Starting today, Facebook will begin testing autoplay videos -- including ads -- with sound in its iOS and Android apps. Facebook told Mashable the test will be limited to Australian users and rolled out in two different ways to gauge how users react. In both versions of the test, sound will only play if the iPhone's volume is turned up, and sound can also be turned to "always off" in Facebook settings.
In one version of the test, sound plays immediately as the video begins, if you have sound enabled on your device. Another group is able to turn sound on during the test session using an icon that will sit to the bottom right of videos.
Both groups see a pop-up message informing them about how to use the controls, and sound will only play if the smartphone's volume is up. If you don't want to annoy your workmates, sound can also be turned to "always off" in Facebook settings.
The test is interesting given that Facebook's own research concluded that mobile users prefer having the choice to opt in to sound, with 80% of people reacting negatively towards both the platform and advertiser if sound is unexpectedly played. But, given that Facebook is an advertising-driven company with aspirations of pushing deeper into video content, autoplay sound may eventually be a necessary evil.
After launching its point-of-sale system app in the United States in 2013, Shopify today announced that both the company's POS app and physical hardware will finally be made available to business owners in the United Kingdom (via TechCrunch). The app and "Tap, Chip, and Swipe" card reader work in conjunction to accept various kinds of retail payments from customers, while also providing merchants with data about their business, like stock shortages and daily cash intake.
“The UK is Shopify’s second largest market,” Hailey Coleman, Product Growth Manager at Shopify, told TechCrunch via email. “The launch of the Shopify POS app and card reader provides small business owners an easy and secure way to accept payments anywhere. Now merchants in the UK can run their entire business with Shopify.”
With its NFC-enabled card reader and connected app, Shopify allows customers to pay with any mobile wallet app, including Apple Pay and Android Pay, and traditional cards from Visa and MasterCard. On the compatability side of things, the Shopify POS app functions with the iPhone 4s and later, the iPad 2 and later, and any version of the iPad mini.
With the new system, business owners in the United Kingdom can also run every aspect of their small business with Shopify's products. The app and card reader not only enhance the retail store shopping experience, but both tie the physical store into the owner's online marketplace, "if they’re using Shopify to power their e-commerce."
Merchants in the United Kingdom can pre-order the Shopify card reader for £59 while it's on sale with a £20 discount, and can expect to receive the device beginning on September 30. The company's app is free to use, but incurs a 1.6 percent credit card rate with no purchase fee. Shopify also sells a line of companion hardware to improve the transaction experience in small businesses, including a receipt printer and cash drawer that connect into the Shopify ecosystem.
After weeks of intense usage, new data from Axiom Capital Management (via Bloomberg) paints a picture of Pokémon Go's overall waning popularity as August comes to a close. With research lead by Senior Analyst Victor Anthony, the investment advising firm collected various user engagement statistics -- and even figured out how much attention Pokémon Go brought to augmented reality gaming -- in a handful of charts.
According to Anthony, many other popular apps, which saw a decline in daily active users because of the Pokémon Go phenomenon, were scrambling to figure out ways for former reliable users to return to their app. But now the executives of Tinder, Facebook, Twitter, and Snapchat "can breathe a sigh of relief," since everything from daily active users, downloads, and the amount of time spent on Pokémon Go each day "are all well off their peaks and on a downward trend."
"Given the rapid rise in usage of the Pokémon Go app since the launch in July, investors have been concerned that this new user experience has been detracting from time spent on other mobile focused apps," [Anthony] writes.
If these declines prove enduring, this would cast aspersion not only on the viability and popularity of Pokemon Go, but augmented reality gaming at large, according to the analyst.
Anthony believes the fad-like quality of Pokémon Go could ultimately leave little lasting impact on augmented reality gaming "at large," due to its fleeting popularity of a few weeks in mid-to-late July. Although not mentioned by the analyst or Bloomberg, it's also worth taking into account how many players actually used the AR camera when catching Pokémon, and consequently how many considered it an "AR game," when it became widely known that turning the mode off made capturing the creatures a slightly easier task.
Apple has been granted an augmented reality navigation patent stemming from its acquisition of AR startup Flyby Media earlier this year (via AppleInsider).
The patent was published today by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office under the title "Visual-based inertial navigation", and describes a system that allows a consumer device to position itself in three-dimensional space using data from cameras and sensors.
