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Coming to terms with a rather miserable financial quarter, GoPro CEO Nick Woodman just announced that the company will cease sales of several action cameras — including its cheapest model — in April. Moving forward, GoPro's lineup will consist of the Hero 4 Black ($499.99), Hero 4 Silver ($399.99), and Hero 4 Session ($199.99). Everything else, including the Hero+ LCD ($299.99), Hero+ ($199.99), and regular Hero ($129.99), will be discontinued. Woodman did confirm that a new flagship model, the Hero 5, will debut in 2016, as will the company's forthcoming Karma drone, which records 4K video footage. The slimmed down product portfolio comes after GoPro reported $436.6 million in revenue for Q4, a 31 percent drop from last year. GoPro's...

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Unreal. Starbucks in Saudi Arabia refused to serve women. Note on their door, plus official response from company. pic.twitter.com/d4tCSqqQOv

— Muhammad Lila (@MuhammadLila) February 3, 2016

The Starbucks café in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia has a sign on the front door barring women from entering. Starbucks will accept their money, but only if the womens' "driver" places the order on their behalf.

From the Express Tribune:

The notice, in Arabic as well as English, reads, “Please no entry for ladies, only send your driver to order. Thank you.”

The Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, the most influential law enforcing authority in the Kingdom, ordered the café’s management not to admit women, according to Emirates 24/7.

Starbucks issued the following statement:

Starbucks in Saudi Arabia adheres to the local customs by providing separate entrances for families as well as single people. All our stores provide equal amenities, service, menu, and seating to men, women and families. We are working as quickly as possible as we refurbish our Jarir store, so that we may again welcome all customers in accordance with local customs.

#Starbucks store in Riyadh refused 2 serve me just because I'm a WOMAN & asked me 2 send a man instead@Starbucks pic.twitter.com/6Nj6DkOtFJ

— Manar N (@manarn8) February 1, 2016

Fedor Selivanov / Shutterstock.com

See the extended director's cut gif here.

See sample pages from this book at Wink.

A tangle of vines pushes its way across a trellis over two chairs. Dangling birdcages squeak in an imaginary wind as their inhabitants sing softly. Further in, a deer prepares to leap off a page filled with leaves and acorns falling to the ground, and a frog sits alone, perhaps contemplating jumping away. I have never been much good at drawing; my stick figures resemble sticks far more than they do figures. However, I do love to color, so you can imagine my delight at receiving a portable coloring book for the holidays.

Published this past year, and first released in Sweden, the Flying Wonders coloring book contains both intricate and simplistic pictures ready for you to fill with colors and designs. Flowers and birds pervade many of the pages, with some of the images repeated for multiple attempts. One of the best parts of the book, however, is its size and construction. The book is smaller than many adult coloring books, the perfect size to be carried in a backpack or purse. Even better, the front and back covers are made of a stiff, thick cardboard to prevent designs from being bent or torn. The portability means I can slip it in my bag and work on any of the designs while I wait at a coffee shop or in the doctor’s office. Coloring is something so often put aside when adulthood is reached; it’s with great joy that I see it's made a comeback as a relaxing activity for adults, and with even greater joy that I can bring my coloring with me. Now, you’ll have to excuse me while I go color some more. – Julia Pillard

Flying Wonders: Portable Coloring for Creative Adults
by Adult Coloring Books
Skyhorse Publishing
2015, 120 pages, 6.5 x 8.4 x 0.6 inches
$12 Buy a copy on Amazon

What surprised me about this map is how far north the UK and Portugal are. The UK is above the continental US, and I would have thought Portugal would be closer to Mexico's latitude. [via]

Once the senators who oversee the science committee see this graph, they will pass a law forbidding Miss America to be over the age of 12. [via]

iBleeedorange posted this pretty GIF that shows the 5-fold pattern traced out by an imaginary line between the Earth and Venus.

Sunsunsun made an audio representation of the orbital relationship between Earth and Venus:

The left side is Venus and the right side is Earth. It takes about 1:36 to synch up, but it almost synchs up (the planets would be directly opposite each other) around 46 seconds in. Each 8 bars represents an orbit around the sun. Do not listen to this without headphones, it makes no sense without being able to separate them.

Make you own "dances of the planets" here. [via]

 Remember Thunderstrike 2? Last summer, Xeno Kovah and Trammell Hudson unveiled a serious zero-day vulnerability in OS X letting malware creators completely brick your Mac without any way to reset it to its factory status. And it looks like Apple didn’t just fix the vulnerability — it has also hired the team behind this exploit to work on security. Read More

(Thanks, Dimitrios!)

