Podcast patent troll’s fight might finally be over

We’ve been covering the frankly absurd claim that Personal Audio LLC owns podcasting for awhile now, but it looks like the patent trolls have finally been stopped for good (for real this time). Back in August, a three-judge panel of US Court of Appeals rendered the organization’s patent invalid, and it looked like that was the end of this bizarre legal ride. But Personal Audio LLC wasn’t quite finished. The organization’s lawyers argued that this three-judge review process violated their client’s constitutional right to a jury trial. This week, the appeals court rejected this argument without comment.

These lawsuits have been going on for years, but back in 2015, the core of Personal Audio LLC’s claim — that the organization invented podcasting and that podcasts should have to pay it licensing fees — was invalidated after the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) stepped in. The EFF showed that podcast-style shows existed well before Personal Audio LLC’s patent.

That’s not to say this patent trolling is truly dead; Personal Audio LLC could still appeal to the Supreme Court. But it’s incredibly unlikely that the highest court in the US will agree to hear the case. So, at least for now, it’s likely we won’t be hearing much more about this patent in the future.

Via: Ars Technica

Source: EFF (1), EFF (2)

Equifax committee says executive stock sales weren’t insider trading

The eyes of the Securities and Exchange Commission and the US Department of Justice have been focused on some questionable stock sales initiated by three Equifax executives a month before the data breach that exposed 143 million US consumers’ personal information was revealed to the public. Those agencies have been investigating the sales, which amounted to nearly $1.8 million, and are working to determine whether they were the result of insider trading. However, CNBC reports today that an Equifax committee has reviewed the sales and found no signs of misconduct.

The Equifax employees in question are CFO John Gamble, President of US Information Solutions Joseph Loughran and President of Workforce Solutions Rodolfo Ploder. The three dumped $946,374, $584,099 and $250,458 worth of stock, respectively, a few days after the company learned of the breach and around a month before Equifax announced it to the public. The three have maintained that they didn’t know about the data breach when they sold the stock. However, shortly after the major breach, which took place between May and July of this year, was disclosed, reports surfaced that the company had also fallen victim to an earlier breach, which it learned about in March. That information put the spotlight on Gamble again, as he also ditched a large chunk of stock worth a whopping $1.91 million in May.

The Equifax committee, which was formed by the company’s board, looked at the August stock sales from Gamble, Loughran and Ploder as well as those of a senior staffer in investor relations, Douglas Brandberg. The committee released a six-page report today detailing its findings and it concluded that none of the executives knew about the breach prior to initiating their stock sales, that the sales were properly approved as per Equifax policy and that they did not constitute insider trading. These findings were based on dozens of interviews and information pulled from 55,000 texts, phone logs and other documents, according to Equifax.

However, whether the DOJ and SEC will come to the same conclusion will remain to be seen.

Via: CNBC

Source: Equifax

Facebook Expanding New GIF-Based Polling Feature to More Users on iOS and Web

Facebook is today beginning a wide rollout for a new status update polling feature on iOS, Android, and the web (via The Next Web). There is only room for two response options on Facebook (Twitter has four available), but Facebook’s new feature also lets you add in GIFs or pictures as options, which you can caption.

Facebook previously supported polls in brand pages, so the new rollout is the first time a wide group of personal users can poll their friends and family on Facebook. Some brand pages — including movies — had the chance to test the GIF-based polls earlier this year.

Twitter first introduced polls to its users back in 2015, and Facebook just added polls to Instagram Stories one month ago. It appears that Facebook’s new version is rolling out on the web first, and should be appearing on iOS and Android devices soon.

Tag: Facebook
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iPhone X Reportedly Unavailable to Walk-In Customers at Trio of Apple Stores in Seattle Area Today

While hundreds of customers are lined up at Apple’s retail stores across the United States today for a chance to get their hands on an iPhone X, that doesn’t appear to be the case in parts of the Seattle, Washington area.

MacRumors has received tips from multiple readers who claim Apple’s stores at the University Village, Bellevue Square, and Alderwood shopping centers, since opening today, have turned away walk-in customers wishing to purchase an iPhone X.

At least four Twitter users have described a similar experience, with store employees reportedly telling customers that iPhone X inventory is limited to those who pre-ordered the device on Apple’s online store and are picking it up.

Last week, Apple CEO Tim Cook said iPhone X would be available at Apple retail stores today starting at 8:00 a.m. local time, but it didn’t clarify if all locations would be receiving stock in time for launch day. The answer would appear to be no.

Even where the iPhone X is available, supplies are likely extremely limited and going fast on a first come, first served basis. At some locations, customers have been lined up since early this week for a chance to purchase the device.

Apple forecasted its revenue in the current quarter will be between $84 billion and $87 billion. Even the low end of that range would smash Apple’s all-time record for revenue in any quarter, suggesting that iPhone X sales will be very strong.

