Volkswagen Gave An Apology Sandwich With The Reveal Of Its Budd-e Concept Car In-Between

Volkswagen’s head brand ambassador Herbert Diess quickly got the emissions fiasco apologies out of the way on stage at CES on Tuesday and then unveiled two connected and all-electric concept cars of the future, the e-Golf Touch and the much-anticipated Budd-e microbus.

Diess was in the running for VW CEO shortly after Martin Winterkorn resigned in fall 2015, amidst a revelation the German car manufacturer had deliberately placed emissions-cheating software in more than 500,000 vehicles sold in the United States. Matthias Muller is now the company’s CEO.

The U.S. government filed a lawsuit against Volkswagen on Monday in Detroit, Michigan. Diess took to the stage at the Cosmopolitan’s Chelsea Theater in Las Vegas this evening to address the situation.

“The current issue for diesel engines is certainly nothing to be proud of. We disappointed our customers and the American people. We are truly sorry and I apologize. We are disappointed that this could happen within the company we love. I assure you, we are doing everything we can to make things right. And we are working night and day to find effective technical remedies for our customers and the authorities worldwide. In total, up to 11 million VW group cars are affected by this issue. For the large majority of these cars, we have already worked out approved solutions. In Europe, this holds true for about 8.5 million affected cars. Resolutions have been ratified by the European authorities and we will start to repair these cars this month. Most of them will be fixed within 2016. Here in the US, the set of regulations is different compared to Europe. It’s more demanding due to nitrogen oxide and less demanding due to CO2. We’re working hard to create an effective package for the US authorities.”

Diess then proceeded to wow the crowd with the concept cars – both of which focus heavily on some digital touches Volkswagen hopes will give the company a good foothold in the connected car race.

The Budd-e, a pint-sized version of the company’s legendary hippie van looked almost Tron-like as it glowed in the dark onstage – as if to let us know we’re now in the future. It also stayed true to what seems to be the automotive theme of CES this year – connection to everything on command. The Budd-e will let you know if a visitor is at the front of your house, what’s in your fridge and “make sure your robot cleaner is ready” before you get home, according to one LG exec who came onstage during the presentation.

The car is also equipped to handle package pickup and delivery with a built-in drop box in the back where a delivery person can drop off and pick up packages wherever your car is parked. 

Budd-e also seems to be adherent to “the force.” The handleless car doors will automatically open at the command of your voice. Diess demonstrated this onstage as the driver inside said politely, “Hello Budd-e, please open the passenger door.” 

The e-Golf Touch is an updated version of the Golf R Touch concept car Volkswagen showcased last year. But this one is electric, comes with a 9.2-inch touchable dashboard resembling an iPad, and is compatible with Apple CarPlay, Android Auto, and MirrorLink.

One of the cool things about the e-Golf is the personalization. Different drivers can set preferred driving features in the cloud and upload them onto the tablet dashboard.

Gestures like the waving of your hand can control things like volume and the e-Golf is WiFi enabled and equipped with phone charging outlets in the front and rear seats of the car. Should no Internet connection be available, the car is also equipped with a USB Type-C port.

The presentation also touched on a strong theme among many car manufacturers at CES this year – automated driving. “Volkswagen is rapidly entering the digital world, utilizing machine learning and mapping,” Diess told the crowd.

Note VW bought HERE, one of the largest digital mapping companies, last summer.

The company also unveiled a partnership with Mobileye, a vision technology company with an advanced driver assistance system that helps boost cars to a near self-driving experience.

“The human eye is really complicated and it’s really hard to replicate,” Co-founder and CTO of Mobileye Ammon Shashua said onstage at the VW event. “In the future we’ll live in a digital world…the camera will continue to be a critical sensor.”

A big theme for both cars was clearly about connection, but the Budd-e was definitely about the design. The car and the home cross-pollinate well in VW’s vision for the future Internet of Things, be it on the road or in the cloud and Volkswagen’s CEO indicated that these futuristic rides “could be a reality by the end of the decade.”

“The car of the future will make a difference. It will make our world a better place and Volkswagen will make sure most people can afford it,” Diess said.

He ended his speech with a return to what his company plans to do to make things right with the U.S. market. “We’re doing everything we can to work on the current diesel issue in the U.S.,” he said. “We’re working very hard to do so and confident we will provide solutions very soon.”

