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A veteran cryptographer has ignited furious debate over a proposal that could allegedly solve the "crypto war" over law enforcement access to encrypted data — but whose detractors think is incredibly dangerous.

Simply put, the crypto war is all about encryption technology and whether it should be breakable. As more and more big tech companies incorporate encryption into their products that can't be broken by anyone without the correct password or key, law enforcement officials have been up in arms, worried that vital evidence is "going dark."

But, technologists and privacy activists counter, this is better than the alternative — backdoors for law enforcement access that would inevitably be discovered and abused by malicious actors. And besides, how do you convince a criminal to use a backdoored system when there are plenty of others out there that don't have such vulnerabilities, and are outside of the jurisdiction of authorities angling for access?

On Wednesday, Wired's Andy Greenberg published a story about a proposal by David Chaum, a well-respected and veteran of the field (so much so that Greenberg describes him as the "father of online anonymity.")

Chaum is building something called PrivaTegrity. It's an online network that anonymises the user and allows for messaging and other functions. He said: "It’s a way to create a separate online reality ... One in which all the various things we now know people like to do online can be done in a lightweight manner under a completely different and new and very attractive privacy and security model."

It uses nine special servers to encrypt users' data, based in nine different countries. But — and this is where it gets controversial — if all nine work together, they can decrypt a user's data.

The logic is that this will prevent abuses like mass government surveillance (a reason many people use encryption tools), but allows for access when there is a legitimate need all can agree on — terrorism, or a paedophile ring, for example. Chaum also argues that it wouldn't have the same weakness as a traditional backdoor, because all nine would need to be compromised for an attacker to have any effect: "These systems would be far more hardened than even corporate systems, and to abuse the backdoor you’d have to break all of them."

He says this is a solution to the current crypto "logjam" being debated. "We don’t have to give up on privacy. We don’t have to allow terrorists and drug dealers to use it. We can have a civil society electronically without the possibility of covert mass surveillance."

Chaum's proposal immediately sparked debate on Twitter, with many reacting extremely negatively to the proposals.

Christopher Soghoian, who works for the ACLU, says the proposals are a gift to the authorities pushing for backdoor access to systems:

Marcy Wheeler, an independent national security journalist weighed in:

Here's Matt Blaze, a respected cryptographer:

Later on Wednesday, David Chaum publicly presented PrivaTegrity at the Real World Crypto conference. Audience members once again reacted badly.

Leaving aside the problem of abuse and the vulnerability of backdoors, there's arguably another — fundamental — problem with PrivaTegrity.

Chaum says it will be used to stop undisputably "evil" people: Terrorists, paedophiles, drug dealers, and so on. But why would they choose to use a platform that is already deliberately, publicly backdoored, when a plethora of options already exist that have no such weaknesses?

You can read David Chaum's paper on cMix, the tech that underpins PrivaTegrity, here »

 

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NOW WATCH: How to make Safari more secure on your iPhone

A few years ago, Bitcoin, the distributed digital currency, was the hottest thing to roll through the intersection of finance and technology. It gained significant interest amongst those keen to create a peer-to-peer, cashless currency. 

But its attempt to enter the mainstream has been marred by reports of thefts, poor marketing, and a general lack of comprehension by the general populace.  

That's too bad, because Bitcoin is really just one application of a much broader technology: the distributed ledger known as the blockchain. And fortunately, people are beginning to understand the blockchain as a phenomenon distinct from Bitcoin specifically and digital currency in general.

The blockchain's strength lies in how it decentralizes transactions of all sorts, allowing all kinds of digital assets to be safely and permanently exchanged. It also promises the potential to create records that can't be erased by attacking some central store of data. Because of the features, the blockchain possesses the potential to increase security and accountability in a range of industries. 

Here are just a few new ways the blockchain is being used. Some may surprise you.

The Art Of The Blockchain

Digital artwork, which can include soundscapes, augmented reality, GIFs, and pixel art, is growing and diversifying as a medium. You can even buy recordings of brainwaves. Yet complications can arise when artists attempt to sell digital art—or even distinguish it as theirs. As Douglas Davis wrote in his 1991 essay "The Work Of Art In The Age of Digital Reproduction":

The fictions of "master" and "copy" are now so entwined with each other that it is impossible to say where one begins and the other ends. 

Davis, sadly, passed away two years ago. But surely someone should attempt to write "The Work Of Art In The Age Of The Blockchain."

In Davis's era, the authenticity of digital art was difficult to verify. Was a file an "original" or one of an edition? In contrast to the conventions established in Walter Benjamin's age of "mechanical reproduction," what did those terms even mean? 

Companies like Berlin's Ascribe and New York's Monegraph are using a blockchain to log each transfer of a work (just as a similar blockchain does for bitcoins), so art ownership at any time cannot be disputed. Digital art can be transferred, consigned, or loaned without losing attribution. The location of the work throughout the internet can also be recorded to document its history.

