Sprint's stock soars more than 70% after judge approves T-Mobile merger

New York (CNN Business)The $26 billion mergers between T-Mobile and Sprint has been approved, ending a years-long attempt to combine the United States' third- and fourth-largest wireless carriers.

A federal judge ruled Tuesday in favor of allowing the two telecom giants to combine, a decision that is expected to dramatically change the landscape of the United States wireless market. US District Court Judge Victor Marrero said in his ruling that he didn't envision the companies "would pursue anticompetitive behavior" and rejected the lawsuit brought by thirteen US states and the District of Columbia that sought to block the deal.

The merger will create three similarly sized competitors in the wireless business: the "New" T-Mobile, Verizon (VZ) and AT&T (T) (CNN parent company WarnerMedia is owned by AT&T). Satellite company Dish Network plans to use the deal as a catalyst to become a new wireless services provider.

The judge said that Sprint on its own likely couldn't "continue operating as a strong nationwide competitor." Sprint is currently in fourth place, but the company has been rapidly losing customers and claimed its path to deploying a nationwide 5G network without T-Mobile was uncertain. Marrero added that he believes Dish will enter the market and provide significant competition to fill the gap left by Sprint.

States' attorneys general argued that approving the merger would make wireless service and prices worse for Americans. But Marrero said he was ultimately unpersuaded by the states' economic theories and analytical modeling, writing that the two sides' claims ultimately came down to competing for crystal balls. He said he was relying substantially on his own "skills and frontline experience" to reach a decision.

"How the future manifests itself and brings to pass what it holds is a multifaceted phenomenon that is not necessarily guided by theoretical forces or mathematical models," he wrote.

Sprint's stock shot up a stunning 70% at the open. T-Mobile shares also spiked 12% early trading Tuesday.
T-Mobile CEO John Legere called the ruling a "huge victory" and said in a statement that the new company, which will retain the T-Mobile name, is "great for consumers and great for competition."

During the two week trial, Sprint and T-Mobile testified that combining would "supercharge" T-Mobile's Uncarrier strategy that has led to such perks for consumers as the end of wireless contracts, and would allow them to more quickly roll out superfast nationwide 5G, the crucial next-generation wireless network.

On Tuesday, the companies touted other benefits of the merger, including new jobs. They said the combination will ultimately employ 11,000 more full-time people than the standalone companies would have over the next four years. They said an additional 12,000 jobs will be created to staff 600 new stores and five new "customer experience centers."

The merger could be finalized in early April. A new website has been started to promote the combined companies at NewTMobile.com.

To alleviate antitrust concerns, Sprint and T-Mobile struck a deal with Dish Network (DISH), which plans to buy some wireless assets from the companies to create a new nationwide carrier. The companies hoped that would remedy the merger's effects on the market. They also promised not to raise prices for the first three years following the combination.

The merger saga between T-Mobile and Sprint has been ongoing since April 2018 when the current deal was proposed. Federal regulators, including the US Department of Justice and the Federal Communications Commission, already approved the merger last year. The states were the final hurdle, and Sprint (S) and T-Mobile (TMUS) battled for the deal's approval in a Manhattan federal court in December.

Both the FCC and the DOJ lauded the judge's decision. Justice Department antitrust chief Makan Delrahim said in a statement he was glad the judge agreed with the DOJ's decision to prop up Dish Network as a fourth wireless competitor.

FCC chairman Ajit Pai also said he was "pleased" with the decision, citing the companies' promise to expand 5G.

"This transaction represents a unique opportunity to speed up the deployment of 5G throughout the United States, put critical mid-band spectrum to more productive use, and bring much faster mobile broadband to rural Americans," Pai said in a statement. "This is a big win for American consumers."

Lingering concerns

The two attorneys general who led the states' fight against the merger were not pleased with the decision.
Letitia James, the AG from New York, said in a statement the reduced competition is "bad for consumers, bad for workers, and bad for innovation." She added that the states will examine a possible appeal.

California's AG Xavier Becerra said he is "prepared to fight as long as necessary to protect innovation and competitive costs."
The Communications Workers of America said in a statement Tuesday that the merger could put 30,000 jobs at risk.

"Throughout this process, regulators who are supposed to be protecting the public interest have ignored clear evidence that this merger would result in significant job loss for wireless workers," CWA President Chris Shelton said in the statement, adding that T-Mobile workers should be allowed to unionize if the merger is completed.

For consumers, the deal is likely to generate promotions and competitive offers from all three wireless giants in the short term, Forrester principal analyst Frank Gillett said in an emailed comment. But whether consumers are positively or negatively impacted in the long run will depend on Dish's ability to enter the market.

"The long-term question of whether there is sufficient competition for wireless service is up for debate," Gillett said."The answer will come from Dish Network and its CEO — if they follow through on promises to invest in a 5G network and become fully competitive over the next seven years, then there will still be four major options."

Dish has wanted to enter the wireless market for a decade, spending around $12 billion on wireless spectrum and promising the FCC that it will have a nationwide 5G network by 2023.

But there are big hurdles for Dish: it currently does not have its own network and would start out serving its own cell phone customers on T-Mobile's network infrastructure. It will also inherit only prepaid subscribers from Sprint as part of the merger deal, a type of customer generally considered less essential to wireless companies.

Dish CEO Charlie Ergen argued during the trial that his company is up to the task.

"This isn't some fantasy for us," Ergen testified. "We've wanted to get into this wireless business for the past 10 years. I've worked on it darn near every day. Now, the stars have aligned to allow us to do this and we know we can compete."

Blockchain startup Ripple buys $30 million stake in MoneyGram

Blockchain firm Ripple has bought $30 million worth of shares and warrants in MoneyGram International Inc, the two companies said on Monday, as they partner to use Ripple’s product for cross-border payment and foreign exchange settlement.

Ripple bought MoneyGram’s stock at $4.10 per share, representing a premium of about 183% to its Monday closing price. The partnership will initially be for two years, MoneyGram said.

Shares of MoneyGram surged about 77% to $2.56 after the closing bell.

Ripple may also buy additional common stock or warrants for up to $20 million at a minimum price of $4.10 per share, MoneyGram said.

The partnership will focus on Ripple’s xRapid, a platform for cross-border payments that uses XRP, a virtual currency powered by blockchain to send and receive currencies.

“Through Ripple’s xRapid product, we will have the ability to instantly settle funds from U.S. dollars to destination currencies on a 24/7 basis, which has the potential to revolutionize our operations and dramatically streamline our global liquidity management,” MoneyGram Chief Executive Officer Alex Holmes said in a statement.

How to set up "add.txt" for AdSense on google blogspot

Set up an ads.txt file

If your blog is monetized with third-party providers or you’ve manually integrated AdSense in your blog, you will need to manually set up the content of the ads.txt file.

Sign in to Blogger.
In the top left, click the Down arrow Down Arrow.
Click the blog you want to set up an ads.txt file on.
On the left, click Settings.
Under "Settings," click Search preferences.
Under "Monetization," find "Custom ads.txt" and click Edit.
Click Yes.
Copy the settings from your third-party monetization provider and paste them in the text box.
Click Save settings.
Optional: To check the content of your ads.txt file, go to http:///ads.txt.

Note: If your blog is not monetized, or it’s only configured to use AdSense using the Blogger-AdSense integration, then you do not need to manually set up ads.txt. Blogger will do this for you. Read more about ads.txt for AdSense.

