Davemichels

Now that Facebook will no longer let you send messages through its main mobile app, users are being forced to download and install Facebook Messenger — and they’re not happy about it. 

In just a few days since the big split, Facebook Messenger has soared to the No. 1 spot in the iOS App Store — but it also has an overwhelming number of one-star ratings. Nearly 94% of those who rated the app gave it just one star. The Google Play store works a bit differently, as Mashable’s Karissa Bell points out, but even recent reviews of the Messenger app are mostly negative.

Here are a few choice samples from some iOS reviewers:

There is nothing that I could add to my messages that would make it so special that it deserves its own app. Even if I were perfectly articulate, completely deep and thought and could muster words that your strongest vocabulary couldn’t even fathom. I could be messaging someone on Facebook with the secrets to ColdFusion, extraterrestrial life, the origin of God, and who killed JFK, and it still wouldn’t deserve its own app. 

Thanks for making billions of Facebook users have to go out of their way to download this stupid app just to send messages. I’m sure most of us are quite informed on how many privacy risks are associated with this “mandatory download.” I have to let Facebook have access to my microphone and camera just to send messages like I was already doing without risking my privacy?

They’ve hit a new low with this app. It’s a pointless waste of space. I was perfectly happy with the Facebook mobile app, as it satisfied my needs perfectly .What I did not need was a whole other app that literally does nothing the previous app couldn’t do, nags me to allow push notifications (not happening) every time I try to use it, and ultimately just takes up more space on my phone. It’s as though every facet of the app was designed to be as obnoxious as possible.

Mobile analytics firm App Annie says this negativity towards Facebook Messenger is not exclusive to the US; almost every other country’s App Store has a 1-2 star average. 

So why are users so unhappy? Well, besides being forced to download and use another app on their phone, there seem to be some major privacy concerns among users. This Huffington Post article by Sam Fiorella outlined all of the permissions Facebook Messenger asks its users before they can use the service:

• Allows the app to change the state of network connectivity
• Allows the app to call phone numbers without your intervention. This may result in unexpected charges or calls. Malicious apps may cost you money by making calls without your confirmation.
• Allows the app to send SMS messages. This may result in unexpected charges. Malicious apps may cost you money by sending messages without your confirmation.
• Allows the app to record audio with microphone. This permission allows the app to record audio at any time without your confirmation.
• Allows the app to take pictures and videos with the camera. This permission allows the app to use the camera at any time without your confirmation.
• Allows the app to read you phone's call log, including data about incoming and outgoing calls. This permission allows apps to save your call log data, and malicious apps may share call log data without your knowledge.
• Allows the app to read data about your contacts stored on your phone, including the frequency with which you've called, emailed, or communicated in other ways with specific individuals.
• Allows the app to read personal profile information stored on your device, such as your name and contact information. This means the app can identify you and may send your profile information to others.
• Allows the app to access the phone features of the device. This permission allows the app to determine the phone number and device IDs, whether a call is active, and the remote number connected by a call.
• Allows the app to get a list of accounts known by the phone. This may include any accounts created by applications you have installed.

As one commenter on that Huffington Post story points out, Facebook needs many of these permissions to send audio and video messages, and it can make calls because Facebook is trying to connect its massive network to your local contacts lists to make communication easier. 

The problem is, the Messenger app doesn’t actually improve the messaging experience. Sure, there are extra sound effects for your actions now, and it’s easier to find your phone’s contacts that use the Messenger app, but the chat feature felt simpler and more responsive when there was still an option to use it directly within the main Facebook app.

Maybe people just miss Chat Heads.

SEE ALSO: Samsung Has Lost Its Grip On The Biggest Smartphone Market In The World

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Reuters / Petar Kujundzic

China will force real-name registrations on users of instant messaging tools and require public accounts wishing to publish or reprint political news to seek prior approval, state media said on Thursday.

Last year, China launched a campaign to clamp down on online rumour mongering and ‘clean up’ the internet. The crackdown has led to an exodus of users from Twitter-like microblog platforms such as Weibo Corp’s Weibo after authorities detained hundreds of outspoken users.

The latest restrictions will likely affect hugely popular mobile messaging apps like Tencent’s WeChat, which has almost 400 million users. Other instant messaging tools include Tencent’s QQ, Alibaba’s Laiwang app, NetEase’s Yixin and Xiaomi’s Miliao.

Accounts that haven’t been approved by the instant messaging service provider are forbidden to publish or reprint political news, the official Xinhua news agency said. It added that service providers must verify and publicly mark accounts that can publish or reprint political news.

Users must also sign an agreement with the service provider when they register, promising “to comply with the law, the socialist system, the national interest, citizens’ legal rights, public order, social moral customs, and authenticity of information,” Xinhua said.

These new regulations could have a similar chilling effect to the one seen on Weibo last year.

The rules “could cool down the traffic of WeChat public accounts and discourage journalists from setting up individual WeChat public accounts,” said Fu King-wa, an assistant professor at the University of Hong Kong’s Journalism and Media Studies Centre.

Tencent and Xiaomi declined to provide immediate comment by telephone. Alibaba declined to comment, while NetEase was not available for immediate comment by phone.

As apps like WeChat have grown in popularity, they have increasingly come under the ruling Communist Party’s gaze.

“WeChat, and social media, are now truly mass media and regulated as such,” said Duncan Clark, chairman of Beijing-based tech advisory BDA.

“There are challenges of course in regulating (WeChat), but the Party will never loosen up,” said Clark.

On Thursday, South Korea said Chinese authorities had blocked messaging apps KakaoTalk, operated by South Korean Kakao Talk, and Line, a Japanese-based subsidiary of South Korea’s Naver Corp, as part of efforts to fight terrorism, the first official explanation of service disruptions in China that began a month ago.

Other services like online video streaming sites run by Youku Tudou, Sohu.com, Baidu and Tencent have also been targeted by censors in recent months.

Tencent shares were down 3.5 percent in Hong Kong trading on Thursday, versus a 0.8 percent drop in the Hang Seng Index.

(Editing by Ryan Woo)

ABI Research estimates that AOSP (or forked Android) is the fastest growing mobile operating system with a total share of units shipped of about 20%. This is not surprising considering that most Chinese vendors don’t include standard Android into their products. Indeed the current leader in China, Xiaomi has its own take on Android and includes a unique UI and set of services. This is also not a new pattern, Amazon’s fork of Android has been in development for many years and powers the second most used tablet in the US.

If one looks at the volumes of smartphones shipped by vendor, the most rapidly growing (Huawei, Lenovo, Xiaomi, ZTE, Coolpad and “others”) are likely to be using forked versions of Android.

The reasons for this are many: a reluctance to deal with Google’s obligations,  Microsoft’s IP licensing costs^[1] , potential litigation, politics (including bans on Google services in certain markets), etc. But the most likely reason is flexibility. Vendors competing on price and localization are looking to move quickly against each other and can’t wait for blessings from above. Belonging to some “Alliance” and all that it entails is just too much to ask for companies that are, so to say, delicate.