ISIS Ruling Aims To Settle Who Can Have Sex With Female Slaves

 ISIS theologians have issued an extremely detailed ruling on when "owners" of women enslaved by the extremist group can have sex with them, in an apparent bid to curb what they called violations in the treatment of captured females.

The ruling or fatwa has the force of law and appears to go beyond the ISIS's previous known utterances on the subject, a leading ISIS scholar said. It sheds new light on how the group is trying to reinterpret centuries-old teachings to justify the sexual slavery of women in the swaths of Syria and Iraq it controls.

To read the fatwa click here: http://graphics.thomsonreuters.com/doc/slaves_fatwa.pdf

The fatwa was among a huge trove of documents captured by US Special Operations Forces during a raid targeting a top Islamic State official in Syria in May. Reuters has reviewed some of the documents, which have not been previously published.

Among the religious rulings are bans on a father and son having sex with the same female slave; and the owner of a mother and daughter having sex with both. Joint owners of a female captive are similarly enjoined from intercourse because she is viewed as "part of a joint ownership."

The United Nations and human rights groups have accused the ISIS of the systematic abduction and rape of thousands of women and girls as young as 12, especially members of the Yazidi minority in northern Iraq. Many have been given to fighters as a reward or sold as sex slaves.

Far from trying to conceal the practice, ISIS has boasted about it and established a department of "war spoils" to manage slavery. Reuters reported on the existence of the department on Monday.

In an April report, Human Rights Watch interviewed 20 female escapees who recounted how ISIS  fighters separated young women and girls from men and boys and older women. They were moved "in an organized and methodical fashion to various places in Iraq and Syria." They were then sold or given as gifts and repeatedly raped or subjected to sexual violence.

Dos And Don'ts

Fatwa No. 64, dated Jan. 29, 2015, and issued by ISIS's Committee of Research and Fatwas, appears to codify sexual relations between ISIS fighters and their female captives for the first time, going further than a pamphlet issued by the group in 2014 on how to treat slaves.

The fatwa starts with a question: "Some of the brothers have committed violations in the matter of the treatment of the female slaves. These violations are not permitted by Sharia law because these rules have not been dealt with in ages. Are there any warnings pertaining to this matter?"

It then lists 15 injunctions, which in some instances go into explicit detail. For example:

"If the owner of a female captive, who has a daughter suitable for intercourse, has sexual relations with the latter, he is not permitted to have intercourse with her mother and she is permanently off limits to him. Should he have intercourse with her mother then he is not permitted to have intercourse with her daughter and she is to be off limits to him."

ISIS's sexual exploitation of female captives has been well documented, but a leading ISIS expert at Princeton University, Cole Bunzel, who has reviewed many of the group's writings, said the fatwa went beyond what has previously been published by the militants on how to treat female slaves.

"It reveals the actual concerns of IS slave owners," he said in an email.

Still, he cautioned that not "everything dealt with in the fatwa is indicative of a relevant violation. It doesn't mean father and son were necessarily sharing a girl. They're at least being 'warned' not to. But I bet some of these violations were being committed."

The fatwa also instructs owners of female slaves to "show compassion towards her, be kind to her, not humiliate her, and not assign her work she is unable to perform." An owner should also not sell her to an individual whom he knows will mistreat her.

Professor Abdel Fattah Alawari, dean of Islamic Theology at Al-Azhar University, a 1,000-year-old Egyptian centre for Islamic learning, said ISIS "has nothing to do with Islam" and was deliberately misreading centuries-old verses and sayings that were originally designed to end, rather than encourage, slavery.

"Islam preaches freedom to slaves, not slavery. Slavery was the status quo when Islam came around," he said. "Judaism, Christianity, Greek, Roman, and Persian civilizations all practiced it and took the females of their enemies as sex slaves. So Islam found this abhorrent practice and worked to gradually remove it."

In September 2014 more than 120 Islamic scholars from around the world issued an open letter to ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi refuting the group's religious arguments to justify many of its actions. The scholars noted that the "reintroduction of slavery is forbidden in Islam."

Samsung Pay Will Launch Online Payments In the U.S.

Samsung Pay plans a major expansion in the United States next year. Users will be able to make purchases on websites with Samsung Pay, which puts it into more direct competition with services like Paypal, Reuters reports. The mobile wallet platform will be also available on lower-end Samsung smartphones, not just flagship models like the Galaxy S6 Edge.