WhatsApp back after worldwide outage

WhatsApp is back up after suffering an outage that affected users around the world for hours. The Facebook-owned messaging service confirmed in a media statement that it had been inaccessible, but did not say why.

“Earlier today, WhatsApp users in all parts of the world were unable to access WhatsApp for a few hours. We have now fixed the issue and apologize for the inconvenience,” said a WhatsApp spokesperson in an email.

User frustration was compounded by the fact that none of WhatsApp’s main social media accounts appear to be very active.

The Twitter account it once used for status reports has not been updated in more than three years, around the time that WhatsApp agreed to be acquired by Facebook in a deal eventually valued at $22 million. The last tweet on its main Twitter account was from last August, while its Facebook page is updated more frequently but also relatively quiet and did not post status updates today.

Any reason @wa_status has not kept Whatsapp users informed as to WhatsAppening? :)

— Miqdaad Versi (@miqdaad) May 3, 2017

.@wa_status @WhatsApp "We are working very hard to make this twitter account irrelevant." 🤔🤔 pic.twitter.com/LGDVdUOlIM

— Juanjo Sánchez (@mrtochmi) May 3, 2017

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced earlier today on the company’s earnings call that WhatsApp Status, the Snapchat Stories rival it launched in the middle of February, now has 175 million daily users. That is about 15 percent of the app’s 1.2 billion users.

We’ve contacted WhatsApp for more information on what caused the outage.

Wonga data breach could affect nearly 250,000 UK customers

More than a quarter of a million customers of payday loan firm Wonga are being warned that their personal data may have been stolen in a data breach at the firm.

The online lender said it was “urgently investigating illegal and unauthorised access” to the personal data of some of its customers in the UK and Poland. It is understood that the breach could affect up to 270,000 current and former customers, including 245,000 in the UK. The company would not disclose where it had taken place.

The lender, which offers loans at interest rates starting at 1,286% a year, became aware of a problem last week but did not realise until Friday that data could be accessed externally. It alerted the authorities and started to contact borrowers on Saturday to make them aware of the problem, and give details of a dedicated customer services phone line for those affected.

Customers who are thought to have been affected have received a message from the payday lender telling them: “We believe there may have been illegal and unauthorised access to some of your personal data on your Wonga.com account.”

The message said that Wonga was working to establish the full details but data breached “may have included one or more of the following: name, email address, home address, phone number, the last four digits of your card number (but not the whole number) and/or your bank account number and sort code.”

It went on to say that the lender believed Wonga accounts and passwords had not been compromised, but customers were advised to look out for unusual activity across their accounts. In a statement the firm said: “We are working closely with authorities and we are in the process of informing affected customers. We sincerely apologise for the inconvenience caused.”

The breach will be a blow to Wonga, which has in recent years attempted to improve its reputation following a series of controversies. The lender, which advertised heavily on TV and through football sponsorships, was found by the financial regulator to have made loans to customers who could not afford to repay them and to have chased bad debts with letters from a fake law firm. New directors have replaced the firm’s original founders, a three-month loan launched alongside the short-term payday loan, and marketing has been changed to appeal to a better-off audience.

However, it has been hard hit by tougher rules on lending, introduced when the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) took on stewardship of the sector. The latest set of results showed that the firm made a pre-tax loss of £80.2m in 2015, up from £38.1m the year before.

There was no sign of the breach on the lender’s website, which carried its usual information on how to apply for its loans. It has alerted the police, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) and the FCA. The ICO regulates firms’ use and care of people’s personal details, although financial services companies are not obliged to inform it of any breach. A spokesperson for the organisatio said: “All organisations have a responsibility to keep customers’ personal information secure. Where we find this has not happened, we can investigate and may take enforcement action.”

Wonga is the latest in a long line of companies to discover that information they hold on their customers has been compromised. In November, Tesco Bank suspended online transactions after £2.5m was stolen from 9,000 customers, while mobile phone operator Three said information from 130,000 users had been compromised when its systems were breached. A cyber attack on phone company Talk Talk in 2015 resulted in a £400,000 fine from the ICO after it found the firm “could have been prevented if TalkTalk had taken basic steps to protect customers’ information”.

On Twitter, some of Wonga’s customers were expressing concern about the breach and complaining that they were struggling to get onto Wonga’s website to change their account passwords. One tweeted the @OfficialWonga feed to say: “Received an email that my details may have been hacked. Please can you tell me if this is real? Been on hold for ages.”

When Information Are At Your Fingertips: Would you get Cyborg-ed?

By Shaida Sham | @shai_sham
Published: Saturday, April 08, 2017

Following the headlines in 2016, “Australia Becomes the First Country to Begin Microchipping its Population”, companies in Sweden and Belgium are boasting dystopian vision in their workplaces by Microchipping their employees. Today, retail estimated 30,000 to 50,000 people have implanted Radio-Frequency identification (RFID) in their bodies in a bid to be part of the future by simplifying their lives with a wave of a hand.

The RFID is roughly about the size of a grain of rice and can be purchase at an affordable $80 to $140 in Australia. It is capable of storing every information about you and eventually replacing physical cards and keys. Recalling numerous passwords will no longer be an issue with RFID as it will be withhold your banking accounts, credit cards, health, club memberships even purchase information.

Transactions at the supermarkets will be a breeze as it replaces smartphone payments such as Apple Pay.

With the practice growing globally, there are chilling implications and threats to the society if there are no legislation to control the invasion of privacy issues and potential cyber attacks. One’s identity could surreptitiously be tracked and his data will easily be collected by potential biohackers as he goes around the city – what items he has purchased and when he leave his home.

Other ethical issues include who owns the chip and what are the implications if the practice eventually becomes a norm that the government decides to microchip every citizen for passport control and other security reasons. CCTVs, biometric and iris identification may become technology of the past. Would you get microchipped if the government pushes for a total surveillance state? I would not.

At least four states in the US have passed bills to ban the implanting RFID chips onto human beings without their consent. Other nations can model this move as the technology has become more real and no longer a far-fetched fantasy.

Xbox Project Scorpio: 6 questions left to answer

Microsoft has exclusively revealed the specs for Project Scorpio in a unusual and exhaustive collaboration with Digital Foundry. The many videos and stories go into great detail about the CPU, GPU, and various other technical aspects of the upcoming console, going so far as to speculate about how drastically Project Scorpio will improve Xbox One and Xbox 360 games. But the reports — based on spec reveals and a single tech demo — raise as many questions as they answer.

Some of the questions remaining are simple (what’s the cost?), while others speak to Microsoft’s long-term ambitions (what role does Project Scorpio play in the Windows universe?). We’ve collected our six biggest questions, which we hope will be answered by the time Microsoft’s big Project Scorpio event rolls around at E3 this June.

What’s the price?

On paper, Project Scorpio will be the most powerful video game console. But power isn’t cheap. The Xbox One S is currently available for $249, and the more powerful PS4 Pro is $399. In its hardware explainer, Digital Foundry speculates that the system will sell for $499 — the launch price of the Xbox One in 2013.

Just how big will this machine be?

Much of what we learned today was about how Microsoft is balancing power with thermal capability. It’s the same problem faced by pretty much any computer hardware manufacturer, of course, but that’s exactly why it’s hard to judge Scorpio’s technical design without seeing the final machine that will be shipping to consumers. And we can’t ignore Microsoft’s history in this regard: after the chronic overheating issues suffered by the Xbox 360, the company seemed to overcompensate with the Xbox One’s roomy, bulky chassis. It was over sized next to the PlayStation 4, even though it required a large external power brick.

