Elon Musk to show SolarCity rooftop panels October 28th
We knew that Elon Musk was working on a roof made of solar panels, and now we know when we’ll see them: October 28th, according to a tweet from the real life Tony Stark. Assuming San Francisco’s trademark fog doesn’t make a surprise appearance too, that is. He says that the SolarCity demo will take place in the Bay area and that we’ll also see how the tech integrates with his other projects, the Powerwall 2.0 in-home battery and a Tesla charging system. I’m sensing a theme here…
Aiming for Oct 28 unveil in SF Bay Area of new Tesla/SolarCity solar roof with integrated Powerwall 2.0 battery and Tesla charger.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 22, 2016
Source: Elon Musk (Twitter)
The Fitbit Charge 2’s upgrades are incremental, but necessary
Fitbit’s two-year-old Charge HR has been in dire need of an upgrade, but thankfully the company has finally refreshed its lineup. The new Charge 2 boasts better exercise tracking, more informative stats, GPS capability and a larger screen for the same price ($150) as its predecessor. Although I dislike its still-boring looks and odd meditation mode, I’ve found the Charge 2 to be a solid fitness companion overall that spurred me to get better at monitoring and understanding my heart health. It’s a worthy successor to our current favorite fitness tracker, and takes over as the most well-rounded option you can buy.
Hardware
At first glance, the biggest change you’ll notice between the Charge 2 and the Charge HR is the display. Instead of a thin rectangular strip, the new screen is four times larger and spans the length of the band. This extra space allows for more information to be displayed, meaning you don’t have to do quite as much scrolling.
Another difference between the Charge 2 and its predecessor is the newer model’s interchangeable bands. You can now swap out the strap for a better-looking one, which you’ll want to do, since the new colors Fitbit introduced for its classic silicone straps are still a little too sporty (for my tastes, anyway). The leather versions look much better, and it’s nice to finally have the option of changing them out.
Both Charges are water resistant enough to withstand “sweat, rain and splashes,” according to Fitbit. Just like the Charge HR, the new model has an easy-to-use buckle clasp, a heart rate monitor on the underside and a physical button on the left side that you press to navigate through the interface. You can also interact with the Charge 2 by jabbing the OLED display since it’s not technically a touchscreen, but uses an accelerometer to tell when you’re hitting it. This means you’ll need to be quite deliberate when you’re poking at your Charge 2 or it won’t register your taps.
In use
There’s something to be said for the Charge 2’s design. Even though I don’t find it very stylish, it’s at least comfortable — so much so that I hardly noticed it was there. That is, until it came time to dress up for a night out, and my unit’s sporty blue band undermined the glam look I had picked out. I had to choose, then, whether I wanted to forego tracking that night’s activities or try to hide or match the Charge 2.
In the end, I chose to match my outfit, because removing the Charge 2 for longer than an hour means my steps progress isn’t logged. My resting heart rate differed depending on how long I had worn it that day, and since Fitbit now assigns a Cardio Fitness Score that shows me how my heart performed against other people of my age and gender, I didn’t want to risk falling behind. Plus, I had steps goals to meet!
Speaking of those goals, I felt pleased each time the Charge 2 buzzed me to say I met an hourly achievement, but none of that compared to the pride I felt when Fitbit’s app told me I had conquered 10 flights of stairs that day. The alert popped up on my phone, and was easy enough to share to my Twitter feed for me to brag to my followers. None of these features are new, but they keep me wanting to put on the device every morning.
What is new is the Charge 2’s ability to auto-detect common activities such as walking, running, bike riding and treadmill exercise after 15 minutes in each. Another big plus for runners is the new GPS Connect feature, which harnesses your phone’s GPS radio to monitor your distance traveled and give you an accurate pace reading. This does mean you’ll have to take your phone with you on your run, though, and, as we found on the original Apple Watch, this method doesn’t guarantee accurate distance tracking.
Fitbit’s app remains largely unchanged since the company’s Alta tracker came out earlier this year, and still displays your day’s progress in an easy-to-understand layout. In one page, you’ll see your step count so far, floors climbed, distance traveled, calories burned and time spent being active. Tap on any of these indicators and you can delve into greater detail about that particular stat. I most frequently studied my sleep and heart data, but I also really liked being able to easily log the cups of water I had drank that day.