In an interview with Reuters, Samsung global co-general manager Thomas Ko said Samsung Pay will roll out to more smartphone models next year. The payment platform launched in the U.S. in September and has an advantage over competitors because it can emulate magnetic stripe cards thanks to Samsung’s acquisition of LoopPay, in addition to using NFC technology like Apple Pay and Android Pay.

This means Samsung Pay works with a wider assortment of existing point-of-sale equipment than Apple Pay or Android Pay does.

Ko claims that Samsung Pay is already the most widely accepted mobile payments system in the U.S. because it is compatible with most credit card terminals. Mobile wallets haven’t quite taken off in the U.S. yet, but getting people accustomed to using their stored financial information in Samsung Pay for online purchases may convince them to pull out their smartphones at cashier stands, too.

Alibaba To Invest $1.25B In Restaurant Delivery Service Ele.me, Says Report

Alibaba will reportedly invest $1.25 billion in Ele.me, a food delivery service based in Shanghai, says financial news site Caixin (link via Google Translate). The deal would Alibaba the startup’s biggest shareholder, with a 27.7 percent stake.

According to Crunchbase, Ele.me has raised about $1.09 billion dollars. Its list of investors is noteworthy because it includes Alibaba rivals Tencent and JD.com. Ele.me’s largest round, a $630 million Series F, was announced in August.

If the deal goes through, it strengthens Alibaba’s O2O strategy. O2O, which can stand for online-to-offline or offline-to-online, is shorthand for the business of convincing e-commerce customers to spend money at offline businesses or, on the other hand, getting customers who usually shop in brick-and-mortar stores to make online purchases.

Alibaba’s other O2O investments include its affiliate Alipay, China’s largest mobile payments platform, electronics retail chain Suning, and taxi app Didi Kuaidi.

Twitter’s Fiscal 2015: Up, Flat, And Down

Twitter did not have a lovely 2015. The world-famous social company saw its revenue rise, its usage flatten, and its share price fall.

The company failed to change the arc of its own narrative during the year: Strong financial performance, but continued failure to grow its user base, the latter of which the market appears to weight more strongly. It brought in a new CEO to turn things around, but so far it still hasn’t found a way to really do a better job of building its audience.

The result? Share price declines that have put Twitter near all-time lows as the year concludes.

Twitter Inc. (TWTR) Stock Price - 1 Year | FindTheCompany

The numbers speak for themselves. After its IPO, Twitter shot to more than $60 per share. The company then spent time in the $30 range, the $40 range, and the $50 range. This year, Twitter has seen its value fall further, bouncing around the low $20 range.

For employees who have options priced at a far higher levels, the declines are not theoretical. They are material. And there is a rot that can set in when it comes to falling share prices — the public equivalent of a down round, in some ways — as it becomes more difficult to hire, retain key talent, and keep morale up.

So, what’s happened this year? Let’s take a look.

Twitter’s financial performance

Key to Twitter’s success story — and it has been a success story — is its financial performance. The company has posted strong revenue growth, beaten expectations, and impressively monetized its user base. To its former critics that decried it as a fad, or financial impossibility, Twitter can drop the following revenue figures and saunter away:

• First quarter, 2015: $436 million, up 74 percent, compared to the year-ago period.
• Second quarter, 2015: $502 million, up 61 percent, compared to the year-ago period.
• Third quarter, 2015: $569 million, up 58 percent, compared to the year-ago period.

If you were curious as to how to monetize social services, Twitter has blazed a trail worth studying. The company’s monetary performance is a credit to its management team.

However, there is a cap on Twitter’s future financial performance. While it has done yeoman’s work extracting more value from its existing user base, the firm is still dependent on user growth. That, in the long-term, is necessary to generate new revenue. The argument is simple: If Twitter can’t grow its cadre of active users, it cannot eventually further grow its revenue.

You can only squeeze a rag so hard, in other words.

And, where Twitter has been precisely brilliant regarding its improving top line, it has seen difficulty convincing the masses that using Twitter is what they should do.

Twitter’s stalling user growth

In the second quarter this year, new CEO Jack Dorsey pretty much summed up a significant challenge for the company in a single statement: “Our Q2 results show good progress in monetization, but we are not satisfied with our growth in audience.”