We won't begin to address the cultural issues that Benjamin and Davis's essays raise with respect to this use of technology, but they're interesting to think about, too. 

The Potchain

Although legal in a handful of US states, marijuana's use, sale, and possession is still illegal under federal law. The buying and selling of marijuana is difficult to navigate for both retailers and consumers. It's primarily a cash-based industry, as banks fear prosecution for handling the funds.

While there are a number of bitcoin-based services like Potcoin, only recently has another option become available. Serica uses the blockchain to track and record every purchase of medical marijuana, and gives companies an easy way to accept payment online. The startup has already signed a deal with the second largest e-commerce site for medical cannabis to become its sole online payment option.

Music That's Off The Blockchain

In October, Ujo Music released a prototype service featuring a downloadable single by artist Imogen Heap. It was a practical example of how a blockchain-based music industry might function. 

Creators and rights holders register works and their stakes in those works on the blockchain, and payments are delivered automatically and instantly using smart contract technology. Artists may also publish policies for how their music may be used, facilitating an open marketplace in which anybody can innovate a new business model, app or service as long as they meet the terms of those policies. 

Currently, payments can be only made via bitcoin but credit-card support is on the way. Beyond its initial announcement, the people behind the Ujo project have been rather quiet.

Ad-free streaming service and marketplace Peertracks is still in the early stages but is attracting interest. PeerTracks allows tipping, patronage-style support, and even the buying and trading of limited-edition, tradable VIP passes for artists, using blockchain technology to track their transfer.

In this instance, the blockchain  serves as a global database for copyrights, a means of payment for all music-related transactions.  It also provides artists with transparent accounting, automatically split up royalty payments and the capability to create their Notes so they can get discovered and engage their fan bases. Fans can interact, participate and even benefit from the success of their favorite artists. Peertracks' beta launch is planned for the first quarter of 2016.

The Blockchain Shall Rule

In May last year, the Isle of Man began the first government-run blockchain project, using the blockchain to create a registry of digital-currency companies operating on the island.  This was intended to  stop money laundering, prevent terrorist financing, and aid international trade sanctions, as financial flows could be traced definitively to the specific individual involved.

Honduras has also turned to the blockchain with the help of a US company, Factom, as a mean to end land-title fraud. 

“In the past, Honduras has struggled with land title fraud,” said Peter Kirby, Factom's president. “The country’s database was basically hacked. So bureaucrats could get in there and they could get themselves beachfront properties.”

Factom's system includes verified timestamps and provides a distributed mechanism to lock in data, making it independently auditable. However the project has not been completed in its expected time frame. Updates describe a project that's encountering political delays despite support from figures high up in the government.

Despite the obstacles in Honduras, Factom is continuing its work in land titles, currently working with BitSapphire on an anticorruption tool to manage the land municipal registry databases in Kosovo. They plan to use the Factom API to build a cryptographic record to prove the databases haven’t been corrupted.

Open Ledgers For Everyone

The Linux Foundation recently announced a new, collaborative Open Ledger project to advance blockchain technology, teaming with tech firms such as IBM and Intel, the London Stock Exchange Group and big banks such as JP Morgan, Wells Fargo, and State Street. Their aim is to advance blockchain technology and: 

... develop an enterprise grade, open source distributed ledger framework and free developers to focus on building robust, industry-specific applications, platforms and hardware systems to support business transactions.

The collaboration is intended to create cross-industry open standards to transform business transactions. That banking and financial trading services have come on board demonstrates the appeal of the blockchain even to traditionally conservative industries.

The blockchain has not fully come into its full potential by any means. Most projects seem to be in early stages of beta testing and trials. Yet it's clear there are advances on an almost daily basis. It will be interesting to see the outcomes of the Open Ledger project and what the future holds for the blockchain, especially in newer applications like voting and healthcare. While the technology will progress quickly, it's not as clear that our political systems and everyday users will be able to keep up.

It won't be bits that hold back the blockhain, in other words. It will be us humans.

CVS, Walgreens, Kaiser, and Department of Veterans Affairs among biggest leakers, reports ProPublica. Now you can look up the details.

The U.S. has strict rules against the unauthorized sharing of medical records, codified in the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) of 1996. But a new report by the investigative journalists at ProPublica uncovered plenty of privacy breaches, suggesting that the government has been shoddy at enforcing the law and in tracking repeat offenders. CVS, for example, violated HIPAA 204 times between 2011 and 2014; the government's own Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) led the march of shame, with 220 major violations.

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Google Cardboard is one of the search giant's coolest projects in a long time.

Sure, it's not as immediately useful as Google Maps, and you won't find yourself checking it as often as Search — but it's virtual reality! Using your smartphone!

With just a piece of cardboard and a compatible smartphone, anyone can dive into an array of virtual worlds. From exploring Street View like never before to taking three-dimensional photographs, from immersive VR journalism to exploring our solar system — here are 16 of the coolest apps available for Google Cardboard today.  