Food logging is also pretty full-featured — you can scan a product barcode, search for common items, create custom entries or input a specific calorie amount. The database had most major brand names, too. I tried to enter my linguine alfredo dinner and found options from Red Lobster, Progresso and Mike’s Restaurants, but not the corner deli I got it from, though that’s not surprising. Fortunately, there were far more brands and options available for generic items such as bread and banana.
A new feature in the app is Fitbit Adventures, which lets you challenge yourself (as opposed to, you know, actual other people) to meet fitness goals without getting bored. Adventures takes you on specific paths tailored for cities such as New York or San Francisco. For instance, the Yosemite Vernal Falls adventure takes you through a 15,000-step route that goes by scenic waterfalls. That’s quite a cool way to mix up your workout, although I can’t see it working everywhere. (I wouldn’t want to go on a solo Adventure in a sketchy neighborhood.)
I sleep way more than I exercise, and happily the Charge 2 is still useful to a sloth like me. I’m obsessed with knowing how well I slept, and the Charge 2 was certainly a blessing in that regard. Every morning, I’d wake up and open up the Fitbit app to get a summary of my slumber, and the tracker was mostly accurate in logging my restless or awake moments. Once, during my week of testing, it incorrectly recorded a period of time I remembered being awake as just restlessness, but errors like that were few.
The Charge 2 made some mistakes in noting my steps as well, saying I completed my required hourly 250 steps when I took only about 100 or so paces. Still, the sensors were accurate overall — the heart rate monitor in particular matched my own finger-to-jugular reading almost exactly — and provided a good frame of reference for analyzing patterns in my health.
Wellness isn’t all about working out, and Fitbit’s new Guided Breathing mode is a nod to the importance of relaxing. The feature lets you start a two-minute or five-minute meditation session, during which the device’s heart rate monitor studies your pulse and coaches you to inhale and exhale at a rate that will help you “find moments of calm.”
Most of the time, I found these deep-breathing exercises somewhat difficult to follow. You’ll have to look at a ring on your Fitbit’s screen and breathe in when the circle expands, and out when it contracts. To see the display, I had to either hold up my hand (which became super tiring after a minute, not to mention two or five), or rest my wrist on a table or in my lap and crane my neck to see it. Either method caused me more distress than calm and I ultimately gave up and decided to breathe to my own tune instead. This implementation is similar to the Breathe app that Apple just introduced in watchOS 3, which also has you follow an onscreen animation to regulate your heart rate. Apple gives you more control over your desired session duration and breathing rate than Fitbit does, though.
When you’re not working out or trying to relax, the Charge 2 is still a decent companion, delivering your message, call or calendar alerts to your wrist with a buzz. Thanks to the larger display, you won’t have to wait as long to see the full preview of your notification. You can also now pick from seven watch faces that can display stats on your steps progress and heart rate in addition to the time, which is handy for someone like me who always needs to know how their ticker is doing.
As of this writing, the Charge 2 has endured about six days of activity, with its battery going from a full 100 percent to just below 50 percent. That’s pretty impressive, and longer than Fitbit’s rated runtime of five days.
The competition
For what it does, and for the price, the Charge 2 doesn’t really have much competition. Its closest rival is the Garmin Vivosmart HR+, which costs $70 more, is swimproof and has built-in GPS so you won’t have to lug your phone along on your runs. The Vivosmart will also continuously track your pulse. Jawbone’s Up 4 costs the same as the Charge 2, and also has constant heart rate monitoring, along with a longer rated battery life. But it doesn’t have a display.
Fitness rookies like myself may prefer Fitbit’s Alta tracker, which is more stylish and costs $20 less. Just keep in mind that the Alta won’t monitor your heart rate. If you want a more smartwatch-like experience but want to remain within the Fitbit family, the odd-looking Blaze may be more your speed, since it lets you control your music and interact with notifications (albeit in a limited way). The Blaze does cost $50 more than the Charge 2, though that won’t necessarily be a deal-breaker.