This statement serves as a microcosm for the company. Its financials looked good, but its number logged-in users did not grow as much as the company had hoped. The company’s monthly active user growth had essentially stalled — and for a company whose performance is dependent on its audience, that demonstrated a massive problem for investors.

Twitter MAU Over Time | SoftwareInsider

Still, that doesn’t mean Twitter’s total user base isn’t growing. There’s a whole swath of users that may simply be logged out — which is difficult to track, and something Twitter is working on. The company is also actively experimenting with new products in order to increase engagement among its users. But the best advertising targeting Twitter can do is on users that have built an interest graph, which involves signing up, logging in and following others to get a sense of what the user is looking for.

“One other thing to note, we also are monetizing logged-out users across the network,” COO Adam Bain said on the last earnings call. “This is the first time that we’ve been doing that. It’s going to come in handy as we also begin to run a pilot here in Q4 for on-Twitter logged-out monetization. So we’re going to take some of that learnings and apply it back on Twitter logged-out [advertising] products.”

But while Twitter’s financial performance continues to beat expectations, slowing logged-in audience growth serves as a limitation for the upside for the company. There are a couple of ways to increase its bottom line — it can improve its advertising products and come out with new ones, or acquire its way into new venues of advertising, for example. But in the end, if it’s going to really explode to new heights and impress investors, it needs to re-ignite its user growth as well.

In sum, while Twitter’s revenue has grown, and its user growth has stalled, its shares have fallen.

It’s up for you to decide if the investing classes are being too hard on Twitter. The firm still has a strong cash position, and is worth billions and billions of dollars. The proper question, perhaps, is how Twitter will manage to bolster its larger consumer appeal, without losing the interest of its key content creators.

In the end, Twitter is still a bit of a confusing company. It continues to improve and develop new advertising products, and bought its way into a brand-new kind of video format in the case of Periscope. That’s something that should impress investors, but Twitter’s finding that challenging — particularly because these kinds of bets are, in theory, long-term ones.

And for Twitter to be a long-term safe bet, it has to be firing on all cylinders, which includes finding ways to do a better job of building, measuring, and monetizing its audience.

A representative for Twitter directed us to the company’s 2015 Q3 earnings call when we requested comment.

How BB-8 Works

By now, there’s a pretty good chance that you’ve seen the new Star Wars movie — and for those who haven’t, don’t worry: no spoilers here. At long last, we’ve got a much-needed dose of Starfighters, Rebel Alliances, Lasers, and droids. BB-8, the adorable successor to R2-D2, has captured hearts and minds. As lovable as it is, and even with as much life as its creators managed to instill into it, in the end… it’s a super sophisticated prop. And now you’re wondering: how the heck does this thing work?

While JJ and Co. have kept the specifics of BB-8’s innards mostly under wraps, we can suss out the basics. Behind that trilling orange and white sphere, BB-8 is likely a set of wheels (propelling the sphere by spinning against its inner-wall) and a magnetic mast (to hold on to and control BB-8’s head). The sort of “wobbly” way BB-8 moves? It’s all inherent to the design — what might be considered a flaw if used anywhere else, here it helps to give BB-8 much of its character.

That explanation will leave a lot of you wanting for more. Want a more detailed breakdown than that? Read on, folks.

A lot of the analysis you see on the internet today has people treating BB-8 as two discrete operations, one each for the head and ball. However, one of the many patents filed by Disney and partner Sphero paints a different picture. This patent, for a “Magnetically coupled accessory for a self-propelled device,” explains how to get BB-8 to work without a separately controlled head. Combine this with Sphero’s Chief Scientist Adam Wilson telling Polygon.com that the head isn’t articulated independently, and you can start to paint a picture of what the internals look like.

The strongest justification for this kind of system is in watching BB-8 try to lean over. It doesn’t seem to be able to maintain a constant head angle while static. This strongly implies that the head isn’t articulated independently, and is consistent with the patent.

Let’s get things rolling

The head complicates things, so let’s just think about the body for now. An image from one of the patents is an extremely helpful illustration. To make things simple, let’s think about this problem in two dimensions, looking only at forward and backward motion. The same principles apply to keep this stable; all that’s happening when BB-8 turns is the internal assembly yawing to point in a different direction.