 YouTube will premiere its first original movies and series for YouTube Red on February 10. The main draws behind YouTube Red — the site’s recently launched subscription service — were always ad-free viewing and the promise of original content. Until now, though, there was no original content, so if you subscribed to Red, you basically paid Google $9.99 to remove ads (and… Read More

Amazon brought Alexa to the TV with its second-generation Fire TV set-top box, and now, a few months later, the company is also doing the same for owners of its original box. Starting today and continuing "over the next few weeks," Fire TV and Fire TV Stick customers will be receiving a software update that adds Amazon's personal assistant to the older hardware. Both devices already include voice search for finding movies and TV shows to watch, but Alexa adds a bit more functionality to the mix.

Alexa can't quite do everything that's possible with the Amazon Echo speaker, but you can still ask for useful things like the weather, traffic updates, and sports scores. Alexa on Fire TV can also find local restaurants, control certain home...

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Just days after it shot to the top of the Play Store, Android's newest ad blocker has been removed for violating developer guidelines. Called Adblock Fast, the plug-in from startup Rocketship Apps worked within Samsung's mobile browser thanks to a partnership with the phone maker, which opened an API this week allowing third-party developers to build content blocking features for the preinstalled Samsung Internet app.

According to Rocketship developer Brian Kennish, Google says Adblock Fast violates section 4.4 of of its Developer Distribution Agreement, which disallows apps or plugins offered through the Play Store from "interfering" or "disrupting" devices, networks, or services of third parties. Google confirmed to The Verge that it...

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 Petcube, which is part of Y Combinator’s Winter 2016 class, is a young startup that wants to bring together pet care and the connected home to improve the lives of our pets. To do this, the company has raised $2.6 million for their first product, the Petcube Camera. Read More

Microsoft already has one of the better mobile keyboards out there, and it sounds like it may soon own another great one. The Financial Times reports that Microsoft is entering a deal to purchase SwiftKey for around $250 million, with plans to announce the acquisition this week. Pinged for comment, Microsoft said it has "nothing to share at this time" and SwiftKey declined to comment on "rumors [and] speculation."

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https://www.patreon.com/posts/week-35-four-4228404

They finished up in the studio recording on Friday.

Nearly four months after being struck down, the US and EU have reached a new Safe Harbor deal. It’s called the "EU-US Privacy Shield" and will facilitate the transfer of European citizens’ data to American companies. While the framework has been ironed out verbally, European authorities still need to create a full draft about the decision in the coming weeks and then have it approved by the Union’s 28 member states. Meanwhile, US companies need to formalize their steps to meet all requirements.

Features of the new agreement include an outline for resolving disputes if European citizens feel their data has been misused or abused. The FTC will help field those complaints, and US companies will have strict deadlines to address them....

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This year at CES we got to see wacky ideas about the Internet of Things, like Samsung's new refrigerator with a gigantic touchscreen, so there's a lot to be desired in the wild new era of smart-objects. That's why this elegant mirror from Google software engineer Max Braun is so exciting — it looks like something you'd actually want in your home right now.

Braun posted the results of his project on Medium, and the photos look almost unreal. It's just a simple mirror with the same information you can glance at on an Android phone — the weather, the time, and a glance at the top headlines — but somehow it makes even more sense on a bathroom mirror. It's the kind of sleek near-future sci-fi of Ex Machina and Gorilla Glass concept videos,...

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 Yahoo confirmed plans today to lay off approximately 15 percent of its workforce. The company made the announcement in conjunction with its its fourth quarter earnings, where it reported revenue of $1.27 billion and earnings per share of 13 cents. That’s ahead of revenue estimates — had analysts had predicted revenue of $1.19 billion and EPS of 13 cents. The Wall Street… Read More

Apple has picked a date for its big product reveal next month, according to reports from both 9to5Mac and BuzzFeed News. The new iPhone 5SE — an updated version of the 4-inch iPhone 5S — and the iPad Air 3 are on the schedule for March 15th, the reports state. While we knew last month Apple was potentially eyeing a March date for the announcements, it wasn't until today both 9to5Mac and BuzzFeed News independently locked down the day.

The new iPad Air 3 is said to include iPad Pro-like features like better speakers and a Smart Connector to use with accessories like the Pro's keyboard. It would be the first update to Apple's 9.7-inch tablet line since the iPad Air 2 in October 2014. Apple is also expected to introduce new colored Apple...