That said, if Digital Foundry is to be believed, Scorpio might represent a break from the past. The publication suspects “you will be pleasantly surprised” by Scorpio’s design once it’s revealed at E3 in June, and the few details we know are encouraging. Scorpio uses a regular figure-of-eight power cable, unlike the kettle leads used by the PS4 Pro and gaming PCs, and the 245W power supply is internal — that means no awkward brick to stash somewhere around your TV. Digital Foundry says that Microsoft’s thinking is that the Scorpio won’t be much more of a burden on an AV setup than the slimmed-down Xbox One S, which suggests that it should be well within our expectations for what a games console looks like.

Will the research and software designed for Scorpio help Windows 10 run Xbox games?

Microsoft has made a big deal of two initiatives: Xbox Play Anywhere and backwards compatibility.

Xbox Play Anywhere allows people to purchase select Xbox One games and play them on both console and compatible Windows 10 PCs. The feature shares game saves, achievements, and DLC, allowing for seamless swapping between console and computer. Microsoft has also worked to make over 300 Xbox 360 games backwards compatible on Xbox One.

These two goals intersect with Microsoft’s plan to make game purchases last beyond a console’s life cycle. What you buy on Xbox One will work — and in theory, run better — on Xbox One S, Project Scorpio, and whatever comes next. But as Microsoft blurs the line between console and computer, one wonders if the research Microsoft has put into backwards / forwards compatibility will at some point allow for all Xbox games to run on Windows 10 PCs. They’ve already hinted at the possibility.

We didn’t learn a lot about Microsoft’s virtual reality plans today. But last month, it said that Project Scorpio and the Xbox One would support "mixed reality content" in 2018. Microsoft is currently working with Acer, ASUS, Dell, HP, Lenovo, and 3Glasses on Windows Mixed Reality headsets. (To be clear, these are separate from HoloLens, a self-contained computing device that's geared toward professionals.) The headsets' big draw is inside-out tracking, which removes the need for external cameras or markers. But they’re still in the development kit stage, and given that Microsoft has said there's a diverse range of prices and specs, it's possible only selected ones will work on Scorpio or the Xbox One.

Meanwhile, it's looking less and less likely that Microsoft has an Oculus partnership up its sleeve. The two companies seemed close in 2015, and the Oculus Rift ships with an Xbox One gamepad. Microsoft also released an app that lets Xbox games stream to the Rift on a PC, albeit after a lengthy delay. The biggest argument for keeping the Rift off Scorpio is logistical: the Rift's external cameras require between one to three USB ports, in addition to a port for the headset. That’s inconvenient enough on a PC, let alone a console, and building something like a dedicated connector box — similar to what Sony did for PlayStation VR — would mean putting a lot of work into a third-party peripheral. That’s not to say it couldn’t happen, it’s just no longer the obvious choice it seemed like before Windows Mixed Reality.

Is Project Scorpio the end of the Xbox as an all-in-one entertainment machine?

Microsoft notoriously announced the Xbox One with an exhausting presentation focused almost entirely on media partnerships and hardware features like HDMI pass-through and the Kinect 2.0. In its vision of the future, the Xbox One would be a hub for your cable box, streaming apps, interactive television, and live sports. Other than a brief glimpse of Quantum Break and Forza, an EA Sports sizzle reel, and a Call of Duty tech demonstration involving a virtual dog, games were curiously absent.

We still know very little about Microsoft’s upcoming exclusives, and we haven’t seen what a Project Scorpio experience looks like. But even this relatively dry hardware info reveals that Microsoft seems more focused on hardware that serves video games above all else. It seems to have been designed with a specific end goal: make Xbox games look better and run smoother.

There is one odd exception: Project Scorpio keeps the HDMI pass-through of previous consoles. So who knows, maybe Microsoft still holds a candle for the all-in-one entertainment machine that never came to be.

Will Scorpio games have unique graphical effects, or will they emphasize 4K resolution and frame rate?

One of Microsoft's many promises with the original Xbox One was 1080p gaming. Launch titles didn't achieve this, with the exception of Forza Motorsport 5, and even today most games struggle to hit 1080p at 60 fps. Project Scorpio's selling point is 4K gaming, but this could come at the cost of texture quality. A ForzaTech demonstration reportedly runs at native 4K and locked to 60 fps, with only 60–70 percent of GPU utilization.

That suggests Project Scorpio has power to spare, but a Microsoft tech demonstration isn't the same as a third-party game running on the console. Like the Xbox One, it will be up to developers to get used to utilizing the power of Project Scorpio and deciding on 4K resolutions and frame rates. This could be a fine balance of trading richer graphic effects for resolution, or meeting somewhere in the middle that's not quite 4K. Even high-end gaming PCs struggle with 4K gaming at 60 fps, so Scorpio might find it difficult to achieve that while trying to improve graphics over Xbox One games.

The history of failed performance promises from both Sony and Microsoft over the years suggests 4K gaming on an Xbox or PlayStation is still a ways off. Either way, we'll know a lot more when we start to see games announced for Project Scorpio, and whether those launch titles can truly deliver 4K gaming at 60 fps.

YouTube TV Isn't Perfect, But It's Very Promising

Try as I might, I just can’t cut the cord. For more than five years, I’ve tried to wean myself off cable—for which I pay $140 a month—in favor of a streaming-only solution. I just cannot live on Hulu and Netflix alone. Is YouTube TV my savior?

I know that with my absurd cable package I’m spending a lot of extra money on channels I don’t watch, but so far, the streaming TV bundles from the likes of Sling TV, DirecTV Now, and PlayStation Vue each have major drawbacks. Sling TV is great in theory—offering access to local channels, ESPN, and other big networks for just $20 a month—but two years after its launch, it still has buffering issues when playing back popular programs. DirecTV Now has the best channel selection, but our early tests with the apps showed a buggy experience, and the introductory pricing that made it so attractive is now gone. PlayStation Vue is pretty good, but I don’t have a PlayStation and the PlayStation Vue apps could use some love.

Now YouTube is in the live TV game with YouTube TV. For $35 a month, customers in five cities (New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, San Francisco) get access to about 50 channels.

Yet the channel selection leaves something to be desired. Having access to local channels is excellent, and the various cable networks owned by NBC (USA, Syfy, CNBC, MSNBC, Bravo), ABC (Disney, ESPN, Freeform), and Fox (Fox News, FX, FXX, Nat Geo) are great, but not having any of the Time Warner/Turner networks (CNN, Cartoon Network, TBS) or Viacom networks (Comedy Central, MTV, Nickelodeon) is a huge bummer. AMC Networks is joining soon, meaning subscribers will have access to AMC, Sundance, IFC, and We TV.


Despite YouTube TV’s relatively weak channel selection, the rest of the service is refreshingly well built. The app is available on desktop via a web browser, as well as on iOS and Android. The desktop experience and the mobile apps are excellent. The interface is very similar to the existing YouTube app, with three tabs for Library, Home, and Live TV.

When it comes to watching live programming, playback is exceptional. It makes sense since YouTube has a lot of experience serving video at scale. Whether I was watching while waiting for the subway, in a cab, on the crappy wi-fi in the office, or in my apartment, I never had dropouts, and the app was automatically able to adjust content quality based on my connection strength. I tested the service on its first day of full operation, so it’s unlikely many people were using it at the same time, but YouTube TV did not have any of the buffering or stream quality problems we’ve experienced on other services.