In a nutshell, what we’ve got is a sphere with wheeled mechanism inside it. The wheels are forced down against the wall of BB-8 in some way (either spring or gravity, it doesn’t matter a huge deal). Rotating the wheels shifts the center of the system’s mass, the bulk of which is in the wheel assembly, off of the vertical line that includes the center of the ball and the contact point with the ground. Leaning generates a moment. Do this right, and the ball moves in the direction that the wheels were shifted to. If we were to picture a mast mounted perpendicularly on top of the wheel base, the ball would move in a direction opposite to the mast.

IMAGE: UNITED STATES PATENT APPLICATION

In broad strokes, this is similar to what it’s like to get a Zorb ball moving. Being the heaviest thing in the Zorb, moving forward changes your position relative to the ball’s center of mass. This, in the end, leads to rotation and forward motion. (We’re not going to go over the dynamics of this problem, but reach out if you really want to know).

IMAGE: FLICKR/DAMIAN CUGLEY UNDER A CC BY-SA 2.0 LICENSE

A head for math

That mast we talked about earlier? That’s where BB-8’s head goes. Since it’s attached to the mast through the sphere, it makes sense that it would be attached magnetically, as the patent dictates. There are lots of ways to do this, but one that lets BB-8 bounce and still function like it does in the movie involves a set of attractive and repelling magnets. Repulsion probably keeps the head from contacting the ball, and magnetic attraction around the edges of the head keeps it from rolling off.

IMAGE: BRYCE DURBIN

Earlier, we went over how to get BB-8 to move if you wanted the mast (and therefore the head) to point in the direction opposite to motion. Through most of the movie, though, you see that BB-8’s head is tilted in the direction of motion. We also know that the head can’t move separately. So, how does this work?

Again, BB-8’s floppy motion tells a lot. Notice how before BB-8 starts moving forward full tilt, there’s a brief period when it’s moving with the head almost rolling backward? Applying some dynamics to the problem helps explain what’s going on.

To clear things up, I don’t think that this is an inverted pendulum problem, even though it’s easy to draw some comparisons. However, let’s pull one concept out from the typical inverted pendulum problem that you go over in school. To get the inverted pendulum’s shaft pointed in the direction of motion, you first have to move the system backwards a little bit, let the shaft fall into place, and then reverse the direction of motion.

IMAGE: BRYCE DURBIN

Similarly, I suspect that the brief period of minimal motion when the base is moving but BB-8 as a whole isn’t is doing something similar. It’s likely that BB-8 gets into motion slowly (without a noticeable backward head shift). Then, by slowing the motors down, the head is allowed to roll forward. Once the head is pointing forward, you can resume the motors and get that nice full-tilt roll that’s shown in the movies.  Alternately, it’s possible that the motors drive the mast forward, letting the ball move backwards, and then the motors maintain constant angle as BB-8 moves forward. If the mast and wheel assembly have enough inertia relative to the rest of the system, you wouldn’t need more than a tiny initial motion before getting started.

All this is easier said than done, though. The control law and sensor suite running all this has to be incredibly sophisticated – making running BB-8 as much of a software problem as it is a hardware problem.

Calibration is Key

Since your entire operation depends on knowing the angle of offset from vertical (θ), your control system needs to be able to measure this to extreme accuracy. This is perhaps why we saw BB-8 needing to be calibrated when TechCrunch’s Lucas Matneyplayed around with a scale model toy earlier in the year. All this feeds into what you call a closed-loop control system, which maintains the angle (θ) of offset from the center at whatever value you set it as. This value is set by the software depending on how fast you want BB-8 to go.

All this being said, this system does mean the BB-8 comes with some handling restrictions. Really, it would have been simpler to just use the two-system method that other analysts predicted. I can see why the designers wouldn’t have done that, though – it’s just less cool.  A lot of this is in broad strokes based on what we can get from video and patent filings. It’s possible that I’m entirely wrong and BB-8 does something else.

China Is Making Domain Name History

Short domains have always been valuable, but if you’re a company today and want to own a short domain name, your price just became a lot higher. And I mean a lot.

There is a market unfolding that very few know about, and tens of millions of dollars are trading hands monthly. Over the last two years, China has become the largest buyer of domain names, resulting in what is likely the biggest story in domain-name investing since the Internet began.

Chinese investors (and other domain prospectors) have been buying up numeric and short-character dot coms faster than Adele can say “Hello.”

George Kirikos, a well-known follower of ICANN policy, tweeted on November 14th: “136 of the 676 2-letter .com domain names are now owned by Chinese registrants, breaking the 20% barrier (20.1% to be exact).”

