Turkey will ban Twitter unless it blocks a newspaper's account

Turkey will ban Twitter unless it blocks a newspaper's account

The Turkish government's love/hate relationship with Twitter is once again turning sour. A court in the country's Adana province is threatening to ban Twitter unless it blocks the account of a newspaper (BirGun) posting leaked documents that expose the truth behind a raid on an Intelligence agency convoy. Twitter and other social networks have agreed to delete individual posts, but that's not considered good enough. BirGun is defying the censorship, and the court believes that the media outlet is interfering with both the investigation and national security as a whole.
Twitter hasn't said precisely how it'll respond, although the company tells the New York Times that it'll "work diligently" to keep its service available to Turkish residents while protecting their rights. Of course, that's easier said than done. Turkey's officials have been looking for reasons to drop the hammer on Twitter, and it's hard to see that paper's account remaining accessible without some severe consequences.
[Image credit: Ozan Kose/AFP/Getty Images]
New York Times

Jon Fingas

Engadget

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Is Apple making an 'iPad Pro' with a stylus?

Is Apple making an 'iPad Pro' with a stylus?

Steve Jobs' famous proclamation that "if you see a stylus, they blew it" may not be as unshakable a mantra as the former Apple CEO imagined. Apple is likely to introduce a stylus alongside a larger version of the iPad with a 12.9-inch display, according to an analyst with a solid track record. KGI Securities' Ming-chi Kuo, in a note reported on by AppleInsider, says his own research alongside numerous Apple patent filings have led him to believe that the pen will arrive in the second quarter of this year.

Kuo says the stylus will probably be an optional accessory so as not to bump up the base price of the "iPad Pro." The analyst expects the first iteration of the stylus to be relatively simple in technical terms, with the possibility for additional sensors to enable "3D handwriting" further down the line. Kuo also thinks the pen will be charged with a Lightning connector, as wireless options have implications for cost and antenna design. It's not clear whether the stylus would be compatible with other iPad models.

"We believe that the stylus could improve the experience of users."
The stylus will be positioned as a way to improve the iPad user experience rather than a major revenue driver in its own right, Kuo believes. "We don't foresee significant sales of an optional stylus in 2015 and forecast unit shipments of 2-2.5 million," he writes. "But we believe that the stylus could improve the experience of users, however, and will likely help Apple develop specific customer groups such as the corporate sector and educational institutions." It's easy to see how an officially integrated Apple stylus could help the company and others develop new productivity-focused enterprise apps, for example, like those it's working on with IBM.

Why should we believe anything Kuo says? Well, the analyst has a knack of predicting Apple product features that eventually come to pass. Ahead of the last iPad event, for instance, Kuo correctly foretold that the iPad Air 2 would feature a laminated screen with an anti-reflective coating; a gold color option; an A8 processor; and a Touch ID fingerprint scanner. None of this required him to go out on a limb, exactly, but he did also nail the event's biggest surprise — the very minor update to the iPad mini. The month before saw him leak accurate Apple Watch information. And earlier in the year Kuo issued a report with essentially the entire spec sheets of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus five months before their official reveal.

All of this is to say that the man tends to be pretty plugged in to what Apple has coming up. This latest report doesn't appear to have much connection to the supply chain, instead relying on Kuo's individual research and Apple's various patents, so there's a chance he could have missed the mark this time. But the prospect of an official Apple stylus seems a lot more believable today — and at the very least, Kuo's report serves as a reminder that we may well see a larger iPad as well as a new 12-inch MacBook this year.

Sam Byford

The Verge 

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Zayn Malik Debuts a Dapper New Haircut

Zayn Malik Debuts a Dapper New Haircut

Stop the presses: Zayn Malik cut his hair! The One Direction singer ditched his shaggy waves and showed off a slicked-back new 'do complete with closely-shaved sides on his Twitter. We nearly fainted after seeing how incredible he looks with the style.

"Thanks for the sick haircut! It's been a year it was well needed," Zayn tweeted to the barber that crafted his sophisticated new style. 

