Samsung may finally be disabling the Note 7 for good
Say goodnight, Gracie.
Apparently, the Verge received an image from a Galaxy Note 7 user on US Cellular today about the fate of the now-deceased Note 7 line. In the photo, a message saying it was from US Cellular states: AS OF DEC. 15, SAMSUNG WILL MODIFY THE SOFTWARE TO PREVENT THE GALAXY NOTE7 FROM CHARGING. THE PHONE WILL NO LONGER WORK.” The message, in all caps so you know they meant business, spells out what many have said would happen — the end of the Note 7.
Having Note 7 phones still in the wild is a liability issue for Samsung and carriers in the US.
While there is no way to determine the validity of the information provided to the Verge, it wouldn’t be surprising to see Samsung take more drastic measures to get the last remaining phones out of the hands of the knuckleheads diehards still clinging to it. New Zealand and Canada have said that they were killing functions up to and including disabling the Bluetooth and Wi-Fi radios and banning the use on cellular networks. Samsung has also sent out updates across the world to limit battery capacity. These companies are serious and want people to stop using the phone.
We all know how the saga went down. Some note 7 batteries ruptured and exploded and caused fires. The phone was recalled in September of 2016, and replacements had just started filtering out — and subsequently doing the same thing and burning more stuff — in October. Samsung finally pulled the plug and ate the loss. Most phones have been returned, but Samsung and the people who actually sold them are determined to get them all back or in a landfill somewhere in New Jersey. They know people intransigent enough to keep using a Note 7 would also be the same people who would hold others liable when things take a turn for the worse.
if you’re still holding onto a Note 7, for God’s sake just turn the damn thing in already.
Everything you need to know about the Galaxy Note 7 recall
Samsung Galaxy Note 7
- Galaxy Note 7 fires, recall and cancellation: Everything you need to know
- Survey results: Samsung users stay loyal after Note 7 recall
- Samsung Galaxy Note 7 review
- The latest Galaxy Note 7 news
- Join the Note 7 discussion in the forums!
Pokemon Go: Now you can get Starbucks and still catch ’em all
From now on, when you’re on the way to work in the morning and make a Starbucks stop to get a cup of joe, make sure to have your phone in hand, because you may have the chance to catch eggs or even battle.
Confused? Allow us to explain.
Niantic labs, the developer behind Pokemon Go, has announced Starbucks is now an official partner of the game. Starting at 11 am PST on 8 December, 7,800 company-operated Starbucks stores in the US will become PokeStops and Gyms, giving you even more places to play the game. Starbucks has even created a special-edition Pokemon Go Frappuccino drink to celebrate the partnership.
Niantic Labs/Starbucks
This news comes just a few days after Niantic Labs revealed new Pokemon would come to Pokemon Go on 12 December, thanks to a partnership with Sprint in the US. Pokemon Go has made a number of changes in recent weeks and months since its heyday in the summer of 2016.
We’ve recently seen the nearby feature launch, Ditto added, and we’ve seen changes to a whole range of game mechanics too.
- How to use the Pokemon Go Nearby feature
- Pokemon Go: How to raise your XP level, power up and evolve your Pokemon
- Pokemon Go: Best Pokemon with highest CP
- Pokemon Go review, or The Trials and Tribulations of a Pokemon Go addict
Hulu now lets you create profiles, including for kids – here’s how
Taking a page from Netflix’s playbook, Hulu is finally letting its users create multiple profiles.
Each Hulu account can maintain up to six individual profiles that will serve up tailored recommendations and remember viewing history. Every profile also has its own Watchlist, which makes it easy to keep track of all the shows and movies you’re watching on the video-streaming service, as you can manually add any show, episode, clip, movie, or trailer to save for later.
As part of these new profiles, there’s also a profile option for kids, so parents can restrict their access to inappropriate content. Here’s everything you need to know about Hulu’s Profiles feature, including how to set them up.
- Hulu now offers 4K, starting with original shows and 20 Bond films
What is Hulu?
Hulu is a video-streaming service in the US that offers premium content such as hit television shows and feature-length movies. For $7.99 a month, you get access to Hulu’s content library, but for an extra $4.00 a month, you can enjoy a commercial-free experience. However, Hulu only allows one stream per account. While you can use your subscription on many different devices, you can only stream to one device at a time.
What are Hulu profiles?
