry,” the company said in a statement. “Recent events have demonstrated that we need to move faster to introduce new benefits designed with developers in mind, and invite them to play an even bigger role in creating the marketplace of the future.”
While G2A profits from sales of stolen keys, which customers get for significantly lower prices than at retail, it is keen to repair its image with the game community. Before TinyBuild took up the issue, the reseller did take steps to suspend keys that it believed were obtained via illegal means. With the introduction of royalties and a clear route for developers to check the status of keys on the site, G2A’s willingness to increase its transparency may help it in its quest. However, a 10 percent share of sales might not appease the companies upset with the company’s business model.
Doppler smart earbuds blend music with the outside world
Doppler Labs raised eyebrows with its Here Active Listening earbuds, which could amplify or tune out frequencies depending on how much you wanted to hear the outside world. Well, it’s back with an upgrade, the Here One — and it offers even more control over your audio. The new earpieces introduce “layered listening” that promise to merge earbud sounds with those of the outside world. You can listen to music on a bike ride without missing car sounds, or get sports commentary while preserving that stadium atmosphere.
It’s more targeted, too. instead of blocking whole frequency ranges, you can apply adaptive filters that boost or eliminate specific sounds, such as conversation or crying babies. You also get a personal profile, so you won’t have to routinely tweak settings when you use the Here mobile app. Just be ready to pay more than you did for the last generation — Americans can pre-order the Here One for $299 (up $50 from the old model’s normal price) ahead of its November launch. International releases are “coming soon,” so don’t despair if you’re an eager listener outside of the US.
Source: Here
Todoist’s business platform has a new activity log and notifications
Todoist has long been one of the best task management / to-do services out there. It works on just about every platform you could ask for and is frequently updated with useful features. But one of its main competitors, Wunderlist, has the power of Microsoft behind it, so Todoist needs to keep improving its product to keep up. One of the big focuses for the company over the next year or so will be its business platform, and that starts today.
Probably the most noteworthy new feature in Todoist Business is an activity log that can be filtered in a wide variety of ways. You’ll be able to see how everyone in your team is progressing on the various projects they’re assigned to, and you can sort by dates, people and projects to get a more focused view of exactly how things are moving forward. Another way to view progress is by sorting by tasks added, updated, completed, uncompleted and deleted tasks, and added comments. It’s a pretty dizzying array of seeing what’s going on in your team — but if you’re using Todoist to track a big set of projects and team members, it should help you see how things are moving forward.
Each project also has a new unified “notes” area where the project leader can share details; you can also attach files to your comments and also notify team members when you add things to that thread. To keep things from getting overly cluttered, notifications are grouped and collapsed by default so you don’t get one every single time something in a project is updated.
The last update is a tweak to Todoist’s “quick add” feature that lets you use natural language to add tasks to your to-do lists. Now in addition to quickly adding recurring tasks on specific dates, you can also easily specify specific users and projects in the quick add field. Todoist says the quick add features will now work the same across all platforms, including iOS and Android.
Of course, a “business” offering doesn’t come for free — Todoist’s corporate product costs $28.99 per user, per year. That’s the same price as the single-user “premium” offering that’s more focused at individuals rather than businesses. It’s not exactly in expensive, particularly if your organization is a large one, but Todoist promises that there will be a whole host of new features for business subscribers coming out between now and 2017. While you don’t want to sign up for something based on potential future features, Todoist’s paid offering is already quite robust. And, it’s cheaper than Wunderlist Pro, to boot. It’s still probably a coin flip as to which is better, but Todoist is still definitely worth your consideration.
Amazon made flipping through books on Kindles and tablets easier
As useful (and as crazy-svelte) as e-readers can be, there’s something terribly satisfying about thumbing through a sheaf of processed plant matter with words on it. While you’ll never get the same sensory experience using a Kindle, Amazon at least tried to make it easier to skim through digital books, and you’ll get your chance to try it for yourself today. The feature’s called PageFlip, and it’s coming to Amazon’s Kindle app for iOS and Android, along with certain Kindle readers and Fire tablets by way of an automatic, over-the-air update.
PageFlip, in short, is basically the digital equivalent of sticking your thumb between two pages and scouting through the rest of a book looking for the juicy bits. If you’re using the Kindle app on a tablet or phone, tapping on a page gives you a zoomed-out view of that page, along with a progress bar along the bottom to mark your place in the book.
While you flick through the pages, a little window remains in the corner of the screen — that’s the page you just came from, and one tap brings you back to where you left off. If that doesn’t get you skimming through prose fast enough, there’s also a grid view option that shows off even more pages at once. Even better, page previews — be they big or packed into the grid — change on the fly when you fiddle with your margin, line spacing and typeface settings.
Getting PageFlip to work on Kindles was a little trickier, considering the differences in displays, refresh rates and touch sensitivity. Still, the concept scales to these more basic devices without much trouble — you’ll be able to pin pages and view the grid (albeit with less detail), and there is a pair of new shortcut buttons to help you jump between chapters. Simple enough, no?
I didn’t spend much time with PageFlip, but there was one thought I couldn’t shake while I was seeing it: this would be kind of amazing to have before you buy a book. After all, who among us Luddite bound-book readers doesn’t thumb through a tome before trudging up to the checkout line? When asked, a pair of Kindle product managers declined to answer directly; they mentioned the “Look Inside” feature on book listings has been “really helpful,” so I wouldn’t expect much more than that for a while. Speaking of book listings, I haven’t been able to find a book that isn’t PageFlip-enabled, though Amazon concedes that not every digital book they carry is compatible right now.
Wink’s smart home controller can hail an Uber car
Wink’s Relay controller is about to do a lot more than tie your smart home together. The company is rolling out third-party service support that accomplishes tasks you wouldn’t normally expect from the device controlling your light bulbs. For one thing, you can order a ride through Uber — it’ll even show a ride you’ve ordered on your phone, in case you need a heads-up that your driver is nearly there. You can also get updates on your Fitbit progress from the Relay’s sleep screen, or use the controller’s two physical buttons to trigger automated IFTTT tasks. Will you use these often? Probably not, but they’ll beat walking across the house to get your phone.
Source: Wink
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