Wrap-up
Fitbit’s Charge line was in serious need of an update, and it finally has a decent offering in the Charge 2. The new heart rate and activity tracker brings important tools such as auto exercise tracking and GPS connectivity, which are good enough that I can forgive the poorly implemented meditation feature. Plus, a bigger screen and interchangeable bands make the Charge 2 look better than its predecessor, even if it could still be more stylish. Overall, the improvements will help Fitbit better take on its rivals, and secure the Charge 2’s place as the leader in its price range.
The iOS Portrait Mode update is live in public beta
Apple just launched iOS 10 last week, but it’s already working full throttle on the next update. Today, Apple made iOS 10.1 available in its public beta program, just one day after launching it for developers. The latest update adds Portrait Mode to the iPhone 7 Plus, allowing owners to take professional-looking photos that artfully blur out the background to better focus on the main object. Portrait Mode requires two photos to create a depth map, which is one reason it’s limited to the iPhone 7 Plus — only the Plus has a dual-camera system.
With iOS 10, Apple opened up the iPhone ecosystem, allowing third-party developers to create programs that work in iMessage and other previously closed apps. This is at odds with the hardware side of things: Apple removed the headphone jack from the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus, effectively walling off the devices from the broader tech world.
Source: MacRumors
Yahoo confirms over 500 million users affected in 2014 breach
Yahoo has confirmed reports that it was the victim of a major hack in late 2014, which has led to some 500 million user accounts being compromised. The story first broke way back in August when a hacker known as Peace was promising to sell 200 million usernames, passwords, birthdates and email addresses for less than $2,000. At the time, Yahoo had refused to confirm or deny if the attack was legitimate to users, a delay which has given nefarious types almost two months head start on their prey.
In a statement posted to its investor relations site, Yahoo claims the massive hack was the act of a “state-sponsored” hacker and elaborates on the kind of data that party might have had access to.
“The account information may have included names, email addresses, telephone numbers, dates of birth, hashed passwords (the vast majority with bcrypt) and, in some cases, encrypted or unencrypted security questions and answers,” the statement reads. “The ongoing investigation suggests that stolen information did not include unprotected passwords, payment card data, or bank account information; payment card data and bank account information are not stored in the system that the investigation has found to be affected.”
That sensitive payment information wasn’t among the data breached is cause for mild relief, and Yahoo believes the hacker no longer has access to the company’s systems. The news originally broke over at Re/code, whose sources said that the hack was so large that it was likely to prompt a government investigation. While Yahoo has confirmed that it’s working with law enforcement to figure out exactly what happened, there’s currently no word on whether government agencies are planning to dig into things themselves.
There’s also no official word on why Yahoo waited so long to publicly confirm widespread reports on the breach. We could easily hazard a few guesses, though. The most obvious: Yahoo is currently selling itself to (Engadget’s parent company’s parent company) Verizon, any negative consequences could harm the deal before it officially closes in early 2017. Verizon, for what it’s worth, was only brought into the loop two days ago — a Verizon spokesperson said in a separate statement on Twitter that the company has only “limited information and understanding of the impact.”
Yahoo’s admission could also spell trouble for beleaguered CEO Marissa Mayer — though she has said that she plans to stay with Yahoo even as it becomes a Verizon subsidiary, the questionable handling of this breach seems like yet another in a long line of crucial missteps for both CEO and company.
Chris Velazco contributed to this story.
Via: Re/code
Source: Yahoo Investor Relations
How to outsource your love life
It’s 5PM on a Friday. I pour myself a glass of three-day-old white wine and wait for my wing woman to call. Her name is Ally. She has a soothing voice and a gentle demeanor. She lives in Temecula, California, somewhere between Los Angeles and the hyper-conservative, bleach-blonde beaches of San Diego. Over the course of our near-two-hour phone call she will grill me on everything from my favorite dishes to dating deal-breakers, from the time I was held at gunpoint in Mexico to my affinity for gin martinis.
This is the first time I’ve spoken with Ally and, aside from the small thumbnail in her Gmail account, I have little concept of who she is or what she looks like. By the time we hang up, though, she’ll know more about me than many of my friends, family and co-workers do. Ally will then take what she’s learned along with a zip file full of selfies and, with the help of a team of writers and consultants, create a better, more desirable version of me.