The result is that the “more open” version of Android is beginning to threaten the “less open” version of Android. China is already lost to OHA but India where penetration is still very low is up for grabs. Into this fray Google launched “One” a more low-end friendly version of sanctioned Android, hoping to retain opportunity.

The value of a singular Android version is not just being Google-friendly but also being better managed and more BOM-friendly. Google is trying to solve the control issue with ease of use, but still retaining control There will be alternatives however which are both easy and “open”^[2]. It seems that there is an opportunity for a hardware-independent vendor to take AOSP and provide a complete solution to local phone brands so they don’t need to expend efforts on integration. A non-Google One, so to speak.

Why it’s likely is that openness in software makes sense when parts of the stack become commoditized. Google took advantage of the commoditization of operating systems (i.e. Linux) to deliver non-open services on top. However, it’s inevitable that some of those very services will also be commoditized and therefore that the portions of the stack which sustain Google will be forked as well.

Notes:

1. which even Samsung seems to be eschewing
2. or Free as in speech

Gmail now makes it easier to "unsubsubscribe" from promotional emails sent by brands, social networks and discussion boards. 



Now when a sender includes an “Unsubscribe” link in a promotions, social or forums message, as Gmail allows users to categorize email messagges, Gmail will surface it to the top, right next to the sender address. 



No more scrolling around to the bottom of messages to find that option. 

You know that bag of chips sitting on your kitchen counter? It's "listening" to all the sounds in your room, and if the right visual filming equipment looks at it, other people can can hear inside your room, too.

Yes, they can hear the sounds simply by looking at the bag, even through a sound-proof glass door, no sound recording needed whatsoever.

"That's the results of the astounding visual microphone," project done by researchers at MIT, reports by Sarah Lewin for IEE Spectrum's blog.

It works like this: All sound creates vibrations. Those vibrations move your eardrum and that's why you can hear.

Sound vibration can also microscopically move other objects in the room. The researchers used a high-speed camera to film such objects and wrote an algorithm to translate the tiny movements captured on film back into the sounds that created them.

Some objections captured visual sounds better than other. For instance a bag of chips, great; a potted plant, mediocre; a soda can, bad.

The researchers were able to re-create the sounds, even when filming an object through a sound-proof glass door.

Here's one example. A man recited "Mary Had A Little Lamb" in a room with a bag of chips. It sounded like this (video below takes about 10 seconds):

They filmed a bag of chips through a sound proof glass door and re-created the sounds. This is what they heard:

Amazing.

The obvious implications are for video surveillance, solving crimes, and maybe spying. But who knows what kinds of creating ways talking chip bags can be used? Time will tell. The researchers plan to release the code that makes this work on the project’s website.

That website also has more samples of the types of things they were able to hear by filming objects in a room.

Here's the full YouTube video explanation of the project, which was uploaded on Tuesday and is already starting to go viral.

SEE ALSO: Take A Look At This Fantastic New Condom Funded By Bill Gates

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Asa Mathat

AOL beat Wall Street’s Q2 revenue and profit numbers. And, like the last few quarters, the company says that its content business — sites like Huffington Post and TechCrunch — was profitable, if you’re willing to accept a fuzzy definition of profit.

But as always, the most amazing thing about AOL’s business is the thing that drives AOL’s business: Millions of people, who started paying the company a monthly fee for Internet access more than a decade ago, who continue to pay the company a monthly fee for Internet access, even though they likely aren’t getting Internet access from AOL anymore.

AOL doesn’t break out precise earnings numbers for this business, but it gives you enough hints to understand that it’s enormously profitable. As it should be!

Tim Armstrong’s company says its subscription business generated $143 million in “Adjusted OIBDA” – its proxy for operating income — last quarter. That’s more than the $121 million in Adjusted OIBDA that the entire company generated.

Here’s how it makes that money: Getting a shrinking number of subscribers — 2.34 million this quarter, down from 3.62 million at the beginning of 2011 — to pay an increasing amount — the average AOL subscriber now pays $20.86 per month, up from around $18 a few years ago.

I’d like to say I can’t believe this is real. But then again, I’m the guy who still pays Netflix for a DVD subscription, and I haven’t played a DVD in years.

An Austrian "class action" suit against the social network is proving very successful in picking up participants -- so much so that the suit's organizers will soon impose a cap so they can process applications.

More than 20,000 people are now suing Facebook in Europe over privacy originally published by Gigaom, © copyright 2014.

Continue reading….

Microsoft's revenues from the Surface line are up, which is good news. But the actual cost to produce those revenues shows the company still has a way to go before considering Surface a success. Will it stay the course like it did Xbox?

How much has Microsoft lost on its Surface line? $1.7B by one estimate originally published by Gigaom, © copyright 2014.

Continue reading….

IBM’s chip-manufacturing unit has been struggling so poorly in recent years that Big Blue was willing to pay up to $1 billion to get rid of it, Bloomberg reported Monday.

According to the report, IBM had offered GlobalFoundries $1 billion in cash to take over its chip-making business, but the deal fell through when GlobalFoundries asked for $2 billion instead.

Earlier reports had indicated that it was the other way around, with GlobalFoundries offering $1 billion to buy the business.

The chip-manufacturing unit is a cash-bleeding business for IBM, having lost roughly $1.5 billion last year, according to Bloomberg. It recently lost deals to produce chips for Sony and Microsoft’s video game consoles, and is seeing less demand from IBM as the company is shifting its focus away from servers, reports the Wall Street Journal.

GlobalFoundries is reported to have almost no interest in IBM’s aging facilities. The deal is more about acquiring IBM’s talent and intellectual properties, the report said.

IBM’s CEO Ginni Rometty has been focused on restructuring the entire organization after posting losses for nine consecutive quarters. It sold its low-end server business for $2.3 billion to Lenovo earlier this year, and is in the process of laying off 13,000 employees worldwide.

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Apple has lost yet another battle to Android. 

According to the latest data from Net Applications (via 9to5Mac), Android usage is now higher than iOS, Apple's iPhone and iPad operating system. Net Applications measures web traffic across 160 million monthly visits.

For the longest time, Apple CEO Tim Cook would mock Android — Android tablets in particular — by saying no one uses them. Last year he said, "I don't know what these other tablets are doing. They must be in warehouses, or on store shelves, or maybe in somebody's bottom drawer!"

But, he can't make fun of Android any more. Web traffic to Android is higher than iOS for the first time in history. This shows that Android users are getting more engaged with their devices, using them more and more.

What does this mean for Apple in the long run? It's hard to say. Android has been clobbering iOS in market share for years now, but Apple has been fine. 

Apple is still minting cash, and the iPhone business continues to grow at a double digit pace on annual basis. 

The risk for Apple in any of these situations is that developers abandon the platform for Android, which has more users, and, now, a more engaged user base. If Apple loses developer interest, then it will have worse applications, and iOS becomes a second-tier platform.

Apple has hundreds of millions of users and millions of developers. There are no signs that developers are getting bored with the platform.

So, this is mostly just an embarrassment for Apple right now. 

SEE ALSO: Xiaomi is now the number one smartphone maker in China

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Google has a huge public cloud. But, inquiring minds want to know, just how enterprise worthy is it?