Apple CEO Tim Cook was at Apple’s Palo Alto store in California on Friday morning to celebrate the iPhone X launch, as he usually does for every iPhone launch, according to a video shared by CNBC moments ago.

JUST IN: Apple CEO Tim Cook arrives at the company’s Palo Alto, CA store for the release of the iPhone X. pic.twitter.com/kpBoOHws2W

— CNBC Now (@CNBCnow) November 3, 2017

Apple did not immediately respond to our request for comment about iPhone X availability in the Seattle area. We’ll update this article if we hear back.

Related Roundup: iPhone XBuyer’s Guide: iPhone X (Buy Now)
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Nintendo’s Reggie Fils-Aime on the first year of Switch and beyond

The last time we talked with Reggie Fils-Aime, Nintendo of America’s president and chief operating officer, the company was stepping into uncharted territory with Super Mario Run and the Switch’s revolutionary spin on portable gaming. Now, almost a year later, Nintendo’s latest console has been a huge success. Super Mario Run, unfortunately, wasn’t as profitable as the company would like (despite 200 million downloads).

But Nintendo’s other mobile game, Fire Emblem Heroes, has been wildly successful, and it’s planning to bring the popular Animal Crossing series to iPhones this month. After the failure of the Wii U, that’s a surprisingly speedy reversal of fortunes. This time, rather than hoping to be successful, Fils-Aime was able to revel in a strong year.

While the Switch’s game library took months to mature, it’s seen more third-party support than the Wii U ever did. In particular, smaller independent titles, like Stardew Valley and Thumper. “We worked with the big developers to give them technical support,” Fils-Aime said. “For the independent-developer community, we had support from Unity and Unreal. That was critical in terms of enabling them to take their content and bring it on to our system.”

“I think also what these developers saw was that Nintendo can help them from a discovery standpoint a variety of different ways,” he added. “It’s not only through our e-shop, it’s through the news feature on the Nintendo Switch. […] We’re providing, if you will, a total opportunity, a large and growing install base, easy development tools, and ability to get the word out, and that’s working.”

It also helps that the Switch is an easy sell for developers and consumers alike. It’s powerful enough to use on your TV but portable enough to carry with you. Something Nintendo was never able to accomplish with the Wii U — it brought Nintendo into the HD era, but its huge gamepad was a pain. You could play games on it away from your TV, but you had to be near the console. And, needless to say, developers didn’t warm to its odd two-screen format. Ultimately, the Wii U was simply too weird for, well, everyone.

The Switch, on the other hand, brings console-like gaming anywhere; the 3DS is more pocketable with a strong library of titles; mobile games give you bite-size playtime at a whim. Nintendo’s focus on portability is clearer than ever. While some questioned the future of the 3DS after the release of the Switch, Fils-Aime believes each console serves its own purpose.

Nintendo

“For Nintendo Switch, it really is about a big-game experience,” he said. “Odyssey is a big game, there’s a lot to do, as you’ve experienced. Breath of the Wild is a big game. … The 3DS is my machine. As I talk with consumers, that’s what they relayed back to me, ‘This is my machine. I play my games. It’s my little getaway.’ And then mobile, mobile is the true snack of entertainment. When you’ve got a couple minutes to spare, it’s there in your pocket.”

That utopian vision of gaming is very different to what Nintendo was saying as recently as 2014 when it denied reports it was building mobile games for smartphones. Partially, that’s due to the rise of Tatsumi Kimishima as Nintendo’s president in 2015. Now, Fils-Aime sees mobile titles like Super Mario Run as a way to promote Nintendo’s franchises to a larger audience. “Our Pokemon business for Nintendo 3DS had a huge surge last year [after the release of Pokemon Go], culminating with the launch of Pokemon Sun, Pokemon Moon,” he said. “I do think [Mario Run] started to drive some excitement for the next Super Mario experience.”

Even though Nintendo is finding some success in mobile, it stubbornly refused to embrace the platform for years. So what about VR? Fils-Aime doesn’t see the company dabbling in that yet, but he also noted that Nintendo was on the bleeding edge of many gaming advancements. “Our [Nintendo 64] controller was the first to include a joystick,” he said. “The DS was the first mass-market consumer-electronics device with a touchscreen. We constantly push the edge on technology. But for us, technology needs to be fun. … We want the technology in our devices to enable a social experience.”

“Accelerometers were not in the lexicon until it was in a Wii remote and you’re playing Wii Sports,” he added. “So fun, social, mass market are the elements for us. We brought augmented reality to the marketplace with Nintendo 3DS. We made it fun, we made it social. With VR, again, we just continue to put it up against those standards. For us, it’s not quite there yet.”