Alexandra Saunders is a professional online dating consultant for TinderDoneForYou.com. The site promises to let users “skip the endless swiping and messaging, and instantly fast-forward to a calendar that’s jam-packed with attractive women looking for a good time with a great guy.”
TinderDoneForYou is part of a growing industry of third-party apps and services that promise to take the work out of online dating. Today, you can outsource nearly every part of your love life. From finding the perfect mate to splitting assets after a divorce, our most intimate relationships have — like much more mundane, less nuanced undertakings — become a part of the on-demand economy. This is dating as a service.
Peruse TinderDoneForYou or its precursor, Virtual Dating Assistants (ViDA), and you’ll find the same sort of player’s club self-help jargon that pervades the male-driven dating-advice industry. The sites’ founder, Scott Valdez, paints a picture of his followers as wealthy, overworked young professionals who don’t have the time or game to land “high-quality” women. With the help of his team of data scientists, “wingwomen” (aka project managers) and ghostwriters, he promises immediate returns and eventual long-term happiness with women way out of his users’ league.
In addition to profile-writing and photo selection, the team at TinderDoneForYou will do some light photo retouching, provide cut-and-paste conversation starters and responses and arrange dates around your schedule. It will do just about everything short of open the door, pull out her chair and pay the bill for a monthly fee. Packages range from $450 to $1,320, based on the number of hours the team spends swiping and messaging those “high-quality” women.
TinderDoneForYou sells itself as a skeleton key for the emotionally lazy and socially inept that can open the door to any woman’s heart in six easy steps.
The vast majority of on-demand dating services cater solely to men seeking women. Valdez says his clients skew 20 percent female with only one gay male and one lesbian client in his history running ViDA and its millennial spinoff. Which, given the tenor of the service’s marketing copy, stands to reason. TinderDoneForYou sells itself as a skeleton key for the emotionally lazy and socially inept that can open the door to any woman’s heart in six easy steps.
“You’ll be sitting across the table from your ideal woman as early as this weekend … and you won’t have to do a thing to get these kinds of results because we’ve got you covered!
“So if you’re ready to finally get Tinder working for you to fill in your calendar with a steady supply of dates on demand, and do it completely on autopilot, then you owe it to yourself to fill out the form below for your 100% Free Consultation.”
After a 90-minute screening call, clients are ranked on a scale of one to 10 measuring their willingness to commit. “One being one-night stands only, 10 being get married as soon as possible,” with most coming in at a 7½ or 8, according to Valdez. He says the majority of his clients are looking for slim, fit or athletic women — they also tend to prefer brunettes to blondes.
“Beauty in general, obviously, is important for most of our clients,” Valdez says. Female clients, meanwhile, are more likely to list career, education and income as top priorities.
“If a guy makes a grammar mistake or a spelling error in a profile, like, they immediately get weeded out,” Valdez says. “Men never care about that.”
Being a gay man who cares more for brains than bodies, I am, admittedly, not the typical TinderDoneForYou client. But Ally promised to do her best. One week after our conversation, I received a handful of custom-made personas, catering to both straight women and gay men and optimized for both OkCupid and Tinder.
TinderDoneForYou’s top-rated headshots (including one reject) and sample profiles for comparison. Swipe left for “straight” profile samples. Swipe right to expose my real profile (left) and two “gay” profile samples (center, right).
The following week, Ally sent over a collection of five headshots, one of which didn’t make the cut even after a round of retouching and high marks from a panel of 12 female judges. In all, a team of nearly 20 people worked on my profile. It’s an absurd contradiction. Apps like Grindr, Tinder and OkCupid use algorithms to take the work out of matchmaking. Meanwhile, services like TinderDoneForYou put the work back in, relying on sizable teams and large sums of money to find you a date.
The profiles they created position me as a cocky, hard-drinking sex columnist who loves his dogs, gin martinis and Italian leather, all of which is true. But nearly every new version of me just wasn’t me. TinderDoneForYou offered to work with me on my profile, but I passed. I’m perfectly happy with the results I’ve received being my authentic self.
If I’d been a paying customer, Ally and her matchmaking minions would then get to work, swiping right, sending canned responses that apparently “work like crack to get women addicted to messaging you,” and setting up dates. Valdez says the ultimate goal is to get his clients off the service and into committed relationships; a process that he estimates takes about 12 dates in total.