True or false: Google Cloud is enterprise-ready originally published by Gigaom, © copyright 2014.

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A newly-developed technique could easily be used to "tap" a room by doing nothing more than studying the super-small movements of objects in the room as sound waves cause them to vibrate.

Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Microsoft, and Adobe have engineered a computer algorithm that can reverse engineer the audio present in a room by analyzing the super-tiny vibrations of objects in that room, according to the MIT News Office.

When sound waves hit an object, they cause that object to vibrate very subtlely. Close examination of vibrations, however — say, of the leaves on a plant — is now all that is required to get a sense of what was said or heard.

Researchers were successfully able to turn objects — like a potato chip bag, aluminum foil, and even the surface of a glass of water — into "visual microphones," where movements revealed the sounds they were being exposed to, even when looked at "from 15 feet away through soundproof glass."

Since the vibrations are so subtle, the technique was thought to require use of higher-grade cameras that can capture 2,000 to 6,000 frames per second, versus traditional cameras that usually capture 30 or 60fps. But an oddity in the way most consumer cameras are designed means the relevant data is still present in the captured video to carry out the algorithm with useful results, despite not recording at an extremely high frame rate.

"We’re recovering sounds from objects," said Abe Davis, first author on the paper summing up the work. "That gives us a lot of information about the sound that’s going on around the object, but it also gives us a lot of information about the object itself, because different objects are going to respond to sound in different ways."

The demo video below walks you through the particulars. It's pretty crazy to think that it's reliable enough to recognize familiar songs and correctly ascertain spoken words and phrases.

SEE ALSO: This Father-And-Son Entrepreneurial Team Makes Literal Maps For World Domination

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Apple’s Siri is not the only mobile virtual assistant in town. There’s Google Now for Android devices, Cortana for Microsoft’s Windows Phone and plenty of third-party “artificial intelligence” apps that try to make your mobile calendar or contact lists smarter.

The most formidable of these Siri competitors is Google Now. But even for Android power users, it can feel a bit nebulous.

Unlike Siri, which only runs on iOS, Google Now runs on a variety of devices, and might work differently across different smartphones and operating systems. And while Siri has a dedicated button, Google Now runs as a kind of intelligent layer under other applications on the phone. In other words, even when you’re not saying “Okay, Google,” Google Now will still cue up info for you.

It’s also tightly integrated into Google Search — in fact, Google Now exists within the Google Search app, which can make things even more confusing.

So, as a follow-up to Bonnie Cha’s Re/code column about Siri a couple weeks ago, this column is a series of tips and tricks that might help users understand and fully utilize Google Now.*

 

First, the basics

Google Now is free. It runs on any smartphone running Android 4.1 or later (and on some other devices, which I’ll explain below). If your phone doesn’t have Google Now preinstalled, you can set it up by downloading the Google Search app to your phone.

This is where you can “access” Google Now, although once you’ve opted in, Google Now will also show you alerts and reminders without your opening the app. It can also be accessed via voice control from your phone’s home screen. If you simply say, “Okay, Google,” the app launches. On some hardware, like Google’s own Nexus 5, you can also swipe left from the home screen and see your Google Now data, but this is only on certain phones. (On the Samsung Galaxy S5 that I’ve been using, a swipe from the left brings me to a Samsung-made Flipboard-like app instead.)

In many ways, Google Now works similarly to Siri. For the uninitiated: You can dictate texts and emails, ask for driving directions, have it read you your daily schedule, book reservations for some restaurants, and search for facts and trivia.

Okay, Google. Now for the fun stuff.

Google Now hasn’t solved traffic yet, but …

… it is supposed to help you with your commute. Once Google Now has figured out where you live and where you work — and it does this automatically, based on your daily habits — it will regularly show you an information “card” that estimates your commute based on time of day and location. You can make this even more precise by telling the app whether you normally get around by car, bike, walking or train.

To do this, go into Google Now, scroll all the way to the bottom of your cards, and tap the magic wand. Then, in the Customize menu, select “Everything else,” and there you’ll see an option to tell Google how you usually get around. It will begin to calculate your commute based on this information. Unfortunately, though, there’s no way to select more than one, if you happen to use multiple methods of transport.

Of course I’m always this put-together after a red-eye

Google Now is also supposed to help you look like an informed traveler, not the frazzled flier who says to a cabbie, “Um … hold on … let me check my email … I’ve got the address right here,” when you need to get to your hotel. Google Now pulls reservation information from your Gmail and from Airbnb, provided that you’re logged into that app, and it will show you a reservation card when you land at your destination. I haven’t been able to test this one yet — my reporting trip to Belize was somehow not approved — but, in theory, this should make traveling a little bit easier.

Listen up, sports fans

Love the Boston Red Sox? Or the San Jose Sharks? Or (my favorite basketball team) the Duke Blue Devils? You can tell Google Now which teams are your favorites, and it will push you news stories and real-time updates during games. To do this, go to the same customizable menu you used in tip No. 2 and tap on “Sports.” From there, you can set your teams.

Now you have no excuse for not picking up the milk

Like Siri, Google Now lets you set quick reminders for things. You can simply say, “Okay, Google … set a reminder for” whatever it is. But you can also attach a location to this reminder. So, when I said, “Okay, Google … remind me to pick up coffee filters next time I’m at Safeway,” the reminder popped up when I was in the vicinity of the grocery store. Bonus tip: Once you’ve picked up said groceries, you can use Google Now to set a timer while you’re cooking, by simply saying, “Okay, Google … set a timer for 20 minutes,” or however long you’d like it to be.

Drop a pin? That’s so 2011.

Google Now knows where you’ve parked your car. Try to let that creepy feeling roll off your back for a minute, while I explain how this works. Google Now uses your smartphone’s accelerometer to get a read on when you’ve been driving, when you’ve stopped driving, and when you’ve started walking, and from that, it determines your approximate parking spot. Still a little creeped out? It’s understandable. But this might be useful for people who often forget where they’ve parked.

Have I shown you all 76 of my vacation photos yet?

If you have auto-backup turned on for photos in your Google+ account, then the photos you take on your smartphone will be automatically uploaded to G+, and can be pulled up through Google Now based on geolocation. So if you say, “Okay, Google … show me my pictures from Paris,” Google Now is supposed to pull up all of your photos from that location. In order for this to work, you have to say “my photos” — otherwise it will show you Web photos of Paris.

In my experience, however, this didn’t work so well. I took a handful of photos in downtown San Francisco last week, which were auto-uploaded to G+, and when I asked Google Now to show me my photos from San Francisco, it told me there were no matching photos. Google says there could be technical quirks that might cause it to not work, and that the company is working to improve this feature.

“And then?”

While virtual-assistant software is getting smarter and smarter, most of the time you have to talk, well, like a robot in order for the app to understand what you’re saying. With Google Now, you can actually build on top of your searches to ask shorter, more natural-sounding subsequent questions. So, for example, I said to my Galaxy S5 smartphone, “Okay, Google … how tall is Michael Jordan?” And Google Now told me, “Michael Jordan is six feet six inches tall.” Next, I simply said, “Okay, Google … what about LeBron?” and the app told me that LeBron James is six feet eight inches tall. Next, I said, “Who does he play for?” and it told me the Cleveland Cavaliers.