That’s not stopping Nintendo’s partners from experimenting with VR, though. Just take a look at Bandai Namco’s Mario Kart arcade experience in Japan. Fils-Aime says the company is learning from those games, but he points out that it’s tied to a very specific amusement center experience. Figuring out how to translate VR to your living room in typical Nintendo fashion will be far tougher.

In general, Nintendo is opening up to letting partners have more freedom with its characters. That was clearer than ever with Ubisoft’s Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle, a (surprisingly great) X-Com-like strategy game. Fils-Aime says the Ubisoft team “created something magical,” but he also points out that Shigeru Miyamoto kept an eye on it during development.

While he wouldn’t divulge any details about future games, he says Nintendo’s open to opportunities where its executives and trusted partners are involved, and there’s a “commitment to quality.”

At this point, anything seems possible for Nintendo. The company has systematically addressed its major weaknesses and come back in full force with the Switch and mobile. Oh, and it’s delivered two of the best games ever made this year alone: Breath of the Wild and Mario Odyssey.

Fils-Aime summed up the company’s new vision succinctly: “In the end, if we have a consumer who plays Super Mario Odyssey on their big screen, heads out and plays Super Mario Run on their mobile device, and before they turn in for the night, they’re playing a little Mario Party, we’re perfectly happy.”

Netflix film ‘Tau’ will feature an evil smart house

Netflix’s sci-fi offering just got better, following the announcement that it’s acquired the global rights (excluding China) to Tau, the directorial debut of Marvel animatics supervisor Federico D’Alessandro. Having worked on the likes of Doctor Strange, Ant-Man and Avengers: Age of Ultron, D’Alessandro’s first foray into directing tells the story of a former street grifter named Julia (played by Maika Monroe) who is kidnapped by sadistic Alex (Ed Skrein) and held captive by an advanced artificial intelligence named Tau. In a classic tale of man versus machine, Julia needs to outsmart Tau in order to escape the same grizzly end that befell her predecessors. Gary Oldman makes an appearance, too.

Source: Variety

Facebook borrows from Twitter this time with Polls feature

Polls check a lot of social media manager boxes like “engagement,” “feedback” and “traffic lift.” With all those buzzwords, it’s truly a wonder that Facebook hadn’t yet pilfered, I mean borrowed, the idea from poll-crazy rival Twitter. Expect to see them everywhere in your feeds from now on, however, as Facebook has launched Polls globally on iOS, Android and the web. Starting today, you’ll be add surveys on any silly topic you like and add GIFs and photos to make them pop.

To create one, you open Facebook and click on the “what’s on your mind” text box, and a new “Polls” icon option will appear. Click on that, and then enter your question into the status box labeled “ask a question.” Then, you can can fill in the question with no character limit, and add two, and only two, responses, each limited to 25 characters. You can then add your own images or GIFs to add some life to your survey.

Facebook has used polls in Instagram Stories and Messenger over the last year, and recently acquired “positive polling” app “tbh.” However, “for the past several years there’s been no one way for both people and Pages to easily poll friends and fans,” it notes.

It’s not clear why Facebook apparently only gives you two polling response options, unlike Twitter which has a maximum of four. Judging by the images above, Facebook wants to the poll to be more image-oriented than Twitter’s and the layout on mobile lends itself better to two responses.

While it seems Facebook is coming late to this party, it’s hard to second-guess their strategy given their blockbuster earnings report this week. It promised to sacrifice profits in the future in favor of better security, but speaking of polls, two around Facebook are pretty interesting. In September, 54 percent of respondents believed Russian posts on social media influenced the 2016 election, and in another from two days ago, 79 percent of Trump’s voters said they don’t care.

Major car companies partner for Europe-wide EV charging network

A group of the biggest names in the car industry have announced a joint partnership to develop a Europe-wide high-power charging (HPC) network for electric vehicles. The venture, named IONITY, draws on expertise from BMW, Daimler, Ford, Volkswagen, Audi and Porsche, and aims to launch 400 HPC stations by 2020.

The first 20 stations will open this year, located in Germany, Norway and Austria at intervals of 120 kilometers, with around 100 more expected further afield in 2018. Each HPC point will support a variety of electric cars, and let multiple customers charge up at the same time. And at 350kW capacity per point, charging times will be significantly reduced, juicing up a Porsche Mission E (on the market in 2019) to 80 percent in just 15 minutes — that’s a range of 400 kilometers in the same time it takes to grab a coffee.

One of the biggest challenges faced by electric vehicle manufacturers is consumer concerns about range and the availability of charging facilities, so IONITY represents a big step in making electric vehicle ownership more appealing. As IONITY’s chief executive officer Michael Hajesch says, the network “will deliver our common goal of providing customers with fast charging and digital payment capability, to facilitate long-distance travel. IONITY plays an essential role in establishing a market for electric vehicles.”

