No New Studio Wireless Headphones Coming From Beats in 2016
Apple recently announced several updates to its Beats line of headphones, debuting new wireless Beats Solo3, PowerBeats3, and BeatsX products, all of which take advantage of the company’s new W1 wireless chip for battery life improvements.
Missing from the lineup was a new version of the high-end over-ear Studio Wireless headphones, and according to CNET, no updated Studio Wireless products are planned for the near future due to an inability to improve battery life.
The reason? Beats can’t yet achieve the battery improvements needed to distinguish a Studio Wireless sequel from the current model. That’s a big contrast to the major battery life gains in Beats’ aforementioned updated wireless headphones, which come courtesy of Apple’s new custom low-energy Bluetooth chip, the W1. The Solo3 Wireless, for example, wrings out three times the lifespan from the exact same battery found in the Solo2. But the W1 can’t offer any energy savings on the active noise-canceling feature on the Studio Wireless.
The existing Studio Wireless headphones, priced at $380, offer an Adaptive Noise Canceling feature that consumes battery life. The headphones feature a rechargeable battery that lasts up to 12 hours when used over Bluetooth and 20 hours when plugged into an iOS device.
Apple’s new Beats Solo3 headphones are available for $299 from Apple.com. The PowerBeats3 and the BeatsX, priced at $199 and $149, respectively, will debut this fall. Apple is also planning to introduce Apple-branded wire-free “AirPods,” which will be priced at $159 and will be available in October.
Tag: Beats by Dre
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White House hopes to fight climate change with data sharing
Despite some scary evidence that climate change is affecting weather patterns and even shifting how the Earth moves, 43 percent of Americans wouldn’t spend a buck a month to fight it. With Congressional deadlock standing in the way of a national strategy to combat it, the White House has launched its own endeavor to find solutions. In typical Obama fashion, it involves making government data public. The Partnership for Resilience and Preparedness (PREP) will give organizations access to troves of environmental information so they can make their own plans to counter climate change.
PREP is a coalition between federal agencies, NGOs, companies and civil organizations to create an accessible open-source platform to collaborate and share data. It came out of the Climate Data Initiative (CDI), a public-private project to determine the best use of the government’s collected climate information. Participants decided that lowering barriers and easing global access to the CDI’s data drove would do the most good, hence PREP’s international focus.
To bolster that, the Obama Administration released a joint declaration today signed by 13 other countries and a few tech heavyweights, all urging greater global collaboration to collect and share information. The call to action pledges mobilizing all sectors to build dedicated data centers, support sharing of relevant and historical weather records, and to support user-friendly and open-source platforms. Essentially, pushing countries worldwide to develop their own PREP equivalent, with notes to embrace technical and climate data standards to ensure everyone’s program plays well with others.
Perhaps most sobering is the declaration’s language, abandoning the call to simply fight climate change in favor of the more defensive urge to gather data and establish “climate resiliency.” Sharing information, it states, will be key to global damage control.
Source: The White House press room
The Wirecutter’s best deals: Save $100 on Sennheiser HD 600 headphones
This post was done in partnership with The Wirecutter, a buyer’s guide to the best technology. Read their continuously updated list of deals atTheWirecutter.com.
You may have already seen Engadget posting reviews from our friends at The Wirecutter. Now, from time to time, we’ll also be publishing their recommended deals on some of their top picks. Read on, and strike while the iron is hot—some of these sales could expire mighty soon.
Ring Video Doorbell
Street price: $200; MSRP: $200; Deal price: $170
While this isn’t the lowest price we’ve seen on this video doorbell, it is a good $30 drop from the street price and the first decent sale in months. This deal is currently only available for the Venetian Bronze model.
The Ring Video Doorbell is our runner-up, smarthub compatible pick in our guide for the best smart doorbell cameras. Stacey Higginbotham wrote, “If our top pick is out of stock, or if it doesn’t fit the front of your house, our runner-up doorbell camera is the Ring Video Doorbell, which is better known because it’s been available longer than the SkyBell HD. Its video and sound quality aren’t as good, but it has the basic features that anyone buying a connected doorbell could want, including motion detection, the ability to connect to the doorbell for a live view of what’s happening at the door, and night-vision capability. It does require you to pay a small monthly service fee to see the events you may have missed, though.”
Refurbished GoPro Hero 4 Black Action Camera
Street price: $450 (new); MSRP: $500 (new); Deal price: $330
The first time this year we’ve seen a great deal on this camera, which makes sense, since a new GoPro was just announced. You’ll want to look over the specs of the new model to consider whether that would fit your needs better. We did see a $350 sale on new models of this last Black Friday, but nothing worthwhile since. This refurbished model comes with a full year of warranty. Make sure you’re registered for Ebay Bucks, so you get an additional 2% back.
The GoPro Hero 4 Black is our 4K video pick in our best action camera guide. Brent Rose said, “The big selling points on the Black are 4K footage (3840×2160) at up to 30 fps; 1080p video at 120 fps for super smooth slow-motion; and a whole array of modes in between.”