In addition to live TV, one of the hallmark features of YouTube TV is its unlimited cloud DVR. Simply browse shows or upcoming programs and tap a “+” button to record the program when it airs. Recordings show up in a library for playback later and episodes can be stored for up to nine months. When a show is available for playback, it does so without any ad breaks. YouTube TV doesn’t put any limits on how many shows can be recorded at once or how many shows can be saved in the library, which makes this a great way to access content.

Beyond recordings and live TV, a lot of on demand content is available in the app, too. I watched past episodes of Riverdale or Bob’s Burgers, and even some (sadly edited) movies which appeared on FXM. Going to a specific show’s page reveals what episodes are currently available to watch, what episodes have already been stored in the user’s library, and what episodes are upcoming.

Yet’s there’s a big downside to YouTube TV: actually watching it on a TV. Right now, the only way to play content on your set is through a Chromecast or a Chromecast-enabled TV. And no, if your TV supports the less robust Google Cast protocol (as my TV does), that’s not enough. I had to make a mess out of my apartment to find a Chromecast buried in a drawer to get to my Riverdale. When I tried to AirPlay content to my Apple TV from the iPhone or iPad app, I was limited to audio-only playback, I assume because of whatever DRM Google had to put in the app.

It’s a huge bummer for the millions of people who have set-top boxes that aren’t Chromecasts. Google will give users who pay for one month of service a free Chromecast (they start at $35 otherwise), but if you already have a set top box, that’s just another device to clog up an HDMI port. Does Google seriously expect me to keep a Chromecast plugged in for a single app? Not going to happen.

Still, elements of YouTube TV feel like the future. It’s not quite the holy grail merger of live TV and on-demand content like Hulu’s upcoming live product seems to be. YouTube’s channel selection isn’t as robust as what you get from DirecTV Now—but the critical component, video playback, works extremely well. The apps are well-designed, and the price of $35 a month is reasonable for people that are happy with local channels, some cable favorites, and lots of sports. If YouTube TV can manage to sign-up more major cable networks and broaden its playback options, this has real potential.

README

• The lack of access to Turner/Time Warner channels is a huge bummer. I really wanted to rewatch the Rick and Morty premiere last night and had to use my cable box.
• Viacom channels are also missing in action (no Comedy Central, no MTV), but Viacom hates all of these bundles right now.
• It’s not clear if you can use YouTube TV as a TV Anywhere login in various TV apps; I reached out to YouTube for comment and will update if I hear back.
• Content stored on the cloud DVR is commercial free, at least for now. That’s super nice.
• The lack of AirPlay/third-party TV apps sucks.
• YouTube claims that the living room is “very important” for YouTube TV and that more device support will be available, “in the coming months.”
• You can have up to six user accounts per profile and stream from up to three of them at one time.
• YouTube Red content is offered as a bonus, but none of the other features of YouTube Red (no ads on YouTube, access to Google Play Music) are included.

SpaceX Launches a Satellite With a Partly Used Rocket

After more than two years of landing its rockets after launch, SpaceX finally sent one of its used Falcon 9s back into space. The rocket took off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, this evening, sending a communications satellite into orbit, and then landed on one of SpaceX’s drone ships floating in the Atlantic Ocean. It was round two for this particular rocket, which already launched and landed during a mission in April of last year. But the Falcon 9’s relaunch marks the first time an orbital rocket has launched to space for a second time.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk appeared on the company’s live stream shortly after the landing and spoke about the accomplishment. “It means you can fly and refly an orbital class booster, which is the most expensive part of the rocket. This is going to be, ultimately, a huge revolution in spaceflight,” he said.

This evening’s mission was a critical milestone for SpaceX, which has been working to make its rockets partially reusable since as early as 2011. Up until now, practically all orbital rockets have been expendable, so they’re basically thrown away once they launch into space. That means an entirely new rocket — which can cost tens to hundreds of millions of dollars to make — has to be built for each mission to orbit. SpaceX’s strategy has been to land its rockets after launch in an effort to fly them again and again. That way the company can partially save on manufacturing costs for each mission.

SpaceX doesn’t save the entire Falcon 9 rocket after each launch though. It saves the first stage — the 14-story core of the Falcon 9 that contains the main engines and most of the fuel needed for launch. About a few minutes after takeoff, the first stage separates from the top of the rocket and makes a controlled descent back to Earth — either landing on solid ground or on one of the company’s autonomous drone ships in the ocean. Prior to tonight’s launch, SpaceX had attempted 13 of these rocket landings and eight vehicles had successfully stuck the touchdown. But as SpaceX slowly acquired a growing stockpile of recovered rockets these last two years, the company had yet to actually reuse one of these vehicles.

Now with today’s launch, SpaceX has proven that part of a used Falcon 9 can successfully launch to space again. And the fact that the vehicle successfully returned to Earth in one piece means that the rocket is poised to launch for a third time. Now SpaceX can boast nine successful rocket landings, as well as a Falcon 9 that has gone to and from space two times now.

“It’s been 15 years to get to this point, it’s taken us a long time,” Musk said. “A lot of difficult steps along the way, but I’m just incredibly proud of the SpaceX for being able to achieve this incredible milestone in the history of space.”

The rocket used for today’s launch was the second Falcon 9 that SpaceX ever recovered. It was the vehicle used for CRS-8, the company’s eighth cargo resupply mission to the International Space Station. On April 8th, the rocket sent nearly 7,000 pounds of supplies — including an inflatable habitat module called the BEAM — to the station for NASA. After launch, the rocket then landed on SpaceX’s drone ship, titled Of Course I Still Love You. SpaceX decided to launch this Falcon 9 again first, since the company wanted to save the first rocket it ever landed — a vehicle that sent 11 satellites into orbit for the company ORBCOMM in December 2015. That stage is now on display at SpaceX’s headquarters in Hawthorne, California.

Though today’s launch was historic for the aerospace industry, it was otherwise routine for SpaceX. The Falcon 9 help to loft a communications satellite for the company SES, which is based out of Luxembourg. The satellite, called SES-10, will eventually sit in a high orbit 22,000 miles up and deliver communications services exclusively to Latin America. SpaceX confirmed that SES-10 was successfully deployed shortly after the launch.

SES had been very vocal about its desire to be the first company to launch on a used rocket. And there is certainly financial incentive for customers. SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell has said that customers that fly on a used Falcon 9 could eventually get discounts of up to 30 percent. Since the cost to launch a Falcon 9 starts at around $60 million, launching on a used rocket could start at around $40 million. For the first few relaunches, though, Shotwell told Space News that the discounts will be more in the order of 10 percent. Neither SpaceX nor SES disclosed how much money was saved for this flight.

“We did receive a discount. Obviously to fly this there was some interest and there was some incentive to do so,” Martin Halliwell, CTO of SES, said in a press conference prior to the launch. “But it is not just the money in this particular case. It’s really, ‘let’s get this proof-of-concept moving.’ Someone has to go first here and SES has a long history of doing this.”

If SpaceX wants to maximize the economic benefits of its reusable rockets, the best method is to launch these vehicles as frequently as possible. But before a rocket can launch again, it has to be inspected, refurbished, and tested a few times to ensure that it’s ready for spaceflight. It took SpaceX up to four months to get this rocket ready for flight today, according to Shotwell, but the company is working to trim down that turnaround time. SpaceX could have a lot of practice on that front soon, as it expects to launch up to six pre-flown Falcon 9s this year.

A VPN can protect your online privacy. But there's a catch

Your internet service provider can sell your browsing history to the highest bidder.

That's the creepy truth internet users in the US woke up to on Wednesday morning. And it's spurring them to check out tools that can hide their browsing histories and disguise their internet traffic.

