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Tech News Today for August 1, 2017

Tech News for Tuesday August 1, 2017

Apple took its turn announcing its quarterly earnings with 45.4 billion dollars in revenue, and that sent after hours stock trading up 4 percent. Not only was this a strong quarter with revenue up 7 percent year over year, Apple is signaling that it expects strong sales of its upcoming iPhone once its officially announced sometime in the next few months. In the meantime, as sales of its iPhones have slowed in recent months, Apple’s services have risen to fill that void, growing 22 percent year over year with $7.3 billion in revenue. iPad sales also pitched in, selling 11.4 million units during the quarter compared to 10 million this time last year. Sure, 2 percent is nothing major but iPad has stalled for a while, so any growth is good for the category. Read more at bloomberg.com.

A bipartisan group of US lawmakers want to introduce legislation to help shore up security on the rapidly growing internet of things. Republicans Cory Gardner and Steve Daines and Democrats Mark Warner and Ron Wyden introduced the Internet of Things Cybersecurity Improvement Act of 2017 that will require federal vendors of iOT devices to enable security updates and prevent them from having hardcoded default passwords that are difficult or impossible to change. The bill will also expand legal protections for cyber researchers working to find vulnerabilities. According to Reuters, we'll be connecting 30-40 billion home and car devices to the internet by 2020. Read more at reuters.com.

Facebook’s experimental Building 8 lab might finally be closing in on the unveiling of its first official Facebook product: A video chat device with a touchscreen, about the size of a laptop screen, that would include a smart camera that can track moving objects in its view. The goal would be to connect people in ways that make them feel like they are occupying the same space. Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman and Sarah Frier say the prototype device is already being tested in some homes. The device could be announced at its F8 conference next Spring. Read more at bloomberg.com.

Microsoft is giving Windows 10 a big accessibility boost. The company announced native eye tracking for people with ALS or other neuromuscular diseases. You'll need hardware for this to work and Engadget says that because this is a partnership with Tobii on Eye Control, their hardware is the most compatible. It's only available in the beta of Windows 10 right now and only works on the Tobii eye tracker 4c, but it will eventually work on Tobii Dynavox PCEye Mini, PCEye Plus, EyeMobile Plus and I-series. Read more at Engadget.com.

Tech News Today with Megan Morrone and Jason Howell streams live weekdays at 4PM Pacific, 7PM Eastern at twit.tv/live. You can subscribe to the show and get it on-demand at twit.tv/tnt.

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