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At least 100,000 people became stranded at the Guangzhou Railway Station southern China. They were trying to get a jump on Chinese New Year, which starts next week. The image above is a small portion of a photo that will send a chill down the spine of agoraphobics.

Over 100k passengers trapped in Guangzhou Railway Station on Mon, due to train delays in #SpringFestival travel rush pic.twitter.com/DcajMP3oAq

— People's Daily,China (@PDChina) February 2, 2016

From The Guardian:

Aerial photographs published by one website showed a crush of bodies snaking towards the train station through metal barricades. About 176,000 passengers had been due to pass through the station on Monday alone.

“There are too many people and it is too crowded,” one stranded passenger, who was not named, told state broadcaster CCTV.

Welcome to the roundup of the best new Android applications, games, and live wallpapers that went live in the Play Store or were spotted by us in the previous 2 weeks or so.

Games

Crashlands

Android Police coverage: Crashlands From Butterscotch Shenanigans Crash Lands Onto Android, Steam, and iOS Today

Crashlands is technically an RPG, but that's selling it a little short.

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24 New And Notable (And 1 WTF) Android Games From The Last 2 Weeks (1/19/16 - 2/1/16) was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

During Alphabet's first earnings call this afternoon, Google CEO Sundar Pichai commented that as of this month, Gmail now officially has one billion monthly active users. That's a lot of Gmail.

Thanks a billion for helping us make Gmail better and better!https://t.co/Rd82YqwGjl

— Gmail (@gmail) February 1, 2016

The Gmail app for Android, by comparison, hit one billion installs a little over 20 months ago, back in May of 2014.

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Gmail Hits 1 Billion Monthly Active Users, According To Sundar Pichai During Alphabet Earnings Call was written by the awesome team at Android Police.

WhatsApp passed a significant milestone today: the mobile messaging service owned by Facebook now has 1 billion users. That's good news for Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who spearheaded the jaw-dropping $19 billion acquisition of WhatsApp two years ago on the promise it could grow to become one of the world's most-used communication platforms. So while WhatsApp doesn't make any money, Facebook can certainly say it's popular — more so even than Facebook Messenger, which just passed 800 million users.

WhatsApp had 450 million monthly active users before Facebook acquired it, and the small team led by co-founder and CEO Jan Koum has doubled the user base thanks in part to its ad-free stance and minimal design. According to regulatory...

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 Today was a huge day for Alphabet — the first day it finally broke out its “other bets” in its earnings report — and boy did the company not disappoint. The company smashed expectations on both ends, bringing in $21.3 billion in revenue and earnings of $8.67 per share. Analysts were expecting earnings of $8.09 on $20.8 billion in revenue. And with that, Alphabet… Read More

On Thursday, followers of Channel Awesome (370,456 subscribers) on YouTube got a strange new message. The channel usually specializes in pop culture riffs, but this was a more straightforward video, with host Douglas Walker laying out a three-week odyssey triggered by a single DMCA copyright claim against a clip he’d used from My Neighbor Totoro. According to Walker, the Totoro clip was in fair use, but appealing the complaint had sprawled into nearly a month of notices and counter-notices. "We’re coming up on three weeks of getting no monetization, no money for any of the videos we’ve put up, past and present," he said to the camera, growing more and more frantic. "Nobody has given us a straight answer. Nothing has been consistent....

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A UK regulator has approved British scientists’ request to use a controversial technique called CRISPR to edit genes in human embryos. The method involves precisely locating and removing parts of the genetic code, in order to replace them with other segments of DNA. It's the first time a federal authority has approved a gene-editing technique such as this for research in embryos.

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The last screen has gone dark, the awards have been handed out, and Park City is comfortably under capacity again. But Sundance isn't over until The Verge's Sundance team have named their favorites among this year's diverse film lineup. Here they are, in no particular order.

Dark Night

Bryan Bishop: Films and television love to give us tidy, narrative takes on atrocities so we can come to grips, stick them in a box, and file it all away under "Can't Happen Here." They remove the fear, but Tim Sutton's surreal meditation on the dangers of gun violence goes the opposite direction. Loosely inspired by the 2012 movie theater shooting in Aurora, Colorado, Dark Night uses inhuman patience and an unflinching eye to turn even the...

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In Investigatory Powers Bill: technology issues, the UK Parliament's Science and Technology select committee takes the government to task for its signature mass surveillance law, the "Snoopers Charter" whose provisions are so broad and vague that companies can't figure out how much of their customers' data they're supposed to be storing, and whether they're meant to be backdooring all the crypto they distribute. (more…)