Spreading the Google Now love

Google Now isn’t just for Android devices. It also runs on iOS through the downloadable Google Search app. The major caveat here, of course, is that it’s not nearly as powerful on iOS as it is on Android devices. For instance, Google Now on iOS won’t let you pull up contacts and call, text or email using voice commands.

“No, I meant tentacles …”

Google Now can also act as your translator. If you say something like “Okay, Google … How do I say in Spanish, ‘I need a doctor’?” the app will dictate the translation for you. This dictation feature works with most Latin-based languages — but not all languages. In fact, I tried translating something from English to Hungarian to communicate with the Google spokeswoman for Google Now, and the app gave me a text-based result, but didn’t read the phrase aloud for me.

Bonus tip: And you thought you’d never have to hear this song again

As with Siri, there are some “Easter eggs” in Google Now. Try asking it, “What does the fox say?” or saying, “Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right,” and you’ll get some fun responses. However, when you ask Google Now if it will marry you, or if it thinks you’re sexy, the responses come in the form of Google search results.

* Almost forgot about the asterisk, didn’t you? As with most of these types of software applications, it’s a give-and-take — meaning, you’ll have to give up your data if you want the full Google Now experience. When you go to activate Google Now on your Android phone, or you download the Google Search app for iPhone, the app will tell you that it needs to use and store your location for traffic alerts, directions and more, and use your synced calendars, Gmail, Chrome and other Google data to send you reminders and other suggestions. In other words, Google’s got a lot on you, and the data-sharing-averse will likely not want to opt in.

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"Urine and faeces to you", explains a dodgy sewer-manager in one of Reginald Hill's crime novels, "is bread and butter to me."

And he is not the only one. The BioEnergy Team, led by Ioannis Ieropoulos of the Bristol Robotics Laboratory (BRL) in Britain, are hoping to profit from working with the stuff too. They have developed a new technique to turn urine into electrical power--or "urine-tricity" as they call it.

People around the world produce an estimated 6.4 trillion litres of urine every year. BRL, a collaboration between the University of Bristol and the University of the West of England, want to make the most of this abundant resource. At the core of urine-tricity are microbial fuel cells (MFCs), which contain live microbes. When urine flows through an MFC the microbes consume it as part of their normal metabolic process. This, in turn, frees electrons. Electrodes within the cell gather these electrons and when they are connected to an external circuit a current is generated.

The BRL team mounted a series of cigar-tube-sized MFCs into a single unit. Attaching this unit to the outlet pipe from a urinal allowed a stream of fresh urine to flow through the cells. Fresh, in this context, is urine not more than a week old from a healthy individual of average height and weight. Previous experiments had fed the MFCs food scraps, dead insects and grass cuttings. But urine achieved a power output three times higher than any other waste product.

Why does urine work so well? In the earlier tests the microbes were quickly satiated on a heavy diet, Dr Ieropoulos believes. This was because the material contained a high proportion of organic matter. The low level of organic carbon in urine, combined with favourable acidity and electrical conductivity, made all the difference. Where earlier tests produced minimal power, urine had the vim to recharge commercially available batteries, including those in mobile phones.

It is early days, but the work--which is being supported by a number of organisations, including the Gates Foundation--shows that urine could have the potential to make a significant contribution to renewable energy. It might also provide a commercial incentive to build more toilets--over 2.5 billion people around the world have no access to proper sanitation. Dr Ieropoulos and his team now plan to examine the potential of faeces as a possible power source. They have a higher organic-carbon level, but the scientists think that might be an acceptable price to pay for abundant availability and a self-regulating supply chain.

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Microsoft and IBM lead revenue growth in cloud infrastructure services, according to Synergy Research Group.

Courtesy: Tesla

In its quarterly letter to shareholders on Thursday, Tesla announced it will be on pace to deliver 100,000 vehicles annually by the end of next year.

At least it will, “provided that we execute well and there are no serious macroeconomic shocks,” the Palo Alto, Calif., electric vehicle manufacturer said.

That’s nearly triple the 35,000 Model S sedans that the company expects to deliver this year.

Several things are enabling that huge boost of the business, which has generally had bigger problems with supply constraints than with demand for its vehicles.

First, the company is ratcheting up production capacity at its Fremont, Calif., plant.

“We are building a new final assembly line and adding more automation to our body shop,” the company explained. “With advancements in automation and efficiency, our new assembly line has the capacity to produce more than 1,000 vehicles per week [in Q4] and the flexibility to build both Model S and Model X [the company's forthcoming SUV]. Production on the new line begins next week after a shutdown for the transition.”

The company later noted that it planned to “continue to invest in additional production capacity, continued Model X and Model S development” and other areas.

In addition, the company struck a deal late last year with Panasonic for 1.8 billion lithium-ion cells over the next four years, tripling its supply arrangement for the batteries that power Tesla vehicles.

The big leap clearly caught the attention of analysts, several of whom asked about it on the subsequent investor call. Meanwhile, Chief Executive Elon Musk called it “arguably one of the most interesting things” in its earnings announcement.

The production will likely be almost evenly split between the Model S and the upcoming Model X, Musk said.

“We’re talking roughly a thousand units a week of each,” he said.

UBS analyst Colin Langan asked whether the increase means that the battery constraints that have restricted Tesla’s production in the past were now “limited.”

“We see a path to potentially 150,000 cars a year, maybe if you really push it 200,000,” with available supplies, Musk replied.

Any big leaps beyond that, however, won’t be possible until the company’s much anticipated Gigafactory comes online later in the decade, Musk added.

Tesla announced earlier on Thursday a finalized partnership with Panasonic to construct the plant. By 2020, the company expects the massive facility to crank out batteries for up to 500,000 cars per year.

Peshkova/Shutterstock

“A well spent day brings happy sleep” — Leonardo da Vinci

Everybody I know is trying to hack or disrupt something. My friend who interns in the fashion closet at a magazine is trying to green-juice her way to health. My roommate, a software developer, tracks every step he takes with a smartwatch. I co-founded Casper, a sleep startup that launched with a universally comfortable mattress this spring. So I thought: Why not hack sleep?

Actually, my team dared me to try it. Our CTO sent everyone a link to a Wikipedia article about polyphasic sleep, dared someone to take one for the team, and no one else was brave enough to accept the challenge.

Polyphasic sleep isn’t new. Some say that Leonardo da Vinci, the ultimate hacker, invented it. Thomas Jefferson, Napoleon and Thomas Edison were all said to be polyphasic sleepers. Buckminster Fuller wished that national leaders would embrace it; he was certain it would have shortened World War II.

I planned to follow the Uberman Sleep Schedule. I would sleep for only 20 minutes every four hours, for a grand total of two hours of sleep daily. Supposedly, that’s all the sleep you need. Supposedly, your body adjusts. You can have 22 productive hours a day … supposedly. As someone obsessed with efficiency, I thought, why not try to hack it?

Kramer tried it on “Seinfeld,” but even he wasn’t nuts enough to make it work.