The same week, TheDomains.com published an article noting Verisign just reported that 3.2 million new dot-com domains were registered in the previous three weeks — more than the entire second quarter.

What was once a market where domain name owners would hold and wait for a company to approach them is now quickly becoming a market with mass liquidity — the missing piece of the puzzle for the last decade.

Three-letter dot coms consisting of traditionally lower-quality letters often sold in the $10,000 to $15,000 range. Now they are catching upwards of $50,000, and more.

Western investors are still trying to catch up and understand the Chinese market. Letters of lower use in English — q, z and j for example — are considered premium in China. Vowels, on the other hand, are not premium. Any domain name with a vowel or a v is considered less valuable.

Ron Jackson, the publisher behind DNJournal, regularly reports sales like Give.com, Amber.com and Classic.com. However, the sales reports today are now almost nothing but short domains. In fact, 9 of the Top 10 year-to-date sales (all over $500,000) are less than three characters.

Even the preferred way to communicate with buyers has changed. Most transactions are agreed upon in China through QQ — the largest instant messaging system in China, but rarely known in North America. Tracy Fogarty of eNaming explains; “Most offers are sent through QQ. Maybe 1 in 10 people use email, even fewer use the phone.”

This explosion has made a lot of people extremely wealthy, but it’s not who you may think. Many industry veterans missed the boat — trying to understand how to analyze what’s attractive to Chinese buyers; others doubt the long-term value of this market, and many are doubling down for what they see ahead. All of the elements for a Hollywood story are happening right now.

One great site that tracks market activity is Chaomi.cc, showing sales history in charts (much like forex, gold or other commodities). As Hong Kong domain-name investor Franky Tong explained, “chao mi“ literally means fried rice, but also means domain speculation. This shows how Western investors may have their hands full analyzing data.

Over the last year, some incredible new milestones in domain-name registrations have been achieved.

• All five-number dot coms are now registered.
• All five-number dot nets are now registered.
• All six-number dot coms are now registered.
• All seven-number dot coms beginning with three eights, ending with three eights or having almost any repeatable pattern are now registered.
• All four-letter .orgs with premium Chinese letters are now registered.

Even with eight-number dot-com domains, of which there are one hundred million, it’s getting hard to find any of the popular patterns that don’t include a zero or four.

Is This A Fad Or History In The Making?

China is a vastly different culture than America, especially when it comes to wealth. Chinese citizens are raised learning strictly about the importance of savings and building wealth versus our consumer-based society.

Wealthy people love to invest and Chinese investors are hungry for portable wealth. The rise of Bitcoin was something quickly linked to China markets, but it couldn’t hold once Chinese regulators put a stop to the acceptance of deposits in Chinese Yuan. Bitcoin also has (and still has) liquidity issues for many owners outside of North America.

Domain names are different. First, the rarity of domain names is perfect and measurable since there are only so many two-letter dot coms, only so many three-letter dot coms, so many four-numbers with an 8, etc.

In fact, what seems like millions of domain names can easily be broken down into premium domain names that have a far lower supply than Bitcoin ever did.

This new demand for domain names is not an easy thing to understand, but some of those who do have acquired almost generational wealth over the past year. Others have made hundreds of thousands.

Short domain names are commodities now. Fads come and go, and this certainly does not seem like a fad in my opinion. Will there be ups and downs? Sure. But we are likely witnessing history in the making — a new history for an established marketplace that never saw this coming.

Maybe you should have ponied up and paid for that domain name after all.

Apple Is Reportedly Developing Its Own, Energy-Efficient Screens For iPhone And iPad

Apple is reported to be working on its own display technology in a move that could lessen its dependence on third-party suppliers like Samsung and Sharp, and boost the battery life of its products.

Bloomberg reports that the U.S. company, which is unique for designing its own chipsfor its smartphones, is said to have opened its own secretive facility in Taiwan where it is working on screens for iPhones, iPads and other devices. (The company is advertisingfor positions at the plant.)

That could mean good news for customers who worry about the battery life of their devices. Screens tend to use a significant amount of power, but sources from the new Apple facility reportedly told Bloomberg that Apple is working to make its screens “thinner, lighter, brighter and more energy-efficient” — that means less battery strain. Indeed, those sources suggested that Apple is looking to switch to organic LEDs, which could massively save on power consumption.