One week prior to meeting Ally, I was on a Skype call with Leslie Moniz, founder of Swagoo, a woman-run online dating consultancy. The San Francisco-based startup shares its name with a Beyoncé lyric and bills itself as “The Gentleman’s Ultimate Dating Guide.” Like TinderDoneForYou, Swagoo starts with a consultation followed by profile writing and photo-consulting. The similarities largely end there.
Services like Swagoo and TinderDoneForYou treat people like products, commodifying style, humor and relatability at the expense of individuality.
Swagoo.co reads like a luxury lifestyle blog and looks nearly identical to fancy flash-sale retailer Gilt. Blog-style posts suggest getting her a box of portable wine vials, growing a beard and ditching your board shorts. A guide to beachwear titled “Short Trunks Are the New Black” reads:
“Here’s the long and not-so-long of it: Gone are the days of knee-grazing board shorts. European trends continue to catch fire on this side of the pond, and here at Swagoo, we’re not complaining, and neither should you.”
The tips are free but the services come at a cost. Consultations range from $175 for one hour to $1,000 for 10 hours with the option of an in-person meeting. After a phone call that covers your likes, dislikes and dating pain-points, your Swagoo Girl — experienced but not slutty, according to Moniz — will select photos and create a bio that plays to a woman’s true desires (as determined by a market-research survey). She’ll then enlist an app like Bonfire that swipes right on any and all profiles, maximizing your potential matches; help you turn those matches into dates; and offer advice on where to go and what to wear.
“I wanted to start a service where I would FaceTime with the guy, look in their closet and if I saw nothing, I’d send a TaskRabbit to go to Nordstrom to pick up an outfit to wear on their dates,” Moniz says. “But that’s not a scalable solution.”
Again, Moniz recognized that I, a gay man with no desire to dress like a J. Crew catalog model and even less desire to rush into an LTR, was not the right fit for the company’s services. She did, however, agree to give my profile and photos the Swagoo treatment. Four days after our call, the new me had arrived. The results were far less aggressive, but still just as unrepresentative as the profiles Valdez’s team created for me.
Swagoo’s profile photo selections. More smiles, same dog. #nofilter
A wordsmith who writes about tech and current trends of the hookup culture. My two roommates are my beloved pit bulls. Looking for a girl who appreciates the timeless things, a well-made martini (easy on the vermouth) and nights in the kitchen.
I would never refer to myself as a wordsmith and I actually like vermouth in my martinis. The thing is, while all of these things (save for the part about looking for a girl) could be said about me, they’d never be said by me. Services like Swagoo and TinderDoneForYou treat people like products, commodifying style, humor and relatability at the expense of individuality. They attempt to take the best parts of you and magnify them while sweeping the worst parts of you under the rug. That’s certainly nothing new, but coming from someone else, even someone seemingly kind and friendly, it just feels disingenuous.
While both of these services are all about image, photos are the real currency on Tinder. And, yes, there are now Tinder photographers. I stopped short of having Tinder headshots taken, but I did exchange a few emails with a New York City photographer who does just that. Charlie Grosso, an advertising veteran, is also a writer, gallery director and owner of TinderPhotography.com.
“Like it or not, we live in an increasingly visual world — first impression is everything,” Grosso says. And those first impressions aren’t cheap. For $650 Grosso promises a two- to three-hour session and selection of six to eight unique portraits “suitable for online dating, social-media and professional profiles.” The photographs are taken in unique settings around New York to avoid repetition. She refers to the sessions as bespoke mini-narratives about her clients, who she says are more interested in long-term results than just “getting laid.”
But a $650 headshot and a $1,000 profile can take you only so far. What happens when all of someone else’s hard work pays off? The love-on-demand economy doesn’t end at finding a mate. Earlier this year, Nellie Bowles reported for The Guardian on a gift site called BetterBoyfriend.me, which, for $70, would send its subscribers, the implied not-so-great boyfriends, unmarked packages with gifts for their girlfriends. There are even apps that will not only remind you to tell the person you love that you care but provide canned text messages to do so.
When all is said and done, when you’ve fully optimized the supply chain of love without lifting an emotional finger, the internet will attempt to fix it for you.