When you sleep, your body passes through four stages in every 90-minute sleep cycle. Stage one is a light sleep, bridging the gap from wakefulness to sleep. In stage two, your breathing and heart rate are regular, but your body temperature drops. Stage three is Slow Wave sleep, when your body repairs and regenerates tissue and bone, and strengthens your immune system. Finally, you enter the fourth stage of Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep, when you convert short-term memory to long-term, and of course, dream.

The basic idea behind the Uberman Sleep Schedule is that you can train yourself to skip the early stages of sleep and head straight into REM. Uberman practitioners think that REM is the only important sleep stage, and that 65 percent of sleep is a waste of time. All you need is a quick dream, and you wake up feeling refreshed. I didn’t need much convincing — and to be honest, I’ve tried things based on less research.

Dr. Claudio Stampi of the Chronobiology Research Institute in Massachusetts has studied polyphasic sleep for years. His research pointed him to an interesting conclusion: “Sleep-deprived humans are better off snoozing like most animals — in brief, precisely timed naps.” Because sleep charges your batteries more at the beginning of the sleep cycle than at the end, frequent naps can effectively hack sleep.

Researchers like Stampi theorize that until about 10,000 years ago, humans were mostly polyphasic sleepers. We were too worried that we would be attacked by large prehistoric animals to sleep through the night. Then we created spears, found shelter in caves and started sleeping for longer stretches of time.

Up until the Industrial Revolution, we were biphasic sleepers, falling asleep early, waking around midnight for an hour or two, then going back to bed until morning. Robert Louis Stevenson, in “Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes,” writes about the “one stirring hour unknown to those who dwell in houses, when a wakeful influence goes abroad over the sleeping hemisphere, and all the outdoor world are on their feet.”

With the advent of artificial light and comfortable beds, we transitioned to our monophasic, eight-hour norm. Now, at the flip of a switch, we can stay up late for hours, permanently altering our circadian rhythms — perhaps even our genes.

There are people trying to disrupt their circadian rhythms even further. These are the modern polyphasic sleepers — crazy enough to think they only need two hours of sleep. I was one of them last night.

The Uberman Sleep Schedule is not new, but its name may be. A user on Everything2.com is credited with coining the term in December 2000. “I was a philosophy major at the time,” she wrote, under the name PureDoxyK. “And the friend I did this with had just finished forcing me to read a bunch of Nietzsche. So we called it the Uberman’s Sleep Schedule as a hat-tip.”

PureDoxyK and a blogger named Steve Pavlina are probably the two most successful polyphasic sleepers in recent history, each maintaining the Uberman schedule for about six months. Both of them are, for lack of a better word, nuts.

Pavlina carefully tracked his sleep for months. On day one, he experienced “some fatigue, lower concentration and occasional sleepiness,” but was relatively fine. By day eight, he said his naps felt like “taking care of a recurring biological need,” like “the urge to go to the bathroom.” Three months later, his brain sort of felt like it was “soaking in a warm jacuzzi.” Sometimes, he felt “so terrific” that he thought he “might explode from holding too much energy inside.”

PureDoxyK wrote that she “felt like a million bucks,” and continued to feel that way for six more months.

Polyphasic sleepers train their brains to skip directly to REM. Instead of the normal sleep cycle, their brains head straight to stage four, skipping the regenerative Slow Wave. According to some who have tried it, you only have to suffer through about a week of sleep deprivation until your brain catches up, adjusting to your new schedule and jumping to REM when your head hits the pillow.

This isn’t as insane as it sounds. In 1991, Stampi tracked one man as he slept for 30 minutes every four hours for 49 days. After 12 days, the man’s REM sleep was normal, but his brain got there far quicker than it had previously. It only took a few minutes from sleep onset, instead of the typical 90 minutes. Stampi proclaimed, “the whole architecture of sleep is changed.”

Our sleep architecture — the repeating sleep cycles — may be physiologically intended to take longer than necessary. If the night was dangerous for early humans, we may have adapted to stay asleep longer than we needed for memory consolidation, in order to stay out of harm’s way.

And while the night isn’t quite so dangerous anymore, polyphasic sleepers may be doing themselves a physical disservice by staying awake for 22 hours a day. According to a study by the International Agency for Research on Cancer, disrupting the circadian rhythm can be “carcinogenic to humans.” It can also hurt the immune system and lead to high cholesterol, heart disease and obesity.

Miraculously, health problems don’t seem to be the reason why people stop sleeping polyphasically. PureDoxyK stopped because she got a full-time job that wouldn’t let her take naps every four hours. Steve Pavlina wrote that the “#1 reason I decided to call it quits” was simply because the rest of the world is monophasic. They both make it very clear that they never got sick during their sleep experiments. Pavlina never even had a cold.

Dr. Piotr Wozniak puts it best:”Whoever claims to be on a perpetual polyphasic schedule must be either suffering from a sleep disorder, or be a liar, or a mutant.” PureDoxyK and Pavlina say they don’t suffer from sleep disorders, and while they might be liars, the most likely explanation for their success is a genetic mutation. In other words, they’re sleep freaks.

As for my own experiment with polyphasic sleep, it’s clear that I’m not a mutant. I only lasted one day — and felt like a zombie. I even tried sleeping with my brand-new sleep-induction mat, which claims to relax and help you sleep deeper.

It turns out that I love sleep. I love lying in bed after a long day at the office. I love the way I feel after completing at least five full 90-minute sleep cycles. Sleep is one of the great pleasures of life, one that polyphasics forgo in favor of 22 hours of productive wakefulness. As for me, I relish that pleasure. I would rather have 16 hours with my eyes open and use them well, so I can get back to that “happy sleep” that da Vinci talked about.

Neil Parikh is co-founder and COO of Casper Sleep. Reach him @neilparikh.

• Launching a new product is no easy feat — even major companies have unexpected flops.
• Less than 3% of new consumer packaged goods exceed first-year sales of $50 million, according to Joan Schneider and Julie Hall, coauthors of "The New Launch Plan." 
• Microsoft's Zune failed to compete with the iPod, Cosmopolitan magazine couldn't break into the yogurt business, and McDonald's couldn't sell a burger intended for more sophisticated palates.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Launching a product is hard to do.

"Less than 3% of new consumer packaged goods exceed first-year sales of $50 million — considered the benchmark of a highly successful launch," say Joan Schneider and Julie Hall, coauthors of "The New Launch Plan: 152 Tips, Tactics and Trends from the Most Memorable New Products."

That's part of the reason that the most heavy-hitting names in business — from Pepsi to Netflix, Microsoft to McDonald's — have had some of the biggest belly flops. 

Read more: 14 rules for using commas without looking like a fool

Here's a look at 26 of them and what we can learn from these epic fails. 

Aimee Groth and Jay Yarow contributed reporting to this story.

26. Ford Edsel (1957)

Bill Gates cites the Edsel flop as his favorite case study. Even the name "Edsel" is synonymous with "marketing failure."