Individual profiles enable you to keep track of all of your shows and movies regardless of what other viewers in your household – who use the same Hulu account – watch. Each profile created within the same Hulu account will have its own personalised Watchlist, recommendations, and viewing history. You can also create profiles for your kids, so they can watch kid-friendly content.
How do ‘Kids profiles’ work?
Profiles for kids aren’t meant to be parental controls, Hulu said. It simply creates a place for children to browse Hulu without accidentally running into recommendations for mature content. Kids also won’t be able to access Watchlist, search, recommendations, and auto-resume functions.
How do you create Hulu profiles?
Profiles are currently only available on Hulu.com, but Hulu plans to add support for more devices in the next couple of months. So, if you create different profiles on Hulu.com and then sign in to your account on your TV or mobile device, you will only be able to view and manage your primary profile. You will not be able to see or access other profiles and their respective preferences and history.
You can create a new profile from the Profiles menu on your Account page (or by hovering over the profile name and selecting Add Profile from the drop-down menu). The first profile is generated automatically using the name and other information on your account, but you will see options to create up to six additional profiles. To edit a profile, simply visit your Account page, then select the Profiles tab, and choose the profile.
How do you switch between Hulu profiles?
From Hulu.com, click or hover over the account name to display the different profiles, and then select the profile you want.
This nostalgic toy magnifies your phone vids onto a mini retro TV
Remember that cardboard smartphone projector that was all the rage a few Christmases ago? We’ve found something similar, only it’s super nostalgic.
On Firebox right now you can buy a toy that blows up your smartphone videos on a TV-like display. That TV has a faux-wood exterior and a warped 8-inch screen and no remote control. It’s supposed to recreate the look of old school box televisions. Even the side hatch, which is where you slip your phone into the magnifier, is designed to resemble old VHS tapes.
- Want Cardboard? Here’s how to make (or buy) Google’s headset
The idea is that you can bring up your favourite Netflix episode on your phone, then slot it into the magnifier via the side hatch, and sit back and watch as your TV show is “transformed into blown-up vintage masterpieces” – warped display quality and all. But aside from reminiscing, you will be watching videos at nearly twice the size because of the 8-inch screen.
It’s the lo-fi, handsfree way to watch magnify films on your smartphone. We can imagine this coming in handy in the tub, when you want to watch a video on your phone, but need to keep it away from the water. Just put it in the Smartphone Magnifier, and you’re good to go.
Facebook now lets you create your own frame for photos and videos
For better or worse, Facebook is trying really hard to copy Snapchat. In the past few months the giant social network has added different features that, if you ask us, are seemingly inspired by the app with the ghost mascot. And its latest feature follows a similar trend. With its Camera Effects Platform, Facebook will let users make their own frame for profile pictures and videos. Now, you can’t just display whatever you want on your page, as Facebook does need to approve your creations.
The new tool isn’t targeted at individual users as much as it is businesses or people who are planning an event, such as a wedding or party. Essentially, you want others to use your frames, like what Snapchat offers with custom Geofilters. You can start making your own here, all you have to do is log in to your Facebook account and follow the steps on that page.
Via: TechCrunch
Source: Facebook
AT&T will finally refund $88 million in unauthorized charges
Thanks to some shady business dealings between AT&T and a pair of companies known for bloating customers’ cell phone bills, roughly 2.7 million current and former AT&T mobile subscribers are getting more than $88 million dollars in refunds from the Federal Trade Commission. The refunds are part of a 2014 settlement in which AT&T was accused of “mobile cramming” — the practice of tacking unnecessary third-party fees onto your bill without consent — along with two known cramming companies Tatto and Acquinity.
According to the FTC’s statement, AT&T was tacking on unauthorized $9.99 monthly charges for things like horoscopes, ringtones, “love tips,” and other “fun facts” from third-party companies and then keeping 35 percent of the charges. After the FTC crackdown, AT&T changed its billing practices and had to pay into the FTC fund that is now issuing refunds amounting to, “the most money ever returned to consumers in a mobile cramming case.”
As the FTC’s new consumer blog notes, customers should be getting back about $31 each on average. Around 2.5 million customers will see their refunds show up on their AT&T mobile bill in the next 75 days and another 300,000 former customers will get their refund via a check in the mail.
Source: Federal Trade Commision, FTC Consumer Blog
German Intel chief: Russia is trying to ‘destabilize’ the country
America’s recent elections weren’t the only event that Russia has been accused of meddling in. On Thursday, President Dr Hans-Georg Maaßen of the Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz (BfV), Germany’s internal intelligence service, issued a brutally frank press release laying out the BfV’s accusations against Russia.