Note: Cardboard is compatible with iOS, but the majority of apps out there are for Android, so that's what we've focused on. And if you don't have a Cardboard viewer yet, you can pick one up cheaply here »

1. Google Earth

Google Earth is accessible via the default Google Cardboard app, which also includes a number of other demos. It's one of the most exciting showcase of the possibilities of VR: Sure, the textures are low-res, and the 3D models of cities it generates (while cool) are somewhat blocky.

But it lets you fly anywhere in the world in VR 3D, using only your smartphone and a bit of cardboard. And that is absolutely wild.

Google Play Store link »

2. Google Street View

Another Google app not originally designed for Cardboard, Google Street View is exciting for much the same reason Google Earth is. At a stroke, Google has transformed its entire catalogue of the world's cities, previously a neat feature primarily used for navigating, into an interactive, explorable, virtual reality playground. 

Ever wanted to visit the Eiffel Tower? Now you can. Wanna stroll down Fifth Avenue gazing up at the Empire State Building? Not a problem. How about just exploring the beautiful Norwegian coastline because you can? The world is your oyster. 

Just load your desired destination in the app, and hit the Cardboard icon in the corner.

Google Play Store link »

3. Caaaaardboard!

Caaaaardboard! is a game for Cardboard that has you jumping off buildings, performing stunts, and collecting points. 

It costs $1.99, or £1.29 in the UK.

Google Play Store link »

See the rest of the story at Business Insider

Here’s wishing you and yours a dynamic, prosperous and healthy 2016 in all of your endeavors! Please join our VUC Kiva Lending Team to guarantee loans to hard-working entrepreneurs worldwide. Our team has made over 1,000 loans since we began in 2007.

Today,  we talked to Olle Johansson about TLS, security, encryption, IoT and the challenges of 2016. Tim Panton made a statement I liked a lot during this call:

“Data: If you don’t collect it, you don’t have to protect it!”

We also spoke about central authorities and identity. Both remain serious concerns for the future.

And James Body is optimistic about the future of really intelligent, really secure SIM cards.

 

 If you’re in the tech world, then you know exactly what Slack is and does. As you eke outside of our little techosphere, however, you might get some puzzled faces when you talk about your favorite work communication tool. Read More

What's next for bitcoin?

2015 has seen the digital currency's volatility stabilise and price jump, but it has also seen much of the hype dissipate. And there's been a divergence between bitcoin and the technology that underpins it — blockchain.

Blockchain, which uses complex cryptography to regulate and record transactions, is in the ascendancy, with millions of dollars flowing into the technology and banks lining up to experiment with it.

Meanwhile, many of the leading consumer bitcoin companies — digital wallets, payment processors, and exchanges — are being forced to adjust or rethink their business models in the face of slower than expected consumer uptake.

"It’s naive to think there will only be one blockchain"

According to Jeremy Millar — the co-author of one of the most extensive reports to date on the corporate ecosystem emerging around the digital currency — the issue is that the markets for bitcoin and blockchain have already fundamentally divided.

"I’m looking at this in terms of market development and what I’m saying is the market of people who buy blockchain to implement financial services is fundamentally different as a market to bitcoin," Millar told Business Insider.

Millar, a partner at boutique technology investment bank Magister Advisors, recently co-wrote an extensive, 75-page report on the two sectors.

"A cryptocurrency market will have exchanges, it will have brokers, it will have speculators, it will have payment networks," he says. "The features of blockchain as a market are institutional adoption, integration with existing business processes, IT planning and budgeting, evaluating technology replacement."

In other words, the two products are pitching at different audiences — one to consumers and currency speculators, the other to corporate IT departments.

The crucial element in understanding all this is that while bitcoin's blockchain is the best known, it's not the only one. Blockchain is shorthand for the complex cryptography-based software underpinning the network. It regulates transactions and records who owns which bitcoins. It's faster, cheaper, and quicker than traditional payment methods.

But the technology can be duplicated with private blockchains, and Millar says: "I think it’s a bit naive to think there will only be one flavour of blockchain."

So even if blockchain becomes the norm in banking, it doesn't necessarily mean bitcoin will rise with it.

"Emerging markets are much more bitcoin native"

But Millar thinks bitcoin will find a home in emerging markets. He says: "Emerging markets are much more bitcoin native. Look at an area like Argentina, where there are capital controls, challenges in the local financial institutions, and there’s a need to do cross border payments.

"If I am running a commerce warehouse in the Philippines or Argentina, my supply chain even at a small scale is going to have many currencies and many areas where there could well be capital controls, fluctuating exchange rates, volatility, what have you.

"In those environments, the ability to get into bitcoin — the ability to get out of the local currency into something that’s portable — has value in and of itself. For me and you here in London, getting into bitcoin doesn’t offer us much value."