Ford invested $400 million into the car, which it introduced in 1957. But Americans literally weren't buying it, because they wanted "smaller, more economic vehicles," according to Associated Content:

Other pundits have blamed its failure on Ford Motors execs never really defining the model's niche in the car market. The pricing and market aim of most Edsel models was somewhere between the highest-end Ford and the lowest-end Mercury.

It was taken off the market in 1960.

25. Gerber Singles (1974)

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Gerber Singles, for when you are an adult who can no longer be bothered with feeding yourself.

Check out some food experimentation atrocities in this week's #ElectricEel. https://t.co/Kj7D1HdYae pic.twitter.com/PiUsI76nMi

Gerber innovated baby food for adults in 1974, with flavors like beef burgundy, Mediterranean vegetables, and blueberry delight. 

24. Sony Betamax (1975)

The 1970s saw a war in home video formats between Betamax and VHS. 

Sony made a mistake: It started selling the Betamax in 1975, while its rivals started releasing VHS machines. Sony kept Betamax proprietary, meaning it had exclusive rights to the format; consequently, the market for VHS products quickly outpaced the company. 

23. New Coke (1985)

In the early 1980s, Coke was losing ground to Pepsi. So it tried to create a product that would taste more like Pepsi.

While New Coke fared OK in nationwide taste tests before launching in 1985, it turned out those were misleading.

Coke abandoned the product after a few weeks and went back to its old formula. It also gave its product a new name: Coca-Cola Classic.

22. Pepsi A.M. (1989)

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In 1989, Pepsi tried to target the "breakfast cola drinker" with Pepsi A.M. At the time of its release, The New York Times reported that Pepsi A.M. would have 28% more caffeine per ounce than regular Pepsi. It lasted only a year.

 

21. RJ Reynolds smokeless cigarettes (1989)

In the 1980s, just as anti-smoking campaigns were heating up, RJ Reynolds put over $300 million into a new product: "Premier," smokeless cigarettes.

According to the Los Angeles Times, the Premier cigarettes heated up tobacco but did not burn it, and consumers did not like their scent or taste. RJ Reynolds pulled the cigarettes after just five months of testing in a handful of cities.

20. Coors Rocky Mountain Spring Water (1990)

This was an interesting experiment in brand extension. Coors Rocky Mountain Spring Water launched in 1990 and didn't fare well. It turns out beer drinkers want only one thing from their favorite label: beer.

 

 

19. Crystal Pepsi (1992)

In 1992, Pepsi tried again, this time with a clear cola, "Crystal Pepsi." No dice — it died in 1994.

(That is, until the summer of 2017, when it was briefly revived.)

18. Apple Newton (1993)

The Newton is held up as an example of Apple's bad old days — before it became a company with a $1 trillion market cap.

Forbes says the Newton PDA flopped for a number of reasons: it was too expensive (retailing anywhere from $700 to $1,200), it was too big (8 inches tall by 4.5 inches wide), and its handwriting recognition was so bad that a classic "Simpsons" episode made fun of it.

Read more: The 30 most coveted tech companies to work at, according to thousands of tech workers

17. Microsoft Bob (1995)

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Microsoft Bob was supposed to be a user-friendly interface for Windows; the project was managed by Melinda Gates. Microsoft killed it less than two years after it launched.

According to Michael Becraft's biography of Bill Gates, Bill explained, "Unfortunately, the software demanded more performance than typical computer hardware could deliver at the time, and there wasn't an adequately large market, and therefore, Bob died."

16. McDonald's Arch Deluxe (1996)

In 1996, McDonald's introduced the Arch Deluxe, which never caught on.

It was intended to appeal to a more adult, sophisticated palate — outside of its target demographic. To reach this group, McDonald's spent between $150 and $200 million advertising the Arch Deluxe.

According to Delish, the Arch Deluxe was composed of: fresh beef, a potato bun, peppered bacon, and Arch Sauce (mustard and mayonnaise), as well as lettuce, cheese, tomato, and onion.

The Arch Deluxe was ultimately discontinued in the late 1990s. However, McDonald's tested a similar product called the Archburger in 2018.

15. Orbitz soda (1997)

Although the soda, which looks like a lava lamp, appealed to young kids, it was not tasty (people compared it to cough syrup). It disappeared off shelves within a year of its 1997 debut.

Orbitz is still sold on eBay, if you're interested in sampling its gelatinous globs.

14. Frito-Lay WOW! Chips (1998)

File this under "too good to be true."

In the late 1990s, Frito-Lay rolled out a miracle food: a line of chips with the upbeat branding of WOW! and a tantalizing marketing claim — a compound called Olestra made the potato chips essentially fat-free.

But, it was not to be. 

"While it provided the satisfaction of tasting just like fat, (Olestra's) molecules were too large to be digested by the body, passing directly through the digestive tract unabsorbed," wrote Sandy Glass at Fast Company. "Sadly, the result was similar to that of a laxative — stomach cramps and diarrhea prevailed."

13. Cosmopolitan Yogurt (1999)

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Cosmopolitan magazine made an interesting decision to launch a brand of yogurt in 1999. Needless to say, the yogurt market was already saturated, and Cosmo's readers were content enough reading the magazine. The yogurt was discontinued after just 18 months, according to the Telegraph.

(This is not to be confused with Cosmopolitan cocktail-flavored yogurt.)

12. Heinz EZ Squirt Ketchup (2000)

Heinz's colorful line of ketchup came in hues like purple, green, blue, orange, and red. It actually was sold until 2006.

11. Microsoft Zune (2006)

The Zune was built to take on the iPod. It did not.

Robbie Bach, the former leader of Microsoft's home entertainment and mobile business, gave his explanation as to why: 

We just weren't brave enough, honestly, and we ended up chasing Apple with a product that actually wasn't a bad product, but it was still a chasing product, and there wasn't a reason for somebody to say, oh, I have to go out and get that thing.

10. Mobile ESPN (2006)

Mobile ESPN, introduced in January 2006, was one of the biggest flame-outs of "mobile virtual network operators," or MVNOs, in the past decade, which also included Amp'd Mobile, Helio, Disney Mobile, and others.

The idea was that ESPN would exclusively sell a phone that offered ESPN content and video, leasing network access from Verizon Wireless. But ESPN had only one phone at launch, a Sanyo device selling for $400.

No one bought it, and ESPN quickly shut down the service, instead providing content to Verizon's mobile internet service.

9. HD DVD (2006)

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Sponsored mostly by Toshiba, HD DVD was supposed to become the hi-def successor to the DVD when it launched in March 2006.

But the Sony-led Blu-ray faction ended up winning the format war when Warner Bros. announced it was dumping HD DVD for Blu-ray on January 4, 2008.

About a month later, Toshiba said it would shut down its HD DVD efforts.

8. Joost (2007)

Joost was supposed to reinvent the way we consumed professional video.

Originally known as "The Venice Project," Joost was mean to be a peer-to-peer TV network for the future, invented by the European geniuses behind Skype. The company recruited rising star Mike Volpi away from Cisco to become its CEO. It got a deal with CBS.

Joost's vision was not realized, as Hulu — a joint venture between News Corp., NBC, and Disney — became the go-to site for TV episodes on the web.