You may have to wait a while for the benefits to be seen in your daily life and devices, but it appears that things are moving in the right direction at a quicker pace.

Microsoft will release Continuum feature for Remote Desktop Universal app on Windows 10 smartphones

When Microsoft announced Windows 10 for smartphones, Continuum was one of the most talked about features among technology enthusiasts. Microsoft has released three Windows 10-powered smartphones till now. However, only Microsoft’s own apps supported the Continuum feature. Slowly, third-party developers started utilising the feature into their apps.

Now, Microsoft is adding Continuum support for its Remote Desktop app for Windows 10 smartphones. This news came from a moderator at Microsoft Community forums where he said, “We’ve heard a lot of buzz around being able to connect to a remote desktop from Continuum for phone. We are excited to share that the Remote Desktop Universal Windows Platform (UWP) app will be released very soon in Technical Preview.”

If you’re not aware, Continuum is a feature that lets you convert smartphone apps into full-fledged desktop apps. Continuum is activated when you connect a compatible smartphone to a monitor through an adaptor via a microUSB port. When this adaptor is used, Windows 10 Universal apps can expand from mobile layout to desktop-compatible layout. Moreover, keyboard and mice can be used in Continuum mode.

Continuum could be a feature that could resurrect Windows 10 back into the smartphone race, but it needs to be implemented by more and more developers in their apps. If that happens, you don’t need to carry a laptop everywhere as your smartphone can behave like a PC, at least for some important tasks on the go. What do you think about this feature?

Dropbox is shutting down beloved email app Mailbox

Dropbox just delivered some bad news for Mailbox users.

The company will shut down its popular email app along with its its photo storage app Carousel, Dropbox announced Monday. Mailbox will be closed on Feb. 26, 2016; Carousel will shut down March 31, 2016.

Reasons for closing the two apps were vague. Dropbox CEO Drew Houston and CTO Arash Ferdowsi called the decision the result of "tough choices" in a blog post announcing the news.

"Over the past few months, we’ve increased our team’s focus on collaboration and simplifying the way people work together. In light of that, we’ve made the difficult decision to shut down Carousel and Mailbox."

Though neither app has a clear replacement, the company says it will bring some of Carousel's "key features" to the Dropbox app. It added that it will be "using what we've learned from Mailbox to build new ways to communicate and collaborate," pointing to its note-taking app Paper, which rolled out in beta earlier this year.

Mailbox was already hugely popular when Dropbox acquired it in 2013, but had been struggling to deal will the massive influx of users. It really took off after the startup was finally able to do away with its waitlist — which at one point was hundreds of thousands of users long.

The app is often credited for introducing gesture-based controls to email, allowing you to organize messages by swiping right or left, a design that has been imitated by dozens of email apps since. Its other signature feature, snoozing emails fro later, has also been copied by many other email apps.

Current Mailbox users will have until Feb 26 to preserve their drafts and other data. Photos from Carousel will live on in the Photos tab of your Dropbox account, though it's not clear if users will need to pay for additional storage.

Have something to add to this story? Share it in the comments.

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Stone Temple Pilots’ Scott Weiland Dies at 48, Says Guitarist

Scott Weiland, the ex-frontman of Stone Temple Pilots and Velvet Revolver who battled substance abuse over the years, was found dead on Thursday. He was 48.

Jane’s Addiction guitarist Dave Navarro first reported the news on Twitter. “Just learned our friend Scott Weiland has died. So gutted, I am thinking of his family tonight,” Navarro wrote.

Weiland was found unresponsive on his tour bus in Minnesota, where he and his current band The Wildabouts were scheduled to perform at the Medina Ballroom, but the show was cancelled, according to TMZ.

It’s unknown what caused the singer’s death.

Weiland, who battled heroin and cocaine addiction over the years, was known for his flamboyant and unpredictable persona onstage.

Wielding a megaphone alongside his bandmates for sound effect, the fiery-haired frontman led the Southern California-based Stone Temple Pilots for two decades.

Also known as “STP” by their fans, the quartet first broke out in 1992 with hit single “Creep” before going on to become one of the most popular rock bands of the 1990s and 2000s with power ballads like “Plush,” “Big Empty” and “Interstate Love Song.”

Their music still plays in heavy rotation on alternative rock stations alongside ’90s grunge acts Nirvana, Soundgarden and Pearl Jam.

But it was Weiland’s rock star ways that often got him in trouble offstage.