Source: Porsche

Apple CEO Tim Cook Says Financing iPhone X Can Work Out to Cost of Just a Few Nice Coffees Per Week

While the iPhone X starts at $999 in the United States, with an even more expensive 256GB model available for $1,149, Apple CEO Tim Cook believes the price can ultimately work out to less than one cup of coffee per day.

On a conference call after Apple reported its fourth quarter earnings results on Thursday, Cook started by saying the iPhone X can be financed for as little as $33 per month at select carriers in the United States.

AT&T, for example, offers the base model iPhone X for 30 monthly payments of $33.34, which works out to exactly $1,000 over that period.

“I think it’s important to remember that a large number of people pay for the phone by month,” said Cook. “I think you would find you could buy an iPhone X for $33/month. So, if you think about that, that’s a few coffees a week — it’s less than a coffee a day at one of these nice coffee places.”

Cook added that many customers are now trading in their current iPhone towards their next iPhone, reducing their total amount owing by $300 to $350 in the process. He said the iPhone tends to have the highest resale value in the industry.

“In terms of the way we price, we price to the value that we’re providing,” said Cook. “We’re not trying to charge the highest price we could get or anything like that. We’re just trying to price it for what we’re delivering. iPhone X has a lot of great new technologies in there that are leading the industry.”

“It is a fabulous product,” he added, still referring to the iPhone X. “We can’t wait for people to start getting it in their hands.”

Related Roundup: iPhone XTags: Tim Cook, StarbucksBuyer’s Guide: iPhone X (Buy Now)
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Protect your privacy with the six best VPN for the iPhone or iPad

In light of the House of Representatives’ decision to allow broadband internet providers to sell your browsing data without your consent, web searches for Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) spiked virtually overnight. There are many reasons to consider a VPN service for your iPhone or iPad — if you use public Wi-Fi, for example, you’re an easy target for cybercriminals, so you need to protect yourself. VPNs can also help you gain access to region-specific streaming catalogs — like those belonging to Netflix, for instance — even if you’re technically located outside the coverage area; and they can also help stop your internet service provider (ISP) from throttling your connection without your consent.

A VPN most importantly enables you to protect your data from snoopers and mask your true location. It hides your online forays in a secure tunnel that outsiders can’t penetrate, but you must choose wisely since you’re trusting your VPN provider with all your online activities. If the service is free, you have to wonder how it’s staying afloat. Do some research to make sure the company behind the VPN isn’t selling your data or bandwidth to third parties. If you can’t, check out the best VPN for the iPhone.

If you’re looking for additional ways to keep your data private, check out our encryption explainer to find out what it is and why it works.

Keep in mind that you may need to install the OpenVPN Connect client and follow a guide in order to take advantage of the OpenVPN protocol on iOS. All the apps will work with IPSec or another protocol by default. You’ll find guides on most of the service provider’s websites to do this.

VPN by NordVPN

NordVPN is one of the most popular VPNs for Windows and MacOS, and, conveniently, it’s also available for iOS. NordVPN uses the IKEv2 security protocol, which is 30-percent faster than the last generation. The app allows you to browse servers using a map, or a curated list of countries. There are currently more than 1,400 available servers spread across 61 countries.

You can connect up to six devices with a single account, and bypass blocked websites and regional restrictions with zero lag. NordVPN does not store any user information either, so your privacy is protected at all times. The app also supports a host of security protocols — including OpenVPN, IKEV2, and L2TP — and your real IP address will show as the NordVPN server IP address, thus securing your browsing experience on the go. Subscriptions vary from $12 a month to $69 annually.

NordVPN even offers a unique, double encryption system that applies military-grade AES-256-CBC encryption to inbound and outbound data twice. A hit with reviewers and users alike, NordVPN should make anyone’s shortlist when looking for a robust VPN solution.

Download now from:

iTunes

CyberGhost VPN

CyberGhost is a solid VPN service that offers several options to secure your internet access. First, it protects your Wi-Fi, automatically securing your Wi-Fi connections. The app encrypts all your emails, as well as Messenger, Skype, Viber, and any other messaging app you care to use. Your passwords, payments, and banking are all secured. Not only will it work on Wi-Fi but it will also secure your connections while you’re on 4G or LTE.

You can select from more than 1,000 servers in more than 30 countries. If you’re abroad, you’ll be glad to know that it also gives you secure access to streaming services. The service supports PPTP, L2TP/IPSec, and OpenVPN protocols and offers up to 256-bit encryption. CyberGhost has a decent privacy policy and doesn’t log your activity or store personal data.

CyberGhost VPN has a premium subscription plan that costs $10 per month or $30 per year. It is also compatible with Windows, MacOS, and Android.

Download now from:

iTunes

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