Should you begin to feel hollow from a lack of genuine emotion or find that it’s just not working out, the internet has you covered there too. Late last year, Emanuel Maiberg enlisted the help of The Breakup Shop to dump his girlfriend over the phone for a $30 fee. The call was a stunt for a Motherboard article, but the site’s founders swore by its validity and viability. Its service ranges from a $10 breakup text to an $80 breakup gift bag that includes Chips Ahoy, a Netflix gift certificate and either a Blu-ray of The Notebook or a copy of Call of Duty: Ghosts.
Whether The Breakup Shop is legit or not, it underlines how impersonal, not to mention comical, all of these services can be. Taken individually, they’re either a meet-cute plot point or a sad attempt at gaming human emotion, but combined they’re a slop bucket of a rom-com meltdown not even Matthew McConaughey could overcome.
And that is where DivorceForce comes in. When all is said and done, when you’ve fully optimized the supply chain of love without lifting an emotional finger, the internet will attempt to fix it for you. The site’s founder, Gregory Frank, describes it as a sort of one-stop shop for “anyone affected by divorce.” Users can post Yelp-style reviews of family lawyers; contribute to forum discussions about alimony, custody and starting over; create and maintain a shared-custody calendar with their ex; get advice from experts; or meet other recently divorced singles for friendship or dates.
“It’s got a little Facebook, it’s got a little LinkedIn, it’s got a little Foursquare, it’s got a little Reddit. You know, it’s got your content, it’s got your activities, it’s got your social aspect, and it’s got a little bit of Tinder.” Frank says.
While the message behind DivorceForce is significantly less superficial than that of other players in the love-on-demand economy, it’s no less unsettling to hear complex human relationships boiled down to Silicon Valley-style demo-day comparisons. As emotional beings, we like to think of our relationships as sacred, heartfelt and personal. When a third-party benefits from the success or failure of those bonds, it cheapens the experience.
But is love any less valuable when an app or a team of “experts” facilitates it? Is a bond created over a fabricated profile any less real? Valdez acknowledges the gray area that services like TinderDoneForYou occupy, but, he says, “this is online dating.”
“It’s super superficial and it’s a bit of a numbers game. To be able to get in front of the right people, and to have a little extra help, I don’t see how you could possibly say this is totally wrong.”
Amazon’s Kindle for Kids bundle offers children’s books for $99
To offer kids a way to read via Kindle, Amazon is back with another $99 bundle. The Kindle for Kids offer combines the latest e-reader with a cover and a “2-year worry-free guarantee.” It’s meant to boost reading habits for children complete with tools for tracking reading goals, building vocabulary and access to 250,000 kids titles. Users can also borrow digital versions of books from their local library. Unlike the regular Kindle, this model doesn’t come equipped with a backlight so it can’t be used in the dark. When the lights are turned off for bed, reading time is over.
This isn’t the first time Amazon has offered a Kindle for Kids option, but that doesn’t make it any less attractive. Parents looking to buy their kids a digital reading device might jump at the $99 price tag for the device and its features. Of course, this is a dedicated e-reader that doesn’t offer a library of apps and games. Couple that with a long-lasting battery and parental controls and Amazon has a rather compelling package for families with young readers.
Via: TechCrunch
Source: Amazon
Tesla sues Michigan over law prohibiting direct sales
Tesla is suing the home of the auto industry. The electric car manufacturer started litigation against Michigan Governor Rick Snyder today over a law that prohibits the automaker’s direct-sale model in the state, according to a report from Reuters. This comes after two years of trying to get the legislation changed via other methods.
Last year, the company made its first in-state acquisition, a tool and die shop in Grand Rapids (roughly 150 miles west of Detroit), but apparently that wasn’t enough to curry favor with the powers that be. Michigan is among Connecticut, Texas and Utah in terms of states where Tesla can’t sell cars directly to consumers.
“Unfortunately, the local auto dealers and local manufacturers have made clear that they oppose any law that would allow Tesla to operate in Michigan,” a statement reads. “As one leading legislator told Tesla: the local auto dealers do not want you here. The local manufacturers do not want you here. So you’re not going to be here.”