Sennheiser HD 600 Headphones
Street price: $400; MSRP: $400; Deal price: $294
The best price we’ve seen on these headphones in over a year. While there were times they dipped lower, towards the $250 range, that was about 18 months ago. The past couple of weeks have seen these dip down to $320, with smaller drops since then, bringing them down to this current $294 deal.
The Sennheiser HD 600 are our runner-up pick in our guide for the best open back headphones under $500. Brent Butterworth wrote, “The Sennheiser HD 600 headphones almost couldn’t be more different from the HE400S. They use dynamic drivers—essentially miniature speakers—instead of the HE400S’s planar magnetic drivers. The HE400S model was brand new when we did this test, while the HD 600 has been around (although with a few changes) since the late 1990s. While the HD 600 has a mellower sound than the HE400S, we picked it for the same reason we liked the HE400S: Its sound has no annoying idiosyncrasies, and most of our panelists liked it and none hated it (not the sound, anyway). Overall, the HD 600 headphones are completely enjoyable to listen to, with a more relaxed sound than the HE400S model, that might appeal more to fans of jazz, folk, and classical.”
Victorinox Flexible Boning Knife
Street price: $33; MSRP: $40; Deal price: $23
While we used to regularly see this for $23 during 2015, this knife shot up to $33 at the start of the year and it hasn’t dropped since. This drop gives you plenty of time to get ready for any holiday carving.
The Victorinox Flexible Boning Knife is our boning knife pick in our Thanksgiving guide. The SH staff wrote, “The Cook’s Illustrated pick, as well as the top-selling and top-rated Amazon pick, is the Victorinox 6-Inch Flexible Boning Knife with Fibrox Handle. If you don’t want to get a dedicated knife, the tip of your chef’s knife can handle this small task, albeit with less finesse.”
Deals change all the time, and some of these may have expired. To see an updated list of current deals, please go to The Wirecutter.com.
Best Android Phones 5.2-inches And Under
If you’re looking at this page, it’s because the right smartphone for you is the one that fits perfectly in your hand.
Best overall
Samsung Galaxy S7
See at AT&T
See at Sprint
See at T-Mobile
See at Verizon
See at Amazon
Unless you’ve been living under a rock this past year, you know that the Galaxy S7 is the biggest hit of the year. The flagship smartphone features a stunning metal-and-glass unibody design that’s both water resistant and comfortable to wield. On the inside, it’s fueled by top-end internals, including a Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 processor and 4GB of RAM. It also offers solid battery life and an impressive rear-facing camera that you can confidently utilize as your primary shooter. Best of all, the Galaxy S7’s screen is a 5.1-inch Quad HD Super AMOLED display, so even though it’s a smaller screen, you’ll still get stunning, TV-like quality from the dullest of YouTube videos.
Perhaps the only drawback of the Galaxy S7 is that it doesn’t run the latest version of Android just yet. Nougat has yet to be optimized for Samsung’s flagship devices, but it’s coming.
Bottom line: If you’re looking to adopt one of the best compact smartphones available, get the Galaxy S7.
One More thing: This highly-rated device is available at all four major carriers in the U.S., but if you’d rather live dangerously and contract-free, Samsung offers an unlocked model that also works overseas.
Why the Galaxy S7 is the best
A powerful, compact, water resistant little package.
Samsung has spent generations attempting to perfect its Galaxy flagship. There’s still some work to be done, but the Galaxy S7 is considered the best incarnation of Samsung’s flagship smartphone yet. Just look at the features: Powerful innards that support the Vulkan API and virtual reality; a water-resistant shell for the accident prone; a fingerprint sensor for added security, an expansion slot for more media storage;, and a high-quality camera that’s good enough to leave your DSLR at home. The Galaxy S7 does everything you need a smartphone to do.
Unfortunately, Samsung’s version of Android also comes with a few quirks, as well as extra apps you might find redundant alongside Google’s own offerings. And the Galaxy S7 often comes bundled with hoards of bloatware, depending on your carrier, and you’re not always guaranteed to be running the latest version of Android. But if this is your big purchase for the year, you can be confident in the fact that you made the right decision in terms of hardware and software offerings, especially since the Galaxy S7 offers one of the best smartphone cameras on the market.
Best “Not Samsung” phone
HTC 10
See at Sprint
See at Verizon
See at Amazon
HTC’s had a rough couple of years with its flagship line, but the HTC 10 is a step in the right direction. This aluminum, unibody device is as fashion forward as it is comfortable to hold. Its 5.2-inch Quad HD display is the right size for most hands, and it’s equipped with a 12-megapixel rear-facing Ultrapixel 2 camera, as well as a 5-megapixel front-facing camera with OIS, so your selfies will be in focus, too.