The system combines images from an onboard camera with measurements gleaned from a gyroscope and accelerometers as well as other sensors, to build a picture of the device's real-time position in physical space.
The patent notes that visual-based inertial navigation systems can achieve positional awareness down to the centimeter scale without the need for GPS or cellular network signals. However, the technology is unsuitable for implementation in typical mobile devices because of the processing demands involved in variable real-time location tracking.
To overcome the limitation, Apple's invention uses something called a sliding window inverse filter (SWF) that minimizes computational load by using predictive coding to map the orientation of objects relative to the device.
The system could be used in a navigational AR device that overlays an output image with location-based information. One scenario describes how the technology could be used to pinpoint items in a retail store as a user walks among the aisles. Another describes the use of depth sensors to generate a 3D map of a given environment.
The patent was filed in 2013 and credits former Flyby Media employees Alex Flint, Oleg Naroditsky, Christopher P. Broaddus, Andriy Grygorenko and Oriel Bergig, as well as University of Michigan professor Stergios Roumeliotis, as its inventors.
Amazon is working on a $5-a-month music subscription service that will be exclusive to owners of the company's internet-connected Echo speaker.
According to Recode, Amazon is planning to introduce the service in September alongside another music streaming service that costs $10 a month, to compete more directly with the likes of Apple Music and Spotify.
Industry sources say the company has yet to finalize deals with major music labels and publishers. One sticking point is reported to be whether Amazon sells the cheaper Echo-only service for $4 or $5 a month.
The $10-a-month service is said to replicate features common to the streaming market, such as unlimited, ad-free playback and an option to download music for offline listening. The company already offers Amazon Music as part of its Amazon Prime subscription package, but the music catalog is limited compared to streaming services like Tidal and Google Play Music.
The $5-a-month service would be different to discounted subscription models that other companies have tried in the past. Not only will the $5 service be restricted to Echo owners, it won't be available to use on smartphones, which is what most users of existing streaming services sign up for.
Amazon started shipping the Echo last year and reportedly sold a million units. The company is aiming to sell three million more this year and 10 million in 2017, according to The Information.
Over the weekend, Samsung announced plans to shut down its Milk music streaming service in the United States, more than two years after it first launched. Milk Music, powered by Slacker Radio, was never able to compete with more popular music streaming services like Pandora, Spotify, and Apple Music.
As of September 22nd 2016, Milk Music will no longer be available. Samsung is encouraging current Milk Music users who want to continue to use the service to sign up for Slacker Radio, and listening history will be able to be transferred over.
Rather than pushing its own music service, Samsung says it plans to pursue a "partner model" that will allow Samsung devices to seamlessly integrate with third-party music services. Samsung also says it plans to "invest and refine" its strategy for delivering "new and engaging connected experiences" to its users.
Samsung is sun setting its Samsung Milk Music service in the United States on September 22, 2016.
We have made the strategic decision to invest in a partner model focused on seamlessly integrating the best music services available today into our family of Galaxy devices. We believe that working with partners will accelerate innovation, enhance device sales and provide amazing new experiences for our customers.
We have no additional details to share at this time.
Positioned as a freemium radio-style app that required users to pay $3.99 per month to remove ads, Milk Music was originally designed to compete with Pandora, but it never gained steam as a Pandora alternative. It was initially launched beside "Milk Video," a video aggregation app, but that was shuttered in 2015, and earlier this year, many Milk Music employees left the company.
Milk Music will continue to operate in South Korea, Malaysia, and China. It was also discontinued in Australia and New Zealand earlier this year.
Microsoft today release a new update for its Office 2016 for Mac apps, introducing small performance improvements, bug fixes, and 64-bit support across the Office lineup.
Outlook, Excel, Word, PowerPoint, and OneNote have all adopted the 64-bit runtime environment to enable better performance and "new innovative features." 64-bit support has previously been available to Microsoft's "Office Insider" beta testers but is rolling out to all users today.
Microsoft Office users who do not use add-ins will be unaffected by the change, while those who do will need to update their add-ins to 64-bit versions as add-in developers release the necessary updates. All add-in developers have had several months to make the updates thanks to the beta testing period, so the transition should be seamless for most end users.
Apple's Mac operating system has supported 64-bit applications for many years, but prior to 2016, Microsoft continued to offer 32-bit Office for Mac apps.