On Tuesday, the US House of Representatives voted to kill Federal Communications Commission rules that would have stopped ISPs from selling this data. Later that night, Google searches in the US for a tool called a VPN (short for virtual private network) spiked to a five-year high, according to Google Trends.

Journalists and cybersecurity experts also chattered about VPNs on Twitter.

It's like all of my Twitter is racing to VPN up after Congress' overturn of broadband privacy rules

— CeciliaKang (@ceciliakang) March 29, 2017

The uptick in searches (which is relative, and likely doesn't mean everyone on the internet is seeking out a VPN) matched a broader, somewhat manic response to Congress' actions. One man is offering to sell his internet browsing history on eBay, so that he can benefit from this apparent commodity. Another ticked-off internet user started a campaign to buy the internet histories of legislators and a bunch of other people to make them publicly searchable.

Fatemeh Khatibloo, a principal analyst at tech research firm Forrester who focuses on privacy, pointed out that nothing has actually changed about the way ISPs treat your data. That's because the FCC rules hadn't gone into effect yet.

But if you're feeling creeped out, you might be wondering: What's a VPN, anyway? And will it keep the Comcasts, Verizons and other internet service providers of the world out of your business?

Well, it's complicated.

"People have to, unfortunately, take privacy matters into their own hands," said Ajay Arora, CEO of cybersecurity company Vera. "There's no silver bullet."

Problem solved?

A VPN redirects your internet traffic, disguising where your computer, phone or other device is when it makes contact with websites. It also encrypts information you send across the internet, making it unreadable to anyone who intercepts your traffic. That includes your internet service provider.

Ha! Problem solved -- right?

Well, sort of. The big catch is, now the VPN has your internet traffic and browsing history, instead of your ISP. What's to stop the VPN from selling your information to the highest bidder?

Of course, there are reputable VPN services out there, but it's incumbent on you the user to "do your homework," Arora said. In addition to making sure the VPN will actually keep your data private, you'll want to make sure there's nothing shady in the terms and conditions.

Shady how? Well, in 2015, a group of security-minded coders discovered that free VPN service Hola was selling its users' bandwidth to the paying customers of its Luminati service. That meant some random person could have been using your internet connection to do something illegal. So, shady like that.

"I would recommend you do some cursory level research in terms of reputation [and] how long they've been around," Arora said, "And when you sign up, read the fine print."

The second catch is that you have to set up the VPN on your own, on all your devices that connect to the internet. You might even need different VPN services for different devices. Then you have to make sure you're connecting through a VPN at all times. How big of a catch that is depends on how tech-savvy you are and how much time you have on your hands.

Plenty of VPN users don't flip on the service unless they want to protect specific browsing sessions, said David Gorodyansky, CEO of privacy technology company AnchorFree.

He said 80 percent of the time, most people don't care about privacy, like when they're on Facebook. But the other 20 percent of the time is when they care about their privacy and they're more likely to use a VPN app. This could be when they're googling a personal topic.

"When people are searching online or downloading anything about their health, wealth or family, that's when they care about their privacy and download and use the app," he said.

Khatibloo, the Forrester analyst, said even though nothing has really changed in how ISPs are allowed to treat your data, Congress' actions have made people care more about privacy.

"This ruling has shined a light on carriers' and ISPs' data practices," Khatibloo said in an email, "and we expect that will mean an uptick in the number of consumers changing how they do things -- VPNs, the Tor browser, and HTTPS Everywhere."

Those last two tools also disguise internet traffic -- and they're not any easier to use than a VPN.

This is the samsung galaxy S8, coming April 21st

Preorders begin March 30th, three weeks before the release date

The Samsung Galaxy S8 is the nicest phone I’ve ever held. It’s a beautiful combination of glass, metal, and an absolutely massive screen in a body that’s much smaller than you might expect.

And that might not be enough to make it stand out anymore.

There are two versions of the S8: the standard Galaxy S8 with a 5.8-inch screen and the larger S8 Plus with a 6.2-inch screen. Both are available for preorder on March 30th and will be shipping in the US on April 21st. Pricing, as always with Samsung, is up to the carriers — but you can expect them to command a premium price. The early word is that it will start at $720.

Here’s everything we learned about these two phones after using them for an hour or two last week.

GALAXY S8 HARDWARE
Holding the S8, I’m struck by the fact that nothing about it feels especially surprising, and not just because damn near everything about it has been leaking for the past few months. The boldest feature is every phone’s more important feature: the screen. On the S8, it extends up and down to cover nearly the entire front of the phone. It also curves around the left and right, something Samsung is calling the “infinity display,” which gives it the look of not having any bezels at all. And speaking of curves, the four corners of the screen are also slightly curved instead of squared-off, which adds some elegance and perhaps some screen durability.

The S8 and S8 Plus fulfill Samsung’s promise of fitting a big screen in a smaller body, and so they’re quite a bit more usable than other large-screened phones. I didn’t experience some of the accidental touch issues that I still get with the Galaxy S7 Edge. But I also only had about an hour with the phone, so it’s possible that it could still be an issue.

More than anything else, the S8 is nice. It may seem like table stakes in 2017, but these phones are incredibly well-designed. There are no seams, only the barest of camera bumps, and everything seems milled down to sub-millimeter tolerances. They feel inevitable in a way that almost becomes boring. Many of the design touches are evolutions of the S7 Edge and Note 7, but refined to their Platonic ideals.

Extending the screen to near the bottom of the phone means that there’s no room for Samsung’s traditional hardware home button. Instead, it uses software buttons like other Android phones. It also uses some haptic feedback like Apple’s iPhones to create a virtual feeling of pressing a home button, though it only works on the very specific spot where the software home button appears. One neat feature: some Android apps hide those main Android buttons when they go full screen, but you can still firmly press the bottom of the screen to activate the home button.

Getting rid of the physical home button also means that Samsung had to move the fingerprint sensor. It’s on the back now, right next to the camera. That’s not a very convenient place for it, honestly. It’s too high up on the phone to comfortably reach and it’s also right next to the camera module, which might mean you’l be getting fingerprints on the camera more often than you’d like.

Speaking of fingerprints, because the S8 is nearly all glass, you’ll see them on the back a lot, but they’re not as prominent as you might expect (they’re worse on the LG G6, for example).

Both the USB-C port and the 3.5mm headphone jack (hallelujah) are located on the bottom of the phone. You have power on one side and volume buttons on the other, underneath which you’ll find a whole new button that’s dedicated to the big new software feature on the Galaxy S8, Bixby. There’s much more on Bixby below, but for now I’ll just note that dedicating a hardware button to this software feature is a big bet on Samsung’s intelligent assistant. If Bixby ends up being not that great, I expect many people will be looking for ways to remap that extra hardware button (or decrying that it’s vestigial).

GALAXY S8 SPECS
As you’d expect, the S8 has the best specs you can get on an Android phone. Depending on the region, you’ll either get Qualcomm’s newest (and slightly rarer) Snapdragon 835 or Samsung’s own Exynos. In both cases, Samsung is touting that they’re built on a 10nm chip, which should theoretically help with power consumption. In my brief time with it, everything was whip-fast. Hopefully it will stay that way over time — Samsung phones often don’t.