Meanwhile, Joost had all sorts of problems with its P2P architecture, its bulky software player, its content library, and more. After launching in September 2007, it never took off, with its scraps being sold in late 2009.

7. Google Lively (2008)

For some reason, Google thought it had to compete with Second Life with a virtual world called "Lively," which came out in July 2008. (Except that unlike Second Life, Lively was supposed to be sex-free.)

When the economy went down the toilet, those dreams faded fast, and Google quickly pulled the plug on Lively in November 2008.

6. JooJoo (2009)

In the era of a $499 Apple iPad, an inferior tablet computer that also cost $499 didn't work. (You may remember this device from its previous title, the CrunchPad.) It came out in 2009 and was gone by 2010.

5. The Nook (2009)

Launched in 2009, Barnes & Noble has now spun off the NOOK into its own company, orphaning the under-achieving e-reader. Sales had been plunging for a while.

Brian Sozzi explained the demise to us: "Shoppers couldn't get beyond Barnes & Noble being a destination for something they no longer want or generally care about, books," Sozzi said. "Barnes & Noble management perpetuated that by not investing aggressively enough in marketing to alter perception."

4. Qwikster (2011)

In September 2011, Reed Hastings announced that Netflix would spin off Qwikster as a DVD rental business. This move met tons of criticism, and Hastings backtracked on his statement 23 days later.

3. HP Touchpad (2011)

HP gave up the TouchPad and its mobile OS, WebOS, after just a month and a half on the market.

The tablet was no iPad killer, selling just 25,000 units for Best Buy over the 49 days it was on the shelves.

2. Burger King Satisfries

Burger King rolled out its healthier "Satisfries" in 2013 — they absorbed less oil and were only 270 calories (compared to the 340 calories of regular fries), according to Bloomberg. Weak sales led the fast-food chain to pull the plug in 2014.

1. Facebook Home (2013)

With Home, Facebook tried to become the homescreen for your phone.

It failed. From our review: 

So what happens when you have no control over what appears on your phone's home screen? 

It becomes a mess. 

In less than a month of being released, the two-year subscription plan dropped from $99 to $0.99. The consensus between reviewers and critics: Home worked only for the most fanatical of users.

"It was fine for a Facebook addict," one reviewer noted. "But [it] seems to run through a lot of data and battery. Uninstalled."

The flop is reflected by a reorganization in the company.

"Facebook has disbanded the team of engineers originally assigned to work on Facebook Home," The New York Times' Mike Isaac reports. 

Read more: Facebook has partnered with Ray-Ban's parent company to create smart glasses

The companies have signed an agreement to form a massive battery manufacturing plant dubbed the Gigafactory in the United States.

This post originally appeared on the Crew blog. Have you ever felt like all you do is check your e-mail? Well, you may not spend ALL your time checking your e-mail but you do spend about 28 percent of your time doing it. That translates into about 13-hours a week or 650 hours a year of e-mail checking. For those of us who work in a job where e-mail isn’t our main responsibility, checking and responding to e-mails each day can take us away from our primary work, which results in less productivity. In fact, our incessant need to respond to e-mails at work is actually...

This story continues at The Next Web

The post The key to better work? E-mail less, flow more appeared first on The Next Web.

Market research firm Strategy Analytics new second quarter 2014 numbers estimate the Android platform’s share of the global market at a record 84.6 percent. Strategy Analytics reported 295.2 million smartphone shipments during the period, just 0.1 million off from IDC’s number. Growth seems to have tapered off, with the firm recording the market’s slowest growth level in five years. Android widened its lead on all its competitors. Apple’s share reportedly fell from 13.4 percent a year ago to 11.9 percent. Microsoft dropped from 3.8 percent to 2.7 percent, and BlackBerry shrunk from 2.4 percent to 0.6 percent. ➤ Strategy Analytics

The post Android reached a record 85% smartphone market share in Q2 2014: report appeared first on The Next Web.

Sita launches foray into latest wearable, the boarding pass. Google folds Maps Coordinate into its Maps Engine Pro. Plus: attackers install DDoS bots on Amazon, and extracting data using import.io.

Sita Takes Wing With API for Wearable Boarding Passes

Sita, which makes a range of APIs focused on air travel that track everything from luggage to travel routes, has now developed one for the Android set of smart watches. The level of convenience gives a window into just how useful such watches will be: boarding checkin will be done with the flick of a wrist.

You won't need a Google+ profile anymore to use Google's Hangouts video chat, thanks to new updates that aim to make the video conferencing platform more appealing to businesses.

Hangouts now work without Google+ account, Apps users get 15-person video chat originally published by Gigaom, © copyright 2014.

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The relationship between the U.S. and Russia is more tense than it's been since the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s.

American and E.U. sanctions on the Russian government in the wake of Moscow-backed separatists' destruction of a Malaysia Airlines passenger jet has Russian President Vladimir Putin backed into a corner — which, as The New Republic's Julia Ioffe argues, is when he's most dangerous.

But this isn't the Cold War. There's little actual danger of the Russians attempting to militarily threaten western Europe. Putin's options are dwindling. He's almost certainly more contained — strategically and militarily — than his Soviet predecessors, who had a trans-continental empire and some of the most incredible military technology of the time at their disposal.

The Lun-class Soviet Ekranoplane is one reminder of the stakes of the Cold War, and the capabilities of the communist bloc. A super-vehicle seemingly purpose-built for a major war with the NATO states, it's a sign of how different Europe, Russia, and the world in general were just a relatively short time ago.

The Ekranoplane was a marvel of late 20th century technological prowess and the Soviets considered it an integral part of their colossal military machine.

Equipped with nuclear warheads and capable of blasting across the sea at 340 miles per hour, the Lun-class Ekranoplane was part plane, part boat, and part hovercraft. It took advantage of an aeronautical effect that allowed it to lift off with an immense amount of weight, but limited its flight to 16 feet above the waves — its altitude could never be greater than its wingspan.

Think of a large seabird, like a pelican, cruising inches from the water and not needing to flap its wings — but loaded with soldiers, missiles, and even nukes.

Only one of these extraordinary war machines was ever built. The only complete Ekranoplane now sits on the shores of the Caspian Sea, rusting away. 

Business Insider's Robert Johnson stumbled upon these pictures back in January of 2012, when aviation blogger Igor113 posted them to Live Journal.

The Lun-class Ekranoplane was used by the Soviet Navy starting in 1987, and wasn't retired until the late 1990s, after the Soviet Union's fall

At nearly 243 feet long — and at almost the size of the Spruce Goose — the Lun is a ground-effect aircraft that can only fly near the surface of the sea

Eight turbofans producing 28,600 pounds of thrust apiece are mounted at the nose of the vehicle

See the rest of the story at Business Insider

AOL is making some changes to its terms of service, the legal documents that Internet users almost never read yet that bind them with restrictive agreements.

On September 15, AOL is implementing new terms of service, which include an arbitration clause which allows AOL to avoid class action lawsuits.