In this case, bitcoin's global scale is a unique advantage over any rival digital currency using blockchain technology. Millar says that while he expects there to be multiple blockchains, he thinks there will be only one dominant digital currency. And, barring any big upset, that will be bitcoin.

He continues: "I’ve talked to people who are building bitcoin services in places like Argentina. They’re not appealing to hipsters. They’re trying to help people manage their pay roll or supply chain.

"When you go and talk to the exchanges and the wallets they say the same thing — 90% of bitcoin is held by wealthy individuals for speculation. But 90% of the transactions are commercial transactions." And most of those transactions are coming from emerging markets.

"If you were to start TransferWise today, you would look at bitcoin"

That's not to say there isn't going to be a bitcoin market in the UK, but Millar believes it will look pretty different.

"What you’re going to see in Europe and North America is the development of bitcoin inside, and that is people who are building next generation financial services will be incorporating bitcoin at least in their strategic thinking in terms of payment rails and how they store value."

"You may or may not choose to use it, but if you were starting a consumer finance business today, particularly one around payments or exchanges of value, I believe you would have to look at bitcoin," Millar says.

The advantages offered by bitcoin from a business perspective — it's faster, cheaper, and gives you more control — will make it attractive to new consumer fintech businesses starting up. Once again, its the scale of bitcoin that gives it an advantage over rivals.

The founder of international payments startup TransferWise was recently dismissive of bitcoin, but Millar says: "I believe if you were to start TransferWise today, you would look at bitcoin."

"The existence proof of someone doing this is Circle in the US. Circle [a bitcoin-based payments app] is revolutionising the way people pay by creating the features of how people actually pay for things as a group. It’s actually much more like WhatsApp than traditional internet banking."

"You can [build that on traditional payment networks] but the reason why you integrate bitcoin is because you control the ledger, you control the exchange of value, and you cut out traditional payment rails to reduce costs and increase flexibility."

With this "bitcoin inside" set-up Millar envisages, bitcoin becomes almost invisible. It's effectively relegated from a currency to simply the mechanics of payment — under the hood rather than a logo on the dashboard.

Payments app Circle is right now trying to appeal to a wider audience by pitching the appeal of bitcoin to people who want to use dollars. Circle is effectively offering the benefits of the blockchain to people who don't want to use bitcoin.

If more businesses move this way it could anger bitcoin purists who see it as a revolutionary technology that deserves to be front and centre. It's also seen by many as an ideological tool. Still, it could also give bitcoin a much needed second wind in the west that could transform it into more than just an asset for speculators.

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NOW WATCH: Jim Cramer told us about his 'vicious' daily routine which starts at 3:45 AM and doesn't end until after 11:30 PM

Comcast announced this week that it has successfully tested the world's first DOCSIS 3.1 modem in Philadelphia.

That probably sounds like a mumbo-jumbo to you, so let's put it in simple terms. This means Comcast has figured out how to use its existing cable lines to deliver super-fast gigabit internet speeds without having to do major work on its current infrastructure. 

Gigabit internet is broadband that delivers download speeds of 1,000 megabits per second (Mbps) or better. That's at least 10 times faster than what you get today from your cable modem.

Usually, gigabit internet requires internet providers to install new fiber lines in the cities they serve. It's an expensive, lengthy process, and cable companies aren't always incentivized to invest that much in the technology.

But Comcast's technology appears to be more promising since a lot of the upgrades can be done with software enhancements to its existing infrastructure. It also means Comcast will be able to offer gigabit internet to its customers a lot sooner than other cable companies can.

Comcast says it'll start testing the new technology in more homes in 2016 and expand from there.

The breakthrough means a lot more for you other than faster internet speeds. And it's not all good.

It'll give Comcast the option to charge you more for a higher tier of premium internet service. And faster data speeds means customers are more likely to use more data each month, which plays into the company's long-term strategy of charging you based on how much you use.

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: The Comcast CEO says he’s not afraid of cord-cutters

 Gone are the days of the 40-hour work week that kept us at work eight hours a day. I find that most startup founders or business owners in Silicon Valley work 50-60 hours a week. Today, freelancing is becoming the accepted norm of the startup world. As more startups are starting to use the millions of freelancers, it’s driving more and more people to join the freelancer generation. Read More

Salesforce's $360 million deal to buy cloud software maker SteelBrick is its biggest acquisition in more than two years.

SteelBrick's quote-automating service is growing fast and could make Salesforce a more robust sales platform.

But some investors believe the deal could also be a sign of much bigger things to come next year: a more active M&A market in the cloud software space.

"This is kind of like a canary in a cold mine deal. I think 2016 will be a very interesting year from an M&A perspective," Jason Green, general partner of the VC firm Emergence Capital, told Business Insider.

And he thinks Google will be one of the companies doing the buying.

A new crop of cloud startups

Green's firm focuses on enterprise and cloud-based companies, and has had a lot of success over the years with early investments in cloud successes like Salesforce, Box, and Veeva

He noted that the market for buying fast-growing cloud software makers has been unusually slow over the past 18 months.