After spending five months in prison for possession of heroin in 1998, he was later charged with domestic abuse for assaulting his wife.

In 2008, he checked into rehab after being arrested for a DUI and once, after a fight with his wife, leapt from a moving car to score heroin.

“People have this misconception about me,” he said in an interview with USA Today in 2011. “OK, I struggled with heroin and cocaine and I was a big rock star. But music is not what defines me. I’m a brother, a father, a son.”

Weiland later split from Stone Temple Pilots and formed supergroup Velvet Revolver with ex-Guns N’ Roses rockers Slash and Duff McKagan, and Matt Sorum. The band eventually split up, again because of Weiland’s substance abuse.

“I’m still on the verge all the time,” he said of his fight to remain sober. “My brother passed away [from a drug overdose in 2007], and that’s something that will always stay with me.”

In 2008, Weiland reunited with STP for the last time before leaving the band again and embarking on a solo career. But not, of course, without Weiland storming off in dramatic fashion.

After ex-members of Stone Temple Pilots sued the two-time Grammy-winner in 2013 for playing their material during his solo shows (STP was later fronted by Linkin Park singer Chester Bennington), Weiland countersued, calling his ex-bandmates’ claims “ridiculous.”

The group eventually reached a settlement out of court.

“I apologize to those fans out there who are, feel like they’re caught in the middle of it,” he said at the time. “‘Cause I sure feel like I’m caught in the middle of it emotionally, and all I want to do is play music.”

Known for his baritone vocal style, Weiland has also performed with the remaining members of The Doors for a VH1 “Storytellers” special.

He is survived by his two children, Noah and Lucy.

Facebook Partners With 50 Publishers To Launch Instant Articles In Asia

Facebook is bringing its Instant Article media format to Asia after more than twenty media from eleven countries in the region — including China, India and Indonesia — went live on the platform. A further 30 more media have agreed to begin publishing Instant Articles “soon,” Facebook said.

The U.S. social network giant said it created Instant Articles to help load news stories and features faster than they do when a user has to leave Facebook and open a web browser. The media format went live in the U.S. first back in May, with a host of initial partners that included the New York Times, BuzzFeed, National Geographic.

With the Western launch completed, Facebook has turned its hand to bringing the media format to new markets.

Facebook extended Instant Articles into Latin America earlier this week and, after mediareported its rollout in India last month, expanding into Asia Pacific, where Facebook has over 500 million monthly active users, will massively increase the potential reach of the service.

“Expanding Instant Articles to Asia is a significant milestone for the product and for each of our early launch partners,” said Andy Mitchell, who is the director of global media partnerships for Facebook said in a statement. “Instant Articles has been designed with extensive feedback from publishers, and we’re excited to bring this collaboration to our publishing partners in Asia to help them distribute fast, interactive articles to their readers in the Facebook app.”

Beyond the initial launch press, Facebook said it has plans to add further content partners from more countries in the region, so we can certainly expect to see more.

Unhappy customer sues Apple after honeymoon photos are wiped from phone

A British man is celebrating a victory for the "common man" after successfully suing Apple for accidentally wiping treasured photos from his phone.

Deric White said he was devastated after his honeymoon photos and 15 years of contacts were lost from his iPhone.

He was awarded almost £2,000 after winning the case [£1,200 compensation and £773 in court costs] after a judge ruled Apple had been "negligent".

Deric White took his phone to an Apple store  Photo: REUTERS

The 68-year-old took his phone to Apple’s flagship store in Regent Street in December 2014 after receiving a text message about a fault on the device.

He said staff fixed the problem but also wiped all of his content from the phone - only afterwards asking him if it had been backed up.

The retired property developer, who had just beaten cancer when the incident happened, said he was determined to have his day in court.

Apple were ordered to pay compensation  Photo: AP

"I would not let it go," he told the Evening Standard. "Having fought cancer, I was not going to get defeated by Apple.

"My wife was reduced to tears when they wiped the phone. Everyone tells me this has happened to them or their mate.

"I did this for the common man. I would say to anyone who has got a gripe with Apple - don’t let them boss you about and ignore it."

Mr White told the court he had "his life was saved on the phone", adding that he had lost his favourite honeymoon video of a giant tortoise biting him on the hand.

In court papers Apple’s lawyers said: "The claimant has not demonstrated how he suffered any loss."