Microsoft Office for Mac is available through an Office 365 subscription or as a standalone purchase from the Microsoft website. Office 365 costs a minimum of $69.99 per year while the standalone version of Office 2016 for Mac is priced at $149.99.
Apple today released the seventh beta of macOS Sierra, the newest operating system designed for the Mac, to developers and public beta testers. macOS Sierra beta 7 comes one week after the release of the sixth beta and two months after the software was first unveiled at Apple's 2016 Worldwide Developers Conference.
Developers and public beta testers can download today's update through the Software Update mechanism in the Mac App Store. Developers can also download the beta from the Apple Developer Center.
macOS Sierra is a major update that brings Siri to the Mac for the first time, allowing users to conduct voice searches to quickly find files, look up information, and more. New Continuity features offer an "Auto Unlock" option for unlocking a Mac with an Apple Watch and a "Universal Clipboard" for copying text on one Apple device and pasting it on another.
Deeper iCloud integration allows files stored on the desktop or the Documents folder of a Mac to be accessed on all of a user's devices, and Photos features deep learning algorithms for improved facial, object, and scene recognition. There's also a Memories feature for displaying photo collections, and Messages has rich links, bigger emoji, and "Tapback" response options.
Apple Pay is coming to the web in macOS Sierra, with payments authenticated through an iPhone or Apple Watch, and new features like multiple tabs, Picture in Picture multitasking, optimized storage, and revamped emoji are also available.
macOS Sierra is currently available to developers and public beta testers, and it will see a wider public release this fall. For full details on all of the new features included in macOS Sierra, make sure to check out our macOS Sierra roundup.
Earlier this month, Samsung introduced the Galaxy Note 7, its newest smartphone with a 14-nanometer Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 quad-core 64-bit processor, 4GB RAM, a 12-megapixel camera, waterproofing, and wireless charging.
Spec wise, the Galaxy Note 7 seems to best the dual-core A9 processor and the 2GB RAM of the iPhone 6s, but based on a new speed test, it's clear raw hardware can't quite match superior hardware and software integration when it comes to real world usage.
In the performance comparison in which the two phones simultaneously launched the same apps, Samsung's Galaxy Note 7 was thoroughly defeated by the iPhone 6s, despite the Note 7's cutting edge hardware and the fact that it's a year newer than Apple's latest iPhone.
The iPhone was able to launch apps in succession at a much faster rate than the Galaxy Note 7, launching 14 apps (including rendering a video) in one minute and 21 seconds and eventually lapping the Galaxy Note 7, which took two minutes and four seconds to complete the same tasks. The iPhone was able to cycle through two laps of the app test in one minute and 51 seconds, while the Note 7 took two minutes and 49 seconds, almost a full minute longer.
This is just a single test that compares an unusual usage scenario, but it does suggest Apple's efforts to deeply integrate hardware and software give the iPhone some significant benefits compared to even the latest Android devices.
Apple will be announcing a new iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus in the near future with improved hardware that includes a faster, more efficient A10 processor and perhaps more RAM, at least in the larger device. The new phones are expected to debut in early September with a launch coming later in the month.
Twitter today announced that it is expanding its "night mode" option to its iOS app, allowing Twitter users to enable a darker mode suitable for reading tweets at night. Twitter first brought night mode to Android devices in July and after a beta testing period, the company is now ready to offer the option in both of its mobile apps.
Night mode can be enabled by tapping on the gear icon and choosing the "Turn on night mode" option. It is disabled in the same way, by tapping the gear icon and selecting "Turn off night mode."
Night mode should be a welcome addition for those iOS users who have been hoping Apple will implement its own Night Mode option, as it makes the Twitter interface much darker and more comfortable to look at in low light conditions.
Twitter's new night mode feature is rolling out to Twitter users starting today. The Twitter app can be downloaded from the App Store for free. [Direct Link]
Nike today updated its popular "Nike+ Running" iOS app with a new name, "Nike+ Run Club," as well as introducing various user interface changes and features (via Fast Company). The big new addition centers around "coaching plans" that let users choose a workout and running plan, which then dynamically adapt to the specific progress made by each user.
Some of these plans include categories like "Getting Started" and "Get More Fit," which falls in line with Nike's mission statement of treating each one of its customers like a professional athlete in order to help them "reach their full potential." Within each plan there's a new "Benchmark Run" that gauges the improvements -- or slacking off -- of each user as they work their way through a workout.
