Tech News Today for August 4, 2016
Tech News for August 4, 2016
Once upon a time, some might have considered Intel’s Basis Peak smartwatch to be a hot item in the wearable space. And now, it’s just a hot item that can burn you. So Intel is recalling the devices having first warned about the overheating issue mid-June. Intel recommends its users stop wearing the smartwatch immediately and shut it down. Read more at arstechnica.com
Facebook changed its algorithm today and you won't be able to take another breath until you click this link and find out why. Really. Stop breathing. It's those kinds of headlines that Facebook is claiming it's going to send to the bottom of your timeline with its new algorithm. Writing on the Facebook newsroom blog today, the company says they will tweak their mysterious algorithm to rank clickbait headlines or link titles lower than more authentic stories. By clickbait, they mean headlines that are purposely misleading in order to force you to click the link, rather than get everything you need from the headline and never look at the story, or the story's ads. Read more at newsroom.fb.com.
Things are looking up here in the US...at least in terms of our average broadband internet speeds. According to the Speedtest Market Report, the US has breached 50 megabits as the national average speed for the first time ever, at 54.96 megabits per second to be exact. That’s 42 percent higher than was reported last year. As far as upload speeds, the US sits at 18.88 megabits per second, a 51 percent jump from last year’s study. Read more at techcrunch.com
Re/Code reports that Apple thinks you need help watching TV. No, they haven't finally reached an agreement with content providers to offer you that skinny bundle of cable channels they promised us years ago. Instead, they plan to function more as a sort of TV guide. Although Apple declined to comment, Peter Kafka's sources say the company is going to tell you where you can watch whatever you want to watch and let you stream it with one click from Apple TVs, iPads, and iPhones, but they'll let you deal directly with the content provider when it comes time to pay for it. Read more at recode.net.
Passwords aren’t perfect, yet they protect our most valuable and important information. Today, Dashlane, a popular password manager, along with Google, announced OpenYOLO. It stands for "You Only Login Once." It’s an open source API that they hope developers will use to make accessing passwords on mobile from password manager archives way easier. Read more at techcrunch.com.
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