AOL is also giving itself the right to call users with automated, prerecorded messages:

When you sign up for Services and provide us with your telephone number or mobile phone number, you agree that we may contact you from time-to-time about the Services.YOU GIVE US CONSENT TO USE AUTODIALED AND PRERECORDED MESSAGES TO CONTACT YOU AT THE NUMBER YOU PROVIDE TO US.We may use the phone number that you provide to us when you open your account, when you add a telephone number to your account information, when you provide it to one of our employees or customer support, or by contacting us from your number. If you provide us with a mobile number, you consent to receive SMS or text messages at that number. You may stop further text messaging by simply texting “STOP” per the instructions we provide to you. Standard telephone minute and text charges may apply if we contact you.We will not share your phone number with non-affiliated third parties for their purposes without your consent, but we may share your phone number with our service providers, such as billing or collection companies, who may contact you using auto-dialed or prerecorded message calls or text messages. 

Chances are the majority of people who use AOL aren't planning on suing them, so they'll likely shrug off the new arbitration clause. But the idea that AOL will be robocalling anyone who uses its services is likely to rile people up.

See Also: LinkedIn’s Latest Lawsuit Is A Great Reminder Of How We Give Up Our Own Privacy

AOL may argue that it wants to place automated calls for billing inquiries, but the terms as written actually allow AOL to call you for any reason, including trying to sell you on new products and services.

The other troubling thing about the changed terms of service is that AOL, unlike other companies trying to push through arbitration clauses, isn't allowing users to opt out of arbitration. Using its services equals consent to the new terms, according to AOL.

Online file-storage company Dropbox included an arbitration clause in its terms of service updated in February of this year, but it allowed users to opt out of the arbitration clause up to 30 days after agreeing to the new terms.

It's especially alarming that AOL is trying to bypass class-action lawsuits, given its history. AOL settled a class-action lawsuit for violating users' privacy by releasing search data last year. It's also faced lawsuits over billing practices and ads inserted into email footers.

Class-action lawsuits are the main way consumers can get recompense for relatively small harms done to a large number of people, like privacy violations or billing errors. Some legal advocates think the arbitration process inherently favors companies.

AOL's new terms offer no such option.

Update 2:08 p.m.: AOL spokesperson Caroline Campbell gave ReadWrite the following statement in response to our questions: “Arbitration clauses are increasingly common place in our industry. Arbitration offers an easy and speedy resolution of a consumer’s dispute.” 

Image via Renato Ganoza on Flickr

The big takeaway from Samsung’s just-released earnings report is that the mobile business is tough, even for the company that dominates it.

Samsung may have passed up Apple in market share, but the company is nowhere close in other areas, including profit margins.

The company saw second-quarter mobile sales drop 12 percent, but profit in the business that includes phones and tablets fell 31 percent amid stiff competition. The company had already warned earlier this month that the second quarter would be a tough one.

Samsung’s global smartphone market share dropped seven percentage points from a year ago, according to IDC.

Looking ahead, Samsung said that the smartphone business will grow in the seasonally stronger second half of the year, but that it expects more competition in the low-end and mid-range of the business, especially in emerging markets. Tablets, too, are expected to see strong competition on price, but the company said it expects fourth-quarter sales to see “substantial growth” thanks to heavy promotion.

Samsung is expected to introduce a new Galaxy Note phablet, but archival Apple is believed to be readying two new iPhone models, one of which is expected to sport a 5.5-inch screen, making it a more direct rival to the Galaxy Note line.

If this summer has taught us anything about selfies, it's that they don't mix with bull running. 

But that didn't stop one man from trying to take a selfie with an angry bull at the Fêtes de Bayonne in southern France. The five-day festival includes a running of the bulls.

YouTube user Lexflex Freeman uploaded a video to the site called "And the winner is, [bull] 1 selfie 0," depicting a man trying to take a selfie with a bull in the background before being tramped by the bull. 

A man who claims to be the selfie-taker, Francois Hofer, somehow found the video of himself and commented that he was grateful for the video. He said the footage was better than his selfie.

Check out Freeman's video below:

SEE ALSO: One Pamplona Bull Runner Is Wanted By Spanish Police For Taking A Selfie

Join the conversation about this story »

BlackBerry's Passport made an appearance in New York. The device is quirky but could find an audience in select industries.

Rena Schild/Shutterstock

Sen. Patrick Leahy introduced legislation on Tuesday to ban the U.S. government’s bulk collection of Americans’ telephone records and Internet data and narrow how much information it can seek in any particular search.

The bill, which has White House backing, goes further than a version passed in May by the U.S. House of Representatives in reducing bulk collection and may be more acceptable to critics who have dismissed other versions as too weak.

Revelations last year by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden prompted President Barack Obama to ask Congress in January to rein in the bulk collection and storage of records of millions of U.S. domestic telephone calls.

Many American technology companies also have been clamoring for changes after seeing their international business suffer as foreign governments worry they might collect data and hand it over to U.S. spy agencies.

“If enacted, this bill would represent the most significant reform of government surveillance authorities since Congress passed the USA Patriot Act 13 years ago,” said Leahy, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said on the Senate floor.

Congress leaves for a five-week break on Friday, and it was unclear if lawmakers would take on the legislation before November elections.

Leahy proposed greater limits on the terms that analysts use to search databases held by phone companies such as Verizon Communications Inc or AT&T Inc.

The bill, called the USA Freedom Act, would prohibit the government from collecting all information from a particular service provider or a broad geographic area, such as a city or area code, according to a release from Leahy’s office.

It would expand government and company reporting to the public and reform the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which reviews NSA intelligence activities.

Both House and Senate measures would keep information out of NSA computers, but the Senate bill would impose stricter limits on how much data the spy agency could seek.

Leahy’s measure “is an improvement on the House-passed version at every step,” said Harley Geiger, senior counsel for the Center for Democracy and Technology, a nonprofit advocacy group based in Washington.

Many other civil liberties groups and privacy advocates endorsed the legislation while calling for additional reforms.

“This is a marathon, not a sprint, and we have miles left to go,” said Laura W. Murphy, Washington legislative director for the American Civil Liberties Union.

Leahy acknowledged there was more work to be done, saying “I’d like to get most of what we need, then work on the rest.”

The Senate bill would end the bulk collection authorized by Section 215 of the USA Patriot Act, which was enacted during the George W. Bush administration after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

It instead would authorize searches for telephone call records “two hops” from a search term, with a hop indicating connections between people suspected of links to foreign terrorism.

The NSA has had legal authority to collect and hold for five years metadata for all telephone calls inside the United States. Telephone metadata documents the numbers involved, when the calls were made and how long they lasted, but not their content.

Leahy’s bill would require the government to report the number of individuals, including Americans, whose information has been collected. It gives private companies four options to report on the number of government requests they get.

The bill would require the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to appoint legal advocates to address privacy and civil liberties issues.

National Security Council spokesman Ned Price praised Leahy on Monday for having done “remarkable work” balancing security and privacy concerns in the bill.

(Additional reporting by Roberta Rampton; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn and Jonathan Oatis)

Microsoft and Amazon Web Services both announced research grant programs on Tuesday, promising millions of hours of cloud computing resources to winning researchers, as well as access to mountains of government data.

Microsoft, Amazon target climate change with cloud computing grants originally published by Gigaom, © copyright 2014.

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