Part of it is because the first wave of red-hot cloud software startups has already been snatched up over the past few years. For example, SAP bought HR cloud service SuccessFactors for $3.4 billion in 2012, Microsoft got collaboration service Yammer for $1.2 billion in the same year, and Salesforce paid $2.5 billion to get marketing service ExactTarget two years ago. (SuccessFactors and Yammer were both Emergence investments.)

But that could change with a new crop of cloud software startups emerging quickly, Green said.

SteelBrick, for example, had its Series A funding in May 2014, and in less than 18 months raised more than $77 million, before Salesforce snapped it up for $360 million yesterday.

On top of that, the market for late-stage financing has been slowing down lately, with some of the private equity and hedge fund investors even marking down their equity value in high-valued startups like Dropbox and Zenefits. The public market hasn't been particularly friendly to cloud startups, either. 

"We’re now starting to see this kind of second wave of companies emerge," Green continued. "And with the IPO markets and some of the late stage financing becoming a little more questionable, I think companies are going to become much more aggressive on the M&A front."

Get ready for Google

This will cause the cash-heavy enterprise companies to find growth through acquisitions.

Green picked the obvious big names like Oracle, SAP, and Microsoft to become major buyers next year, but also pointed to Google as a potential sleeper in the enterprise space.

He stressed that Google has become a lot more aggressive in the enterprise, and its cloud solutions are popular among startups. Recently, Google bought a software startup called Bebop, a move that landed them its founder Diane Greene, who's considered one of the most influential people in the enterprise space.

"Google has made some big moves on the enterprise front, and they're going to unleash a lot of potential with that," Green said.

This isn't the first time we heard of this prediction. Tom Roderick, managing director of market research firm Sitfel, echoed the same idea when we spoke to him last month. He said most of the software acquisitions have been focused on private equity buyouts of old tech companies, like Informatica and Tibco, and less on fast-growth startups.

"It’s been too quite for too long for strategic M&A," Roderick told us. "For the next 6 months, you’re going to see some activity in M&A that adjusts the way people think about it."

SEE ALSO: Wall Street still thinks Microsoft could buy $50 billion Salesforce

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NOW WATCH: Jeb Bush goes off on Trump after scrapping his trip to Israel

By Andrew Prokop
While it’s not hard to recognize the benefits that these new gadgets will bring to our lives, there is a dark side to having all these devices Internet-connected.

Americans don't use electric kettles — or at least it's very rare. This is unlike in Britain, where electric kettles are standard for boiling water.

An electric kettle, which is typically made of plastic or steel, has a heating element on the bottom. The kettle is plugged into an electrical outlet, which powers the coil and heats up the water.

It looks like this:

Or this:

American mostly use stove-top kettles. The kettle is filled with water and then heated on a gas or electric stove. The water boils, producing steam, which then flows out of the kettle spout producing a whistle. The whistle signals that your water is ready and you should turn off the stove.

Here's that process in action:

I'm American, so when I moved to the UK, I was surprised that it was difficult to find the standard stove-top kettle that I had grown up with. They are almost all electric.

The reason for this appears to be related to the voltage in America, which is lower than the voltage in the UK. A physicist and science teacher in the UK explains this on his blog MrReid.org.

Most homes in the US operate on 100-127 volts, whereas the UK and many other countries use between 220 and 240 volts. The lower voltage in the US means that electric kettles would not heat water as quickly as they do in the UK. As a result, they haven't caught on in the US.

Mr. Reid gives this example:

To raise the temperature of one litre of water from 15°C to boiling at 100°C requires a little bit over 355 kilojoules of energy. An “average” kettle in the UK runs at about 2800 W and in the US at about 1500 W; if we assume that both kettles are 100% efficient† than a UK kettle supplying 2800 joules per second will take 127 seconds to boil and a US kettle supplying 1500 J/s will take 237 seconds, more than a minute and a half longer.

He concludes: "This is such a problem that many households in the US still use an old-fashioned stove-top kettle."

I'm not the only American who has wondered about our lack of electric kettles. There's an entire Reddit thread devoted to it.

One British person living in the US cited the voltage explanation but also wrote that "the culture for it isn't there," perhaps meaning that Americans drink less tea and aren't as fussed about how fast water gets boiled.

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NOW WATCH: The biggest security mistakes people make with online banking

If you're already doing everything online on your smartphone anyway, why pay for home broadband service?

That seems to be the conclusion of a growing number of Americans, particularly Millennials. According to the Pew Research Center, as charted here for us by Statista, the percentage of U.S. adults with home broadband has declined over the last two years, and is down six percentage points among adults 18 to 29. Meanwhile, the percentage of adults with a smartphone and no home broadband is rising, and jumped 7 percentage points among 18-to-29-year-olds since 2013. 

If you think this is just a temporary state of affairs, remember that 90% of Americans had landlines 10 years ago, according to Statista (based on a survey by the U.S. Center for Disease Control). Now, only half do.