The standard S8 has a 570ppi 5.8-inch screen, with a resolution of 2960 x 1440. The S8 Plus has the exact same resolution on its 6.2-inch screen, which works out to 529ppi. For my money, the standard S8 is the way to go. It still feels like a massive screen and the body is significantly smaller. The height of the screen is interesting, too: the aspect ratio is a super-tall 18.5:9, which adds a bunch of screen real estate to scroll through. I didn’t get to test a bunch of third-party apps, so hopefully we won’t see too much weirdness with the new aspect ratio. Even if we do, Galaxy phones are popular enough to prod developers to update their apps to support it.

In terms of other specs, it’s pretty bog standard stuff: 4 gigs of RAM, 64 gigs of onboard storage, and an expandable SD card slot.

Processor
US: Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 Octa core (2.35 GHz Quad + 1.7 GHZ Quad)
International: Samsung Exynos Octa core (2.35 GHz Quad + 1.9 GHZ Quad)
Display

Galaxy S8: 5.8-inch OLED, 2960 x 1440, 570ppi
Galaxy S8 Plus: 6.2-inch OLED, 2960 x 1440, 529ppi
Cameras

Rear: 12-megapixel, OIS, F1.7
Front: 8-megapixel, auto focus, F1.7
Batteries

Galaxy S8: 3,000 mAh
Galaxy S8 Plus: 3,500 mAh
Dimensions

Galaxy S8: 148.9 x 68.1 x 8 mm, 155g
Galaxy S8 Plus: 159.5 x 73.4 x 8.1 mm, 173g
Other specs

Android 7.0 Nougat
USB-C, 3.5mm headphone jack
NFC and MST for Samsung Pay
IP68 water and dust resistant
Wireless charging
LTE Cat.16
Bluetooth 5.0, can stream to two devices
Wi-Fi a/b/g/n/ac

GALAXY S8 BATTERY
Nearly 900 words in and I haven’t made an exploding phone joke (you’re welcome, Samsung). But now is the time to point out that the last time the phone maker released a phone this big and beautiful, it literally set itself on fire on a disturbingly regular basis. The company’s responses to this issue were botched and bad for some time before it pivoted, apologized, and introduced a new process for checking battery safety. Those safety checks are important, but Samsung still has to own all the exploding phone jokes and hear them at every mention of its phones for a while.

So on the S8, Samsung did not push the envelope when it comes to capacity. The S8 has a 3,000mAh battery and the S8 Plus has a larger 3,500mAh battery — the same capacity that the Note 7 had. But neither is especially large when you consider the fact that they need to power towering screens. Samsung claims it has tweaked the battery chemistry to help the batteries last longer after a year or two of use.

To make up for it, Samsung is offering the usual suite of power options: Qualcomm Quick Charge and support for both major wireless charging standards. But I still have reservations about how long the batteries will last on these phones. In fact, it may be a reason to seriously consider getting the larger S8 Plus.

GALAXY S8 CAMERAS
Another place where Samsung hasn’t really pushed the envelope is the camera. The S8 uses the exact same rear camera as the Galaxy S7, a 12-megapixel sensor with OIS. Samsung says it’s done work on the software side to improve picture quality, and in my short time with it I found it to be significantly faster than the camera on the Galaxy S7 Edge.

It is notable that the S8 Plus doesn’t get a better camera or a dual-camera setup. Excepting screen and battery size, both phones are identical.

I suspect it’s using the “take pictures all the time in the background and just save them when you hit the shutter button” trick we’ve seen on other phones. It also borrows another trick from other Android phones: the shortcut to launch it is double-pressing the power button now (since the home button is virtual).

The front-facing camera (aka the one you really care about) has gotten an upgrade. It’s an 8-megapixel sensor now, but more importantly it has autofocus. Switching between cameras was fast and easy, as was swiping over to get to Samsung’s kajillion photo gimmick settings. But some of those gimmicks are pretty neat, I’m especially fond of the GIF mode, though I do wish it was just automatic like you can do with Apple’s Live Photos and the Motion Stills app.

In any case, the competition for the “best smartphone camera” is way more interesting now than it was a year ago, when just Samsung and Apple were at the top. Now, Apple and LG are sticking multiple cameras in their phones while Google’s Pixel has jumped to the top of the Android camera quality game. It’s too early to say that Samsung is resting on its photography laurels with the S8, but it is fair to say that there’s probably nothing here that will give other companies reason to worry.

GALAXY S8 SOFTWARE
That Samsung is capable of making great hardware should come as no surprise to anybody. It’s the software where we have reason to be skeptical. Running all the way back to the bad old days of TouchWiz, Samsung has a well-earned reputation for taking Android and mucking it up with bad ideas.

For the past few years, though, the common refrain has been restraint, and I’m going to repeat it again today. Samsung has done a pretty good job keeping its worst instincts in check. There are a ton of weird features to find in the dark recesses of the settings menu, but out of the box the basic look, feel, and functionality of Samsung’s Android skinning is pretty good.

And there are some genuinely great parts, too. The iris scanning that lived all-too-briefly on the Note 7 is back, if you’d like to unlock your phone that way. But the best way to unlock the phone is Samsung’s new face detect system. It takes about 20 seconds to set up and once you do, it works really well. It’s not the same, bad face unlock that was introduced in Android years ago, it’s an entirely new system Samsung made.

In my 10 minutes or so of playing with it, it didn’t fail to unlock a single time. In fact, it was so fast that we a hard time filming it. I had to point the phone away from my face and then just tilt it up to look at myself. I unfortunately forgot to print a glossy 8 x 10 of my face to test with, though, so I can’t say if maybe it’s tuned to be a little too forgiving when it tries to see if it’s you. Samsung admits the face-detect system is less secure than the other ways of unlocking, so you will still need to set up the iris or fingerprint scanners to make payments.

There is one gimmick that in theory I should be excited about but in practice I’m just not: DeX. It’s a feature where, after buying a specialized dock, you can plug your Galaxy S8 into a monitor, keyboard, and mouse and get a full desktop mode. Unlike solutions we’ve seen in the past (RIP Motorola Atrix), the desktop mode here simply offers Android apps instead of a full desktop browser. It looks well-designed for what it is, offering full access to your notifications and resizable windows. But it can’t escape the fact that outside a few apps like Samsung’s own browser, Microsoft Office, and Adobe’s creative suite, Android apps are bad on big screens.

People who unironically call themselves Road Warriors like they’re IT managers in 1999 will love it. The rest of us probably won’t use it. And that’s fine.

BIXBY, SAMSUNG’S PERSONAL ASSISTANT
Samsung may not have put a ton of effort in changing its hardware design language, updating its camera, or packing in a bigger battery. But it has been focused on figuring out how to make software that people actually like, and it’s all centered on a new virtual assistant called Bixby.

As I mentioned above, Bixby is launched by pressing an honest-to-god dedicated physical button. It has basically three modes:

A short-press of the button takes you to Bixby Home (you can also swipe over to it from the home screen).
Long-pressing the button turns on Bixby’s voice features.
There’s a small button on the camera app for Bixby’s augmented reality features.

Let’s start in the middle with voice, because speaking to Bixby is the most interesting and challenging set of features here. Essentially, what Samsung is trying to do is create a new kind of virtual assistant, one that helps you use the device directly in your hands rather than ask random questions from the cloud.

I wasn’t able to test this myself, unfortunately, but Samsung did run us through a couple demos. In one, you can open the gallery app and then issue voice commands for editing a photo rather than trying to dig through the interface to find the right button. “Bixby, rotate this photo left,” and “Bixby, send this photo to Dan.” If you live that Samsung Life, you can use Bixby to send videos to your TV or turn off your smart lights, too.