With the latest version of fitness app Nike+ Run Club, for example, personalized coaching for newbie runners is central to the experience. As the app learns more about you, it tailors your workouts accordingly.
"If you have a body, you're an athlete," says Jay Lee, global head of product for Nike+. "What we've learned is that we really need to serve [athletes] as individuals if we want them to reach their full potential."
On the social side of things, Nike has made it easier to share progress with friends on social networks as well as tweaked its leaderboards tab with new ways to compare and compete with people who are also using the app. Users will also be able to use the companion Apple Watch app independently of the iOS app, since the new update allows users to "run free" and leave their iPhone behind.
The new "Club" naming style follows in the footsteps of Nike+ Training Club [Direct Link], which focuses on a wider array of weight and strength training. For anyone who has yet to download it, Nike+ Run Club is available for free on the App Store. [Direct Link]
ZEISS has announced that its iPhone-compatible VR ONE Plus virtual reality headset is now available at Best Buy stores across the United States for $129. The headset has a universal smartphone tray that fits most smartphones with a screen size between 4.7 and 5.5 inches, including the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus.
iPhone users can use the VR ONE Plus with thousands of virtual reality apps on the App Store, including Google Cardboard apps, in addition to 360 degree YouTube videos and Google Street View. The headset has an immersive field of view of approximately 100° and can be used while wearing eyeglasses.
ZEISS is also accepting VR ONE Plus orders through its website in the U.S. and Europe.
Apple today announced its 2016 Apple Music Festival, a free annual concert series that will see big name artists performing at the London Roundhouse. This year's event will take place from September 18 to September 30.
Apple Music Festival 10 returns to London in September for 10 exhilarating nights of live music. Residents of the UK can win tickets to the gigs. Apple Music members around the world can watch the performances for free. Ticket applications will be opening soon. Follow @AppleMusic on Twitter and Snapchat for up-to-the minute information and join the #AMF10 conversation.
In 2015, Apple made some significant changes to the festival, which was called the iTunes Festival in the years before the launch of Apple Music. Prior to 2015, the event lasted for a full 30 days, but was scaled down to 10 days with the revamp. Apple also now offers the music festival performances live and on-demand in the Apple Music App.
Though this is the second annual Apple Music festival, Apple has been holding the festival for a total of 10 years, so 2016 marks the 10th anniversary music event.
For the 2016 Apple Music Festival, Apple has not yet announced the acts that will be performing. Unveilings will be done gradually in the weeks leading up to the event, with most new information coming from Beats 1 Radio.
Apple is planning to release at least three new iPhones next year, including a high-end model with a 5.5-inch-or-larger OLED display that is curved on both sides like Samsung's Galaxy S7 edge, according to Nikkei. The other two models are said to be 4.7-inch and 5.5-inch models with flat LCD displays like the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus, corroborating previous reports.
The report reiterates that Samsung is expected to be Apple's primary supplier of OLED displays, but it may be unable to fully keep up with demand for both iPhones and its own Galaxy smartphones. Recognizing the opportunity, Apple manufacturer Foxconn has been developing glass casings and OLED displays over the past year, in hopes of securing orders from its biggest customer next year.
Apple's widely rumored transition towards OLED in 2017 is requisite for curved displays, while the technology also provides improved contrast, faster response times, better viewing angles, better power efficiency for typical mixed image content, and other benefits compared to LCD technology. Samsung's Galaxy S7 makes a compelling case for Apple's rumored switch to OLED technology.
Today's report corroborates KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, who earlier said Apple may launch an all-new iPhone with a curved 5.8-inch AMOLED display and glass casing in 2017. Kuo's research note outlined three new iPhone models, including LCD-based 4.7-inch and 5.5-inch models and a high-end OLED-based 5.8-inch model, as one possibility providing supply of AMOLED displays is sufficient.
When applied to the height of an existing 5.5-inch iPhone, a 5.8-inch display like the one Apple is rumored to be working on would leave an extra 7.25mm of display on each side that could be used to wrap around the edges of the device. This would extend the display across the front and sides of the iPhone, perhaps enabling side-based gestures and buttons like on Samsung's Galaxy S7 edge.
Apple was similarly rumored to be developing three iPhone models internally this year, but it reportedly scrapped plans to release a 5.5-inch model with a single-lens camera around six months ago. Apple's tenth-anniversary iPhone is shaping up to be a more significant upgrade, compared to the relatively incremental refresh expected from this year's tentatively named iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus.