SEE ALSO: Tech giants are paying a lot less tax than some of the biggest companies in the US

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LG introduced its latest robotic vacuum cleaner, the Turbo+, this week to compete with Roomba’s and Dyson’s robotic vacuums, Engadgetreported. The Turbo+ has a couple of new features including a “Home-Joy” feature, which allows users to direct the vacuum to clean a specific area through a smartphone app. The user just takes a picture of the area they want cleaned, and the Turbo+ cleans it.

LG also took a note from the from China-based Jisiwei’s S+ robotic vacuum cleaner by turning the vacuum into a home security system. The Turbo+ features three cameras, and sends photos to the owners' smartphone if it detects movement while they’re away. Turning the robot into a home security system makes sense given that home security is one of the most popular categories of smart home devices.

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Microsoft is hiking the price of both its upcoming Surface Hub models and is pushing the shipping date back, ZDNet reports.

The 84-inch model now costs $21,999 (£14,880), up from $19,999 (£13,460), while the 55-inch model costs $8,999 (£6,065), up from $6,999 (£4,700).

The shipping date has slipped to sometime in early 2016, according to Microsoft. The original shipping date was set for September 1 2015 but that was pushed back to January 1, which has now been pushed back again. 

The Surface Hub is, essentially, a giant touchscreen surface powered by Windows 10 that has a 4K screen. Microsoft is aiming the device — which weighs around 48kg for the 55-inch model and 127kg for the 84-inch model — at conference rooms as it comes with a built-in webcam. 

According to ZDNet, Microsoft did not give a clear reason for the hike in price beyond saying that the company is "finalising [its] manufacturing plan with a view towards delivering the best product experience." 

"After evaluating the market opportunity and considering the unique collaboration scenarios Surface Hub offers, we believe these are the right prices to drive the business and the category forward," said a spokesperson in a statement to ZDNet. 

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NOW WATCH: Mark Cuban explains why downloading Snapchat is a huge mistake

Google is working on a new "smart" messaging service that will be able automatically answer users' questions, sources with knowledge of the plans tell The Wall Street Journal's Alistair Barr.

Although the report is sparse on concrete details, the app sounds like a combination of Google's current Hangouts service — which lets users message their friends —and Facebook M, the virtual "personal assistant" which, in its beta phase, can complete tasks for users like ordering flowers or booking flights.

Facebook aims to build M so that the service will use artificial intelligence to complete various tasks, although its early incarnation relies on humans, who oversee the AI.

Google is also looking to weave AI into the mix. The app would take advantage of the company's artificial intelligence capabilities and web search skills, according to the WSJ.

For example, Google's new service could let someone switch between texting a friend and asking a chatbot to offer a restaurant suggestion based on their prior preferences, in the same thread.

As more people relegate their smartphone usage time to staying within apps, a new messaging service would be a way for Google to keep them using a form of its search engine.

"Instead of typing a query into Google’s search engine, users will type questions as text messages, to which chatbots will respond," the WSJ reports.

The report also says that Google would most likely let other developers build chatbots that could integrate with its service, similar to how Facebook has built an app store within its Messenger chat app.

It's unclear how the new service could integrate with Google Now on Tap, which uses information that's on someone's screen to show them related details, apps, or actions.

Business Insider reached out to Google and will update when we hear back.

SEE ALSO: A Google designer explains why it changed one of its most popular products from a black stick to a brightly colored hockey puck

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NOW WATCH: The US Post Office will now email your mail before it’s delivered

Most companies could still read your messages if needed.

Tokyo police have adopted a new system for dealing with illegal drones. They now have a fleet of drone catchers, each equipped with a 10-foot net that can capture a drone without letting it fall to the ground. 

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In less than two years, Slack turned itself into a massively popular business-messaging app worth $2.8 billion.

Now, Slack wants to be more than just a work-messaging app.

It wants to be a broader platform that grows its software into a central hub for all work communications.

It also wants to be an investor.

On Tuesday, the 2-year-old startup launched a new $80 million VC fund that will primarily invest in startups building apps on top of Slack, and an app store called App Directory, where users can download third-party apps that integrate with Slack.

"We really want to encourage all kinds of different applications on our platform," Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield told Business Insider. "We've worked with a number of big companies to do integrations, but we're also investing in really cool little things starting up."

The new fund is backed by Slack with additional capital coming from its partners, including Accel, Andreessen Horowitz, Index Ventures, Kleiner Perkins, Spark, and Social Capital. It will primarily make investments worth $100,000 to $250,000 in seed-stage startups that make Slack their core foundation.

That means you'll see more apps like Howdy, an app that runs status-update meetings for teams through Slack's built-in bot, which automatically collects feedback.

April Underwood, Slack's head of platform, told us it's already made three investments out of the new fund, including Howdy, and that it will make investments regularly throughout the year.