The HTC 10 also offers BoomSound Hi-Fi, which the company worked on in conjunction with Dolby, and there’s even an amp built in to the headphone jack. The HTC 10’s Android interface isn’t bad either; HTC’s Sense UI is pretty vanilla compared to years past, and you can customize the interface to your liking with themes.
Bottom-line: The HTC 10 is a viable flagship alternative for anyone who is looking for something just as capable as a Samsung device but without the chintzy software.
One more thing: Although the 10 does not have all the bells and whistles as Samsung’s devices—like water resistance and wireless charging— HTC does offer Uh Oh Protection, which covers broken screens, water damage, and even switching carriers.
Best affordable phone
Nexus 5X
See at Google
If you’re looking for a device that’s easy to cradle, but you don’t want to break the bank, consider one of Google’s Nexus devices. The Nexus 5X is a pocketable, 5.2-inch device with a 1080p LCD display, a solid 12-megapixel rear-facing camera, and a 2700mAh battery. It runs on a Snapdragon 808 processor with 2GB of RAM and its rear-facing fingerprint scanner is faster to use than most smartphones that have it embedded on the front. And though the Nexus 5X doesn’t sport the most forward-thinking chassis design, it does come in a seriously attractive mint blue color.
Bottom-line: The Nexus 5X is the best choice if you want a smaller Android phone that will receive consistent software updates for at least another year.
One more thing: You can purchase Nexus Protect for an extra $69 to help cover any device malfunctions and accidental damage for two years.
Best under 4.7-inches
Xperia X Compact
See at Amazon
Bet you didn’t think we’d offer up a Sony smartphone as a choice, but the Xperia X Compact is worth the consideration—especially if you’re looking for something that’s under five inches. Inside, the Xperia X Compact runs on mid-range Snapdragon 650, 3GB of RAM, and a 2,700mAh battery. It’s equipped with a 720p IPS display, though that’s all you really need from a 4.6-inch screen. It also supports Quick Charge 3.0, so that you can quickly charge it up during your layover, and it offers a solid 23-megapixel rear-facing camera with laser autofocus.
Bottom-line: The Xperia X Compact is great for anyone who’s been grumbling that smartphones are just too big in this day and age.
One more thing: The Xperia X Compact will officially launch in the U.S. on September 25.
Conclusion
Folks, if you’re looking for a compact smartphone that’s got as much power and capability as the laptop on your desk, the Galaxy S7 is the way to go. It has all of the latest features you want wrapped up in a water resistant shell that’s somewhat impervious to life’s little accidents. And it’s a mere 5.1-inches, which makes it comfortable enough for a variety of hand sizes. But if you’re not entirely keen on going the Samsung route because of its not-stock Android software, we’ve also offered up a few other choices for your consideration. We won’t let you traverse this journey alone.
Best overall
Samsung Galaxy S7
See at AT&T
See at Sprint
See at T-Mobile
See at Verizon
See at Amazon
Unless you’ve been living under a rock this past year, you know that the Galaxy S7 is the biggest hit of the year. The flagship smartphone features a stunning metal-and-glass unibody design that’s both water resistant and comfortable to wield. On the inside, it’s fueled by top-end internals, including a Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 processor and 4GB of RAM. It also offers solid battery life and an impressive rear-facing camera that you can confidently utilize as your primary shooter. Best of all, the Galaxy S7’s screen is a 5.1-inch Quad HD Super AMOLED display, so even though it’s a smaller screen, you’ll still get stunning, TV-like quality from the dullest of YouTube videos.
Perhaps the only drawback of the Galaxy S7 is that it doesn’t run the latest version of Android just yet. Nougat has yet to be optimized for Samsung’s flagship devices, but it’s coming.
Bottom line: If you’re looking to adopt one of the best compact smartphones available, get the Galaxy S7.
One More thing: This highly-rated device is available at all four major carriers in the U.S., but if you’d rather live dangerously and contract-free, Samsung offers an unlocked model that also works overseas.
Which smartphone camera do YOU think is the best?
We’re putting the latest and greatest smartphone cameras to the test — but this time, we want you to tell us which one you like best.
There are a lot of great smartphone cameras out there these days, no matter your preference of operating system. As is our custom, we’ve put together an extensive photo comparison of each of the major players, but we’re doing it a little differently this year.
Instead of us snapping photos, comparing them, and telling you which we prefer, I want you to tell us which photo you like best. Below, we’ve snapped images with four recently-released smartphones with high-end cameras — but we’re not telling you which pictures came from which phone.
The images below have been randomized for every question — and we’ve stripped their EXIF data, too, so no cheating. We took every picture with the phone’s primary camera app and automatic settings, shooting hand-held, just like most users snap photos today.
Which smartphone takes the best photos? We want your help: Pick your favorite for each section by selecting the radio button above each image, then hit the Submit Survey button. (You can also blow up the photos to full resolution by clicking on them directly.)
Next week, we’ll compile our results and announce the smartphone champion as picked by our readers — so stay tuned!
If things aren’t displaying correctly for you, try accessing the survey directly.
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.”