NPR posted an audio interview with singer Barbra Streisand over the weekend, focusing on Streisand's North American tour of her new album Encore: Movie Partners Sing Broadway. In the middle of the 8-minute interview Apple gets mentioned briefly, specifically regarding the way that voice assistant Siri has mispronounced Streisand's name over the last five years.
Siri uses a hard 'z' sound when saying the second 's' in Streisand, so the singer took it upon herself to ask Apple CEO Tim Cook to get the company to correct the error in Siri's language. Cook was said to respond with an agreement to fix the issue in "the next update," supposedly referring to iOS 10.
"She pronounces my name wrong. Streisand with a soft 's' like sand on the beach, I've been saying this for my whole career. And so what did I do? I called the head of Apple, Tim Cook, and he delightfully agreed to have Siri change the pronunciation of my name finally, with the next update on September 30th. So let's see if that happens, because I will be thrilled."
It's unlikely Cook so readily divulged the release date of iOS 10, which is expected to launch earlier than the date mentioned by Streisand. The release for the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus could be on September 16 or September 23, according to recent rumors, meaning iOS 10 would launch within a similar timeframe.
Apple has acquired personal health and wellness startup Gliimpse, continuing its push into the health and fitness landscape that it began focusing on with the launch of the Apple Watch.
The company made the acquisition earlier in the year, according to Fast Company, but Apple has now confirmed the purchase with its usual response: "Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans."
Gliimpse is a personal health platform that collects various fitness-related pieces of data for its users "to collect, personalize, and share a picture of their health data" at different stages of their personal journey. The company was funded by entrepreneur Anil Sethi and was founded in 2013, following Sethi's inspiration to create an easy way to track health data as he watched his sister battle breast cancer.
Gliimpse™ began with a simple idea – everyone should be able to manage their health records, and share them securely with those they trust. Currently in stealth, Gliimpse is healthcare’s platform for building patient-centric apps. By unlocking hospital silos, we aggregate fragmented data into Medicare mandated patient summaries. Gliimpse is your personal health history, in the palm of your hands.
As seen on the company's website, Gliimpse also lets users make daily journal entries to chronicle their emotional state of mind, track lab results, record levels of pain to inform a physician, and other privacy features that ensure each user's data stays secure. These features mark Gliimpse as a more healthcare-focused experience for users with serious ailments like diabetes and cancer, in contrast to more casual health upkeep apps, like Apple Health.
The new acquisition is a continuation of Apple's efforts to bolster its presence in the digital health field. Earlier in the month, the company re-hired Flipboard co-founder Evan Doll for a secretive position in its health initiative, and it's even been rumored that Apple is working on a new piece of hardware with a health-tracking focus -- which might also be another Apple Watch -- for release in 2017.
Apple's focus on health and wellness (which will also expand to mindfulness with its Breathe Apple Watch app this fall) was summarized by CEO Tim Cook when he appeared on "Mad Money" earlier in the year. Specifically, when host Jim Cramer asked whether it was "within the realm of our lifetime" that a device paired with Apple's HealthKit framework might be able to monitor diabetes, blood pressure, and detect cancer, Tim Cook said "Oh, I absolutely do."
Samsung is planning to launch a new program selling refurbished used versions of its smartphones as early as next year, according to sources who spoke to Reuters.
The Korean tech firm is seeking ways to sustain its earnings after the company posted its best profits for two years following a restructuring of its mobile lineup. With the smartphone market plateauing, Samsung hopes that selling the returned handsets as part of its upgrade programs will help it maximize cost efficiency and keep its operating margins above 10 percent, reports Reuters.
The discounted handsets are said to be coming to customers tied to upgrade programs in markets like the U.S. and South Korea, however there's no official word on how much the discount will be, or which countries the program is coming to.
Apple already sells used phones in several markets including the U.S., but was recently blocked from selling refurbished handsets in India, where high-end devices are beyond most buyers.
Reuters notes that an iPhone has a re-sale value of around 69 percent of its original price after about one year from launch, while Samsung's flagship Galaxy sells for 51 percent of the original price in the U.S. market, according to BNP Paribas.
The program is likely to attract customers previously put off by the high price of Samsung's high-end smartphones, some of which cost up to $800. Selling the used phones in growing markets like India could also be a big hit for Samsung, while offering them in China could could help the company prevent market share encroachment by Chinese rivals, many of which offer low-cost alternatives.