"We think there's a real opportunity for these companies to build a sustainable business on top of our platform," Underwood said.

The App Directory is launching with 150 different apps that integrate with Slack's platform, including Dropbox, Google Drive, and Twitter. There will also be lesser-known apps, like Blockspring, which makes it easy to pull in data from outside sources and answer questions right within a Slack chat window. A lot of these apps will have a conversational UI, taking advantage of Slack's communication-based design.

"There's so much to explore by offering capital and support to these companies, and we'll see more of it, which means we'll see more apps on the platform, and our customers will get more value out of Slack," Butterfield said.

Textbook enterprise play

Slack's move to launch its own app directory is a textbook play that many enterprise-software companies follow.

Salesforce, for example, has a huge app marketplace called AppExchange, where Salesforce users can download third-party apps that can be used right within the Salesforce platform. Some of those apps are only available on Salesforce, but they're still able to build a sustainable business because Salesforce has such a huge userbase.

Smaller players like Box, Zendesk, and Atlassian all have their own app marketplaces, too.

By offering app marketplaces, these platforms become a central destination for business workers, making their products more valuable — and keeping customers using them longer, rather than switching to different services. Butterfield conveyed a similar idea, saying, "If we can make our customers' use of their existing tools even better because they use Slack, then that's a huge win."

Launching a corporate VC is also a common tactic among large enterprise players, although you rarely see it from a company of Slack's size. Salesforce has become one of the most active VC firms lately, while Cisco and Intel also have sizable investment arms. It lets the companies to work closely with startups, and often leads to acquisitions, too.

The bigger trend: ChatOps

From a more technical perspective, Slack's new platform ties into a growing trend called "ChatOps," where companies are increasingly combining everyday apps with chat programs.

In a nutshell, what ChatOps does is allowing users to access third-party app content right within the chat programs, bypassing the need to open up another app to see it.

For example, Slack has made it possible to call a Lyft cab directly within its app using its popular "slash commands," while Slack rival HipChat just announced an Uber integration that lets you call a cab without having to leave the chat app.

"Imagine every software tool that you needed to use, their notifications, it just came in through Slack," Underwood said. "That's part of the reason teams have fallen in love with Slack."

But the overarching goal is to continue to expand its user base, and Slack seems to be doing well on that front, too. It now has 2 million daily active users, and 570,000 paid members. Just two months ago, it said it had 1.7 million daily active users and 470,000 paid users. It's why Butterfield wants to see more Slack-integrated apps.

"People spend hours on Slack," Butterfield said. "You tend to have Slack open at work, so that's the perfect place to have these other apps available and these integrations to be happening because you're already looking at it."

SEE ALSO: The next big thing in computing is called ChatOps, and it's already happening inside Slack

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NOW WATCH: Stewart Butterfield, co-founder of Slack and Flickr, on two beliefs that have brought him the greatest success in life

The negotiators have created a landmark deal. But does it go far enough to stop environmental catastrophe?

After weeks of negotiation, the 195 countries present at the Paris Climate talks have come to an agreement on how the world's governments can combat climate change.

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In schools, Chromebooks have leapfrogged Apple and Microsoft devices in just a few years.

Fleep — a messaging platform launched by six Estonians, including four former Skype engineers — is set to launch a new feature as it looks to go viral in the same way as Whatsapp.

Fleep allows people to IM each other, and keep files and pinned notes synced across multiple devices. In order to message someone over Fleep, the user needs to enter the recipient’s email address or Fleep username.

Ultimately, Fleep wants to change the way businesses and individuals communicate. "Leave email behind and manage all conversations with your team, partners and clients in Fleep," the company writes on its website.

Fleep CEO Henn Ruukel, who used to be director of engineering within the Skype for Business group, told Business Insider today about the changes he is making to help Fleep go viral.

With just 35,000 users across Europe and the US, Fleep has a long way to go if it wants to scale to the same size as platforms like Whatsapp and Skype.

Firstly, the company, which employs 15 people in total, has overhauled its app within the last few weeks with a completely new user interface (Fleep 2.0) that Ruukel hopes will make people want to share it with their friends.

But that's not all. Ruukel realises that Fleep needs to further expand its product and offer deeper integration with other messaging services if he wants to get more users.

Currently users can only send and receive email to their Fleep ID’s (e.g. sam@fleep.io) but that's about to change.

"In early 2016, Fleep will launch an email integration feature, which will enable users to send and receive email messages in Fleep while maintaining their existing email addresses," said Ruukel, adding that he's optimistic the new feature will help Fleep to ramp up its user numbers.

Fleep also hopes to scale up its business by raising another round of funding over the next 6 months. So far the company has raised €1.9 million (£1.34 million), including an undisclosed amount from Skype cofounder Jaan Tallinn.

"I really don’t like email as a communication method and there’s a good reason for this," Tallinn told Techworld in April. "It was invented in the 70s and it was intended for much lower volumes."