The goal is that “anything you can control with touch, you can also control with voice.” It’s a laudable goal, but it’s also one I very seriously doubt Samsung can achieve. For one thing, it only works with about 10 Samsung apps at launch. Also, it can only work with apps that are written to support Bixby. Unlike Google Now on Tap, Bixby doesn’t do any screen reading to try and guess what’s on the screen. So it might be a virtual assistant, but it’s very far from an artificial intelligence.

The other big question with Bixby is how exactly is it differentiated from the Google Assistant. It seems pretty clear, but then you discover that there’s a bunch of overlap. For example, you can do things like set alarms with Bixby. There’s also Bixby Home, which so far as I can tell is a giant, random set of information cards for things like your smart light bulbs, fitness data, local news and weather, and whatever else Samsung thinks belongs in a virtual assistant home screen. It looks like every widget screen you’ve ever seen on a phone, which is to say it looks like sort of a mess that you probably won’t use very much.

Last but certainly not least are Bixby’s camera features, which are Bixby’s best features. You can launch it either directly in the camera app or from Bixby Home, and what it essentially does is turn your camera into a photo search machine. Point the Bixby camera app at anything and it will identify it and suggest web searches for it. I tried on flowers and it gave me options to buy flowers on Amazon or look at more flowers on Pinterest. It wasn’t able to precisely identify my Android Wear watch, but it did know it was a round watch and offered to let me buy a real one on Amazon.

It also works with more prosaic things. Samsung ran a demo with wine labels and book covers, both easily identified and given options to buy. Samsung says it’s working with specific partners for Bixby — including Amazon and Pinterest — but it doesn’t appear that it works with the biggest search engine of them all, Google. That’s not really a surprise.

GALAXY S8 RELEASE DATE, COLORS, AND PRICE
In the US, the S8 and S8 Plus will come in black, gray, and silver. Gold and blue are options internationally.

The Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus are available for preorder starting tomorrow, March 30th, and you should get a free Oculus headset with a controller and a set of games along with your preorder. The official release in the US is on April 21st. Unfortunately, Samsung won’t confirm pricing, leaving that to its carrier partners — again, it looks like it’ll start at around $720.

Apple is upgrading millions of iOS devices to a new modern file system today

Apple’s iOS 10.3 is rolling out today, with a new find my AirPods option and CarPlay improvements. Most of the features in iOS 10.3 aren’t major, but Apple is actually undertaking a pretty huge shift for all iPad and iPhone users today. Within iOS 10.3, Apple is moving supported devices to its new Apple File System (APFS). It’s a file system that was originally announced at WWDC last year, and it’s designed with the iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, Mac, and Apple TV in mind.

Apple has been using its 31-year-old Hierarchical File System (HFS) for iOS devices so far. It was originally designed for Macs with floppy or hard disks, and not for modern mobile devices with solid state storage. Even its successor, HFS+, still doesn’t address the needs of these mobile devices enough. Apple’s new APFS is designed to scale across these new types of devices and take advantage of flash or SSD storage. It’s also engineered with encryption as a primary feature, and even supports features like snapshots so restoring files on a Mac or even an iOS device might get a lot easier in the future.

As APFS is designed to be low latency, this should also improve read and write speeds on iOS or Mac devices. Apple demonstrated this during WWDC last year with a Mac, showing how APFS saved time on a simple file copy compared to HFS+. Most iPhone and iPad users won’t notice a difference after today’s iOS 10.3 update, but there could be a boost to storage levels for some. Beta testers of iOS 10.3 reported seeing more storage available after the update, primarily due to the way APFS calculates available data.

Other than a tiny boost to storage, it’s unlikely you’ll see any benefits from this new file system on an iPad or iPhone just yet. It will help lay some of the foundations for Apple to switch fully over to 64-bit apps only on iOS, something that many believe will happen with iOS 11. What you might notice when you install iOS 10.3 is that it takes longer to install. It shouldn’t be too much longer, but Apple is taking on a big task to carefully and silently update millions of iOS devices’ file systems so things will take a little longer than normal.

Apple, Samsung, Microsoft react to Wikileaks' CIA dump

Several of the tech firms whose products have been allegedly compromised by the CIA have given their first reactions to the claims.

Wikileaks published thousands of documents said to detail the US spy agency's hacking tools on Tuesday.

They included allegations the CIA had developed ways to listen in on smartphone and smart TV microphones.

Apple's statement was the most detailed, saying it had already addressed some of the vulnerabilities.

"The technology built into today's iPhone represents the best data security available to consumers, and we're constantly working to keep it that way," it said.

"Our products and software are designed to quickly get security updates into the hands of our customers, with nearly 80% of users running the latest version of our operating system.

"While our initial analysis indicates that many of the issues leaked today were already patched in the latest iOS, we will continue work to rapidly address any identified vulnerabilities.

"We always urge customers to download the latest iOS to make sure they have the most recent security update."

Samsung - whose F8000 series of televisions was reportedly compromised via a hack co-developed with the UK's MI5 agency - was briefer.

"Protecting consumers' privacy and the security of our devices is a top priority at Samsung," it said.

"We are aware of the report in question and are urgently looking into the matter."

The leaks also claimed that the CIA had created malware to target PCs running Microsoft's Windows operating system.

"We are aware of the report and are looking into it," a spokesman from Microsoft said.

Google declined to comment about allegations that the CIA was able to "penetrate, infest and control" Android phones due to its discovery and acquisition of "zero day" bugs - previously unknown flaws in the operating system's code.

Likewise, the Linux Foundation has yet to publicly react to claims the agency had created "attack and control systems" that could hijack computers powered by Linux-based software.

'Incredibly damaging'

The CIA has not confirmed whether the documents are real.

But one of its former chiefs was concerned by their publication.

"If what I have read is true, then this seems to be an incredibly damaging leak in terms of the tactics, techniques, procedures and tools that were used by the Central Intelligence Agency to conduct legitimate foreign intelligence," ex-CIA director Michael Hayden told the BBC.

"In other words, it's made my country and my country's friends less safe."

But one expert said the fact that the CIA had targeted such a wide range of technology was no surprise.

"The story here isn't that the CIA hacks people. Of course they do; taxpayers would be right to be annoyed if that weren't the case," blogged Nicholas Weaver, a security researcher at the International Computer Science Institute in Berkeley.

"The CIA's job, after all, is [to] collect intelligence, and while its primary purview is human intelligence, hacking systems interacts synergistically with that collection.

"The actual headline here is that someone apparently managed to compromise a Top Secret CIA development environment, exfiltrate a whole host of material, and is now releasing it to the world... now the world wants to know who, and how, and why."

Embarrassment factor - Analysis by BBC's security correspondent Gordon Corera

These latest leaks - which appear to give details of highly sensitive technical methods - will be a huge problem for the CIA.

There is the embarrassment factor - that an agency whose job is to steal other people's secrets has not been able to keep its own.

Then there will be the fear of a loss of intelligence coverage against targets who may change their behaviour because they now know what the spies can do.

And then there will be the questions over whether the CIA's technical capabilities were too expansive and too secret.

Because many of the initial documents point to capabilities targeting consumer devices, the hardest questions may revolve around what is known as the "equities" problem.

This is when you find a vulnerability in a piece of technology and have to balance the benefit to the public of telling the manufacturer so they can close it and improve everyone's security with the benefit to the spy agency of leaving it in place so it can be exploited to collect intelligence.

The National Security Agency faced questions about whether it had this balance right when many of its secrets were revealed by Edward Snowden, and now it may be the CIA's turn.