Privacy advocates have claimed the breach of hacking tools and exploits apparently stolen from the National Security Agency has vindicated Apple's stance in its dispute with the FBI earlier this year.
Last week, reports emerged that a hacker group called the "Shadow Brokers" had allegedly stolen a cache of the NSA's top espionage tools and offered to sell them to the highest bidder.
The malware was linked to the "Equation Group", a secretive team of cyber spies widely believed to be associated with the NSA and its state partners. The hacking collective that stole the malware posted two sets of files online, including a free sample of the stolen data, which dates back to 2013, and a second encrypted file whose decryption key went up for sale in a bitcoin auction. Many saw the auction as a stunt.
But the attack code posted by the hackers appeared to be real, according to former NSA personnel who worked in the agency's hacking division, known as Tailored Access Operations (TAO).
"Without a doubt, they're the keys to the kingdom," said one former TAO employee, who spoke to The Washington Post on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive internal operations. "The stuff you're talking about would undermine the security of a lot of major government and corporate networks both here and abroad."
"It's a big deal," said Dave Aitel, an ex-NSA research scientist and CEO of penetration testing firm Immunity. "We'd be panicking." Whistle-blowing website Wikileaks tweeted that it also had the data and would release it "in due course".
News of the leak has been closely followed by technology companies, many of whom pushed back against the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee's attempts to force them to provide "technical assistance" to government investigators seeking locked data.
The failed attempt to enact legislation came after Apple publicly clashed with the FBI over the government agency's insistence that it create a "back door" to its iPhone software.
Apple: If we're forced to build a tool to hack iPhones, someone will steal it. FBI: Nonsense. Russia: We just published NSA's hacking tools
— Christopher Soghoian (@csoghoian) August 17, 2016
The FBI claimed the software was needed to break into the iPhone owned by Syed Farook, one of the shooters in the December attack in San Bernardino, California. Apple refused to comply with the request, claiming that the code would lead to weaker smartphone encryption and inevitably get into the wrong hands.
Now, after a top-secret archive of some of the NSA's own exploits having been leaked online, privacy advocates are suggesting Apple's stance has been vindicated.
"The component of the government that is supposed to be absolutely best at keeping secrets didn't manage to keep this secret effectively," said Nate Cardozo, a senior staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation who spoke to Business Insider.
The NSA's stance on vulnerabilities seems to be based on the premise that secrets will never get out. That no one will ever discover the same bug, that no one will ever use the same bug, that there will never be a leak. We know for a fact, that at least in this case, that's not true.
Ex-NSA scientist Aitel believes the most likely scenario is that an insider walked out of a secure area with this data on a USB key, which could have been sold or stolen. "No one puts their exploits on a [command-and-control] server," Aitel said. "That's not a thing."
Another possibility suggested by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden is that the malware toolkit was stolen from a "staging server" or segregated network outside the walls of the NSA, where it was used for conducting attacks. Snowden has also pointed to Russia as the chief suspect behind the leak.
News of the hack has also raised new questions about the legalities of government hacking, since many of the "zero day" exploits included in the leak have never been disclosed to the companies whose hardware is affected.
A policy framework called the Vulnerabilities Equities Process outlines how and when the state should disclose a vulnerability to an affected company if the larger security risk is greater than the reward it could yield. The FBI has informed Apple of security flaws in older versions of iOS and OS X in the past under the VEP framework.
However, Cardozo argues that the rules are "completely broken" because the VEP guidance is a non-binding policy created by the Obama administration, rather than an executive order or law. "We need rules, and right now there aren't any," Cardozo said. "Or at least none that work."
Note: Due to the political nature of the discussion regarding this topic, the discussion thread is located in our Politics, Religion, Social Issues forum. All forum members and site visitors are welcome to read and follow the thread, but posting is limited to forum members with at least 100 posts.
Amazon is working on a $5-a-month music subscription service that will be exclusive to owners of the company's internet-connected Echo speaker.
Twitter today 
Apple has acquired personal health and wellness startup 
Samsung is planning to launch a new program selling refurbished used versions of its smartphones as early as next year, according to sources who spoke to 
Privacy advocates have claimed the breach of hacking tools and exploits apparently stolen from the National Security Agency has vindicated Apple's stance in its dispute with the FBI earlier this year.