He continued: "Fleep is kind of like Skype IM on steroids because it was developed by people who were behind Skype IM in the first place. All the familiar mechanisms have been imported and it works very much like Skype IM, except that it’s much better.

"We absolutely have to get more people using it. I think in terms of features it’s already up there with the big players of the world but in terms of users, no."

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BlackBerry is shutting down BBM Meetings on February 10th 2016, according to a blog post.

BBM Meetings launched in late 2014 and offered an alternative to other enterprise-focused meeting software, such as Cisco's WebEx, that ran across BlackBerry, iOS, Android, Windows, and Windows Phones.

The killer feature of Meetings was the way it leveraged other BlackBerry services, such as the platform's security features, to make conference calling easier. Much of the information needed to set up a HD video or voice call was already present on a BlackBerry handset, cutting out many of the steps needed on rival services.

The pricing — $12.50 (£8.37) a month per host for fewer than 25 participants — is far cheaper than rival systems.

BlackBerry gave no reason for shuttering the service, simply stating that it would be coming to a close next year. The company offered a way for customers to transition to Zoom Communications, a rival service that deals exclusively in web-based meetings.

BlackBerry is moving to become a software company, after sales of its smartphones have fallen to under 1% of total shipments, according to analysts. The company is aiming for $500 million (£334 million) in software-related revenue by March 2016. 

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 Enterprise software company Atlassian, which filed a month ago to go public on NASDAQ, has disclosed how much its shares will cost. In a SEC filing, the company said its 20 million shares will be priced between $16.50 and $18.50. Read More

Sorry, cars: The bike always gets to go first.

It really must be heaven to be a cyclist in Denmark. You get lovely, dedicated infrastructure, like this new bridge. You get cities that run analyses showing how bikes are good for people, and cars aren't. And now, if you live in Aarhus, you can get a special tag to help beat the traffic lights.

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The 2016 edition is perhaps the most progressive in a series that has been leaning more and more that way in recent years.

If a certain notorious pin-up calendar appears to contain a wider variety of body types, personalities, and levels of nakedness this year, you're not just seeing things.

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A security researcher accessed personal information stored by Hello Barbie, a Wi-Fi-enabled talking Barbie doll.

Toy manufacturers are learning a hard lesson about Wi-Fi-enabled dolls, action figures, and building sets: They can be hacked pretty easily.

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Over the weekend, the NSA finally ended its contentious phone metadata spying program.

It was first brought to public scrutiny after NSA contractor-turned-whistleblower Edward Snowden leaked documents to journalists about the scale of the US government's spying, provoking a global debate over privacy and security.

Though hailed as a hero by privacy activists, Snowden is viewed as a traitor by many in the US establishment, and would face trial if he returned home (he's currently in exile in Russia.)

But his leaks have provoked some political changes.

Key among these is the USA Freedom Act. It means that the NSA is no longer directly collecting millions of Americans' phone records. It actually came into effect this summer — but there was an 180-day grace period. That period ended just before midnight on Saturday, November 28.

If the NSA wants this data, it will now have to apply to a FISA (foreign intelligence service) court to get it from one of the phone companies. Ewan MacAskill, a Guardian journalist who did some of the earliest reporting on Snowden's leaks, describes it as a "first step but a modest one." And he points out a "major" problem for privacy activists: "The reform applies only to phone records. The NSA can continue to harvest bulk communications from the internet and social media."

Reuters reports that the metadata the NSA has hoovered up over the last five years "will be preserved for 'data integrity purposes' through February 29 [2016]."

So the NSA is no longer collecting phone records directly — but it can access them with judicial authorisation, and it will continue to access internet records directly. These are, arguably, even more important than phone records, as people spend ever-more time online. The battle for privacy activists isn't over yet.

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NOW WATCH: This real-life 'thinking cap' could help you learn faster

People in China are falling in love with Microsoft's Xiaoice, a project that translates as "Little Bing," according to GeekWire. 

The software is used by more than 40 million people and gathers real-world data on how people communicate in online forums, social networks, and chat rooms to respond to queries.

Essentially, Microsoft has created a more personable version of Cortana or Siri. 

"Xiaoice, by and large in terms of development of artificial intelligence, is already a huge milestone," said Dr. Hsiao-Wuen Hon, who leads the project at Microsoft. 

According to Hon, people are literally falling in love with "Little Bing." New York Times reporter John Markoff noted at the GeekWire Summit that 25% of users — around 10 million people — have said "I love you" to the service.  

"We're trying to have a emotional connection with user," said Hon. "While it gives you useful information, a lot of times it just wants to be your friend." 

Apple's Siri has a personality which can often be humorous, but Microsoft appears to have taken it a step further. The New York Times looked at interactions with Xiaoice and found that it can identify personal messages — such as pictures of dogs — and carry out playful discussions. 

"Little Bing" is available in China first because Microsoft R&D thought of the idea there, according to Hon. There are no plans to export the software but it is possible. 

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