YouTube To Offer Its Own Pay-TV Service

Fed up with paying for cable the traditional way? You may soon be able to subscribe to it over the internet with… YouTube.

The Google-owned site, known for cat videos and do-it-yourself makeup tutorials, is the latest company to offer a version of cable that looks and feels more like Netflix. Dish, Sony and AT&T already have internet cable alternatives, and Hulu has one coming soon.

None of these have yet been huge hits. YouTube is hoping its expertise in recommendations and search makes it stand out.

Dubbed YouTube TV, the new service will cost $35 a month for access to about 40 channels when it launches in the next few months, similar to rivals. But it will be initially limited to a few cities where it has deals with broadcasters. And so far, Google doesn’t appear to have deals for popular channels such as HBO, AMC and TBS.

THE ONLINE PROPOSITION

There are roughly three million fewer traditional TV households in the U.S. then there were four years ago, a decline of about 3 percent. Online alternatives such as Dish’s Sling TV, AT&T’s DIRECTV Now and Sony’s PlayStation Vue had about 1.5 million customers combined in 2016.

But companies like YouTube believe a substantial number of people could be persuaded to pay for TV online. Many of these potential customers are younger people who have never had cable and watch shows and movies primarily through online services such as Netflix.

But these online cable alternatives have drawbacks of their own. They may not offer substantial savings compared with cable, and offer incomplete channel lineups and inconsistent video quality.

YOUTUBE’S OFFERING

YouTube’s service will cost $35 a month, similar to the cheapest deals from AT&T’s DIRECTV Now and Sony’s PlayStation Vue, but more expensive than Dish’s Sling TV. It comes with unlimited storage in a cloud DVR; only Vue also offers a DVR to all customers. It will allow three people to watch on different devices at the same time.

The new service underscores how far YouTube has evolved since its early days as a repository for pirated shows and movies. Over the past several years, YouTube has beefed up anti-piracy controls and allowed television producers and networks to share in ad revenue. Those companies are now willing to partner with YouTube on this new endeavor.

But YouTube still faces challenges making this work. In addition to the no-shows in its channel lineup, it will launch only in cities where it can offer live feeds of the major broadcasters, which tend to be larger metropolitan areas. (YouTube says it will work on expanding to other markets, although that will require cutting deals with the owners of network affiliate stations in those cities.) It will work on a TV only via Google’s Chromecast streaming gadget.

WHAT’S THE PROBLEM?

In general, internet TV services are an incomplete substitute for cable.

Many popular programs aren’t available because digital rights are a hodgepodge. You can’t watch most NFL games on phones using these services — Verizon has those exclusive rights. DIRECTV Now and Sling don’t carry CBS, and live feeds for ABC, CBS and NBC are available only in some big cities, as most network stations are owned by third parties.

Although many cable subscribers say they don’t need packages of 500 channels, they don’t agree on which channels they actually want. These online services offer cheaper packages with fewer channels, but they are bound to be missing someone’s favorites. As with cable, the cost mounts the more channels you add.

Cable companies also offer discounts when you buy internet and TV services together, which can be cheaper than getting them separately. Prices for the online services start at $20 for Sling’s cheapest bundle to $70 and up for the biggest packages from Vue and DIRECTV Now.

Beyond that, these online services also have had quality issues with video freezing or not working at all. And to watch on a TV, you need an extra gadget like an Apple TV, a PlayStation game console, a Roku box or, now, a Chromecast — and not every service works with every gadget.

WhatsApp privacy backlash: Facebook angers users by harvesting their data

Facebook is being accused of backtracking on its pledge not to use the data of the 1 billion users of the WhatsApp messaging app it acquired two years ago

Facebook is being accused of backtracking on its pledge not to use the data of the 1 billion users of the WhatsApp messaging app it acquired two years ago

Stop us if you’ve heard this one: Facebook rolls out a new feature and/or acquires a new company, vowing to protect the privacy of its users’ personal information with its last dying breath. A year or two later, it backtracks and decides it wants spin your data into gold after all – and if users don’t like it, they can delete their accounts.

And so it is with today’s news about WhatsApp, the messaging service acquired by the world’s most unavoidable social network in February 2014. In a blogpost, WhatsApp announced it would begin sharing names and phone numbers with its parent company, to allow its more than 1 billion users “to communicate with businesses that matter to you too” – like notifications from airlines, delivery services or your bank, for example.

Facebook will also use that data to make friend suggestions and combine that data with the reams of information it has already collected so that it can tailor ads even more specifically to your interests.

Facebook did not want to comment on the change.

The reaction was nothing if not predictable. Tech news site Gizmodo sums up the feeling of many tech observers: “The sentiment that WhatsApp is an app that protects and cares for your privacy is no longer a reality. It was nice while it lasted.”

Some used Reddit to voice their disappointment, like Redditor Rakajj: “WhatsApp just lost a user. Was just a matter of time once the FB acquisition went through. Guess it’s time to finally give Telegram a whirl.”

And there was the inevitable tweet stream:

The #WhatsApp about-face is a good reminder that you should never take a company at its word. https://t.co/vcjPMmxj7k

— Greg Scoblete (@GregScoblete) August 25, 2016

What sms service are people switching to now it's been revealed that WhatsApp is giving all our phone numbers to Facebook?

— Mark Ward (@mark_ward_) August 25, 2016

Facebook lie and take advantage of their users in order to make a buck? What? No way! #Sarcasm https://t.co/D2WbCJhwYO

— Mr. Funk E. Dude (@MrFunkEdude) August 25, 2016

Yet the backlash runs deeper than a few angry tweets.

Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Washington-based Electronic Privacy Information Center (Epic), says that by going back on its agreement to keep WhatsApp data private, Facebook is violating an agreement reached with the FTC in 2012.

The agency’s final order requires the social network to obtain its users consent before changing settings that affect the privacy of their information. “The FTC has to act,” Rotenberg says. “It’s absurd that a company can disregard a legal judgement.”

Facebook has a long history of changing its policies in a way that puts the company’s needs ahead of its users’ and kicks the internet outrage engine into full gear.

In November 2007 the social network launched Beacon, a way to capture information about what people did on third-party sites, publishing things like the games they were playing or their recent purchases on their newsfeeds. Howls of protest and a class action suit ensued; Facebook immediately scaled back the Beacon program and then quietly killed it two years later.

In December 2009, Facebook unilaterally made some information that had been private by default, like friends lists, publicly available without warning anyone. It also shared private information with third-party apps, while claiming to do the opposite. These and other offenses earned the social network sanctions from the FTC and 20 years of third-party privacy audits.

In early 2012, Facebook performed an ad hoc psychology experiment on nearly 700,000 users to see if it could manipulate their emotions by flooding their newsfeeds with either positive or negative posts – again, without informing anyone. The Electronic Privacy Information Center filed a complaint with the FTC, and Facebook eventually apologized.

Those are just the greatest hits.

What does Facebook get from annoying its users yet again? If you use WhatsApp to communicate with your airline, bank, delivery service or customer service department at virtually any other establishment, Facebook will know that too – and, at some point in the future, presumably add all those nuggets of potentially monetizable information to your ever expanding yet-strangely perverse advertising profile.

If that’s too much for you, you have 30 days to opt out of data sharing. (WhatsApp offers instructions here, though these steps weren’t available on my iPhone app at press time.) You can switch to a more private messaging service, like Telegram or Signal, which doesn’t rely on an advertising-based business model. Or you can keep calm and carry on using WhatsApp and Facebook – at least, until the next outrage arises.