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Tech News Today for October 10, 2016

Tech News for Monday October 10, 2016

Samsung is suspending production or halting production or possibly adjusting the schedule of production of the Samsung Galaxy Note 7, due to continuting reports of fires caused by the device. Samsung has told Jordon Golson from The Verge that they're "working diligently to ease the recall process for consumers," but many are reporting having received incomprehensible emails from the company about what to do next. What's worse, Samsung knew the problem existed last week, but didn't say anything. Hints at a cover up come from a text message that a representative accidentally sent to the owner of the phone. Read more at recode.net.

Yahoo has been under the microscope lately, with report after negative report rolling in showing the insecurity of the service. Many users are hoping to take action on their account and the first step to getting rid of an email account is usually to transfer your email into another account so they aren’t all lost for good. According to the Associate Press, Yahoo disabled this feature at the beginning of the month for users who haven’t already set up automatic email forwarding, meaning there’s currently no easy way for users to get their emails out if they wish to then close their Yahoo account. Yahoo simply points to its help site where it says the feature is “temporarily disabled while they are working on it.” Read more at techcrunch.com.

Apple and Samsung are headed to the Supreme Court to decide once and for all exactly what a design patent is worth. Tomorrow, Tuesday October 11th marks the day that the two giants will argue just how much of the 399 million dollar patent infringement suit Samsung will have to pay for copying Apple's design. The Supreme Court is not deciding *if* Samsung copied Apple, but how much they copied Apple and how much they should pay for it. This is the first time the Supreme Court has taken a design patent case since it helped settle patent cases regarding spoon handles in the 1870s and carpets in the 1890s. Read more at bloomberg.com.

Ars Technica reports that new guidelines in the UK will seek harsher punishments for certain kinds of online trolling, including doxxing, virtual mobbing, nasty images, fake social media profiles, and more. A top prosecuter says under part 2, section 44 of the 2007 Serious Crime Act, perpetrators could face jail time and this includes people who use social media to encourage others to harass people online. Over the past four years the UK has been trying harder to police virtual abuse with initiatives such as the Online Hate Crime Hub that helps identify trolls and provides more support to victims of online abuse. Although some argue that the laws are unecessarily broad, the director of public prosecutions said these new rules are not designed to stifle free speech. Read more at arstechnica.co.uk.

Megan Morrone and Jason Howell are joined today by Christopher Mims who wrote in the Wall Street Journal about digital assistants being created by all of the major tech companies. Tech News Today streams live weekdays at 4PM Pacific, 7PM Eastern at twit.tv/live. You can subscribe to the show and download it on-demand at twit.tv/tnt.

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