The statement also says that lawmakers won’t even hold a hearing to debate the current legislation, despite Snyder wanting to make it a “top priority” during his tenure. Maybe if Musk and Co. had made a giant campaign contribution or offered to look the other way while Snyder allowed the city of Flint’s water system to be poisoned, the self-proclaimed “tough nerd” would’ve been more open to changing the law. Just an idea.
Source: Reuters
Amazon takes aim at Shutterfly with photo printing service
Photo printing is the latest addition to Amazon’s slate of services and that’s not great news for the likes of Shutterfly. Amazon Prints outputs snapshots for as little as 9 cents each and offers photo books starting at $20. What’s more, options like post cards and calendars will soon be added, too. The online retailer debuted Prime Photos in 2014, giving subscribers unlimited photo storage as part of their $99 annual fee. It also offers a standalone storage option for $60 a year. With Amazon Prints, the company has a way to make money off of the photos it’s storing for customers.
Shutterfly is a popular service for printing photos, making stationery and building photo books. Despite a a stock drop of 12 percent when Amazon announced Prints yesterday, we’ll have to wait and see if there are any long-term issues for the company. That drop was Shutterfly’s largest single-day decline in over eight years, but analysts told Bloomberg it was an “overreaction.”
Customers in the US are expected to spend $2 billion for online photo printing services this year according to market research firm IBISWorld, so it’s easy to see why Amazon would want a piece of that. Couple that potential revenue stream with the company’s existing photo storage services and Amazon should be able to grab a nice chunk of that tally.
Via: Bloomberg
Source: Amazon Prints
Sony’s Xperia XZ arrives in the US October 2nd for $700
Sony debuted its latest handsets back at IFA and now the duo will soon debut in the US. The flagship Xperia XZ is slated to arrive October 2nd at Amazon, Best Buy and other retailers. Priced at $700 unlocked, the unlocked model supports GSM networks while packing in a 5.2-inch 1080p display, Snapdragon 820, 3GB of RAM and 32GB of internal storage that can be expanded via a microSD slot. The XZ also has a USB-C port to keep up with the times and features like 4K video and enhanced image stabilization for its 23-megapixel camera. It’s also IP65/IP68 dust-tight and water resistant for added protection from the elements and any unforeseen accidents.
The mid-range Xperia X Compact will go on sale September 25th in the States, a few weeks after making its debut in the UK. A smaller 4.6-inch device, the X Compact is priced at $500 unlocked with a 720p display and the same 32GB of storage, a microSD card slot and a USB Type-C jack as the Xperia XZ. The GSM-compatible X Compact also touts that 5-axis video stabilization that Sony offers on the larger phone. All of features are driven by a Snapdragon 650 chipset alongside 3GB of RAM and an Adreno 510 GPU. And yes, the same 23-megapixel camera that’s on the XZ is here as well. If you can’t wait an extra week for the XZ, the X Compact still offers some of the same features as its bigger and pricier companion.
At Least 500 Million Yahoo Accounts Hacked in Late 2014
Yahoo today confirmed that “at least” 500 million Yahoo accounts were compromised in an attack in late 2014, leaking customer information like names, email addresses, telephone numbers, birthdates, hashed passwords, and both encrypted and unencrypted security questions and answers.
Yahoo does not believe unprotected passwords, payment card data, or bank account information was accessed, as that data is not stored in the system that was hacked. According to Yahoo, account information was stolen by a “state-sponsored actor” and the company is working with law enforcement on a full investigation.
Starting today, Yahoo will notify all affected users and is asking them to change their passwords immediately if passwords have not been changed since 2014. All compromised security questions and answers have also been invalidated. Yahoo has laid out a set of recommendations for all customers who might have had data stolen:
-Change your password and security questions and answers for any other accounts on which you used the same or similar information used for your Yahoo account.
– Review your accounts for suspicious activity.
– Be cautious of any unsolicited communications that ask for your personal information or refer you to a web page asking for personal information.
– Avoid clicking on links or downloading attachments from suspicious emails.
– Additionally, please consider using Yahoo Account Key, a simple authentication tool that eliminates the need to use a password altogether.
Yahoo first said it was investigating a data breach earlier this summer after hackers started selling account access online. The full scope of the attack was not revealed until today and could potentially affect Yahoo’s sale to Verizon.
Tag: Yahoo
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