This is big: unprecedented, stark warning by Germany’s BfV against aggressive Russian influence ops, false flags, APT28, goals—full text: pic.twitter.com/2H8RCKYZbW
— Thomas Rid (@RidT) December 8, 2016
In recent months, Germany has seen an “aggressive and increased cyber spying and cyber operations that could potentially endanger German government officials, members of parliament and employees of democratic parties,” Maaßen said in his statement. This has been accompanied by an “enormous use of financial resources” to spread “disinformation” and sow discord both within the country and the wider EU
The BfV also reports that it has observed a significant jump in the activities of ATP 28, a Russian hacker group better known as Strontrium (“Fancy Bear”), which has been linked to the intrusion into the American Democratic National Convention earlier this year. What’s more, the intelligence agency notes that so-called “false flag” operations conducted by this group have consistently pinned the blame on domestic activist organizations.
Taken together, the BfV has all but yelled “J’accuse!” (but, you know, in German) at Russia’s intelligence apparatus. The BfV claims that the cyber-campaign aims to rile up extremist groups and weaken voter trust in the German government, just like it did in America. All, reportedly, performed in an effort to reduce the degree of economic sanctions currently being levied against Russia and “to influence the federal election next year,” Maaßen wrote.
Source: Al Jazeera, Reuters
Secret’s anonymous sharing app is now a publishing platform
Remember Secret? The standard bearer for the anonymous social app movement shuttered in 2015 before co-creator David Byttow teased a possible Version 2 in the wake of Donald Trump’s election. While the old app-based Secret won’t be coming back, Byttow unveiled its successor today in the form of anonymous publishing platform IO.
As TechCrunch notes, IO shares more with blogging platforms like Medium than it does with social apps like Twitter or Instagram. And, in Byttow’s words, IO is meant to address, “the downsides of current social media products.” Specifically, Byttow and his other startup Bold hope to achieve “authentic publishing” by allowing people to post either anonymously, with a pseudonym or with their real names.
IO itself is sort of a stripped-down blogging platform or a minimalist writing app. There’s nothing on the page but a white text box with optional space for a byline and a title. There are also options to pipe in some ambient background noise or to turn on a Hemingway App-style editing assistant to help clean up your prose. Behind the scenes, IO also supports markdown, images and exporting, but Byttow wrote on Product Hunt that the editor is still very much a work in progress with more improvements on the way. For now, once you hit that Publish button, you’ll get a short, sharable URL to show off your work — anonymously or otherwise.
Via: TechCrunch
Source: Bold.io
AT&T Customers to Receive More Than $88M in Refunds Following Mobile Cramming Settlement
The United States Federal Trade Commission today announced that it is giving more than $88 million in refunds to 2.7 million AT&T customers who had unauthorized third-party charges added to their service bills, something better known as “mobile cramming.”
The refunds come from a $105 million settlement AT&T paid the FTC back in October of 2014, after the carrier was accused of allowing third-party companies to bill customers for things like ringtone subscriptions without their consent. Money was also collected from Tatto and Acquinity, two companies involved in the cramming scheme.
Nearly 2.5 million AT&T customers can expect to receive a credit on their bill within the next 75 days, and over 300,000 former customers will be given refund checks. The FTC says the average refund amount customers will receive is $31, and checks are going out starting today.
“AT&T received a high volume of complaints related to mobile cramming prior to the FTC and other federal and state agencies stepping in on consumers’ behalf,” said FTC Chairwoman Edith Ramirez. “I am pleased that consumers are now being refunded their money and that AT&T has changed its mobile billing practices.”
According to the FTC, the AT&T refunds being provided to customers represent the most money that’s ever been returned to consumers in a mobile cramming case.
Up until late 2014, AT&T and several third-party companies were charging customers up to $9.99 per month for subscriptions that provided sham services like ringtones, horoscopes, love tips, and more, with AT&T keeping 35 percent of the money that was taken from its subscribers.
Other mobile carriers, such as T-Mobile, had similar cramming practices. Back in December of 2014, T-Mobile agreed to pay out $90 million in fines.
Recently, AT&T also agreed to pay out an additional $7.75 million for a separate issue that allowed scammers to charge AT&T customers $9 per month for a fake directory service.
Tags: FTC, AT&T
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