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Sprint snags its first Lumia smartphone

Sprint snags its first Lumia smartphone

Believe it or not, Sprint hasn't had a Lumia-badged smartphone since Nokia (and now Microsoft) got into Windows phones -- you've had to go with HTC or Samsung and forgo a bunch of apps and services. You won't have that problem from now on, since Sprint just picked up the low-cost Lumia 635. It's been available on the carrier's prepaid Boost and Virgin Mobile labels for a little while, but the move gives you truly unlimited data without having to break the bank on either your phone or your plan. You can score a 635 for $168 up front, or $7 per month over two years.
Sprint

Jon Fingas

Engadget 

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5 Seconds of Summer confirm they're set to start their second album

5 Seconds of Summer confirm they're set to start their second album

They've just been nominated for a BRIT award, an accolade which would fit nicely among the various other trophies they won last year.

But Australian band 5 Seconds of Summer aren't going to let their recent fame slow them down, instead using their time to get to work on their second album.

The band took to their official Facebook account on Friday to confirm they're 'ready to write a new record.'

After releasing their hit single She Looks So Perfect in February, they unleashed their debut self titled album in June.

In America, their album debuted at number one on the Billboard 200, selling hundreds of thousands of copies.

They also won one ARIA Music Award, two Teen Choice Awards and three MTV Europe Music Awards, just to name a few.

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HTC's next flagship phone to be unveiled on March 1st

HTC's next flagship phone to be unveiled on March 1st

we're still in the middle of January, some of us are already hearing bits about the upcoming MWC. One e-mail that caught our attention comes from none other than HTC, who is already teasing its very own Barcelona event on March 1st -- the day before MWC kicks off. We understand that this will be the launch of the company's next flagship device, which sounds about right; the One (M8) was unveiled back in March 25th and went to market soon afterwards.
The invitation itself doesn't show much other than a "utopia in progress" line over a cosmic background (full image attached after the break), though the latter may be teasing some breakthrough camera technology, as we once heard a little while back. As always, we'll be at Barcelona to find out what HTC and others got up their sleeves, so stay tuned.

Richard Lai
Engadget

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Apple and Google want to settle no-poaching lawsuit for $415 million

Apple and Google want to settle no-poaching lawsuit for $415 million

Google, Apple, Adobe and Intel do not want to go to trial in April -- they've made that clear by agreeing to a $415 million settlement for the no-poaching class action lawsuit filed by over 60,000 employees years ago. The companies originally offered $324.5 million in 2014, but Judge Lucy Koh turned it down, as she believed the plaintiffs deserve a lot more than that. That's still far from the $3 billion the plaintiffs originally wanted, but it's still $90 million more to divvy up amongst themselves. What's this no-poaching lawsuit about anyway? Well, between 2005 and 2009, these four Silicon Valley corporations along with Lucasfilm, Intuit and Pixar had an agreement not to steal each other's employees.

You might recall that Steve Jobs even emailed then-Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt back in 2007 to ask Mountain View's HR department to stop trying to recruit one of Apple's engineers, as per their deal. The employees that filed the class action lawsuit accuse the companies of enforcing a no-poaching agreement in order to keep salaries low. Lucasfilm, Pixar and Intuit already settled for $20 million and the agreement's no longer in place, but since the remaining four companies are much larger, negotiations are taking time.

Despite the significantly more generous offer, the companies continue to deny any wrongdoing. As Intel spokesperson Chuck Mulloy told CNET:


We deny the allegations contained in the suit and we deny that we violated any laws or that we have any obligation to the plaintiff. We elected to settle the matter in order to avoid the risk, burdens and uncertainty of ongoing litigation.
Reuters

Mariella Moon

Engadget 

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Hackers announce 'World War III' on Twitter

Hackers announce 'World War III' on Twitter

Hackers took over the Twitter accounts of the New York Post and United Press International on Friday, writing bogus messages, including about hostilities breaking out between the United States and China.

One tweet posted under the UPI account quoted Pope Francis as saying, "World War III has begun."
Another message delivered on the Post account said the USS George Washington, an aircraft carrier, was "engaged in active combat" against Chinese warships in the South China Sea.
The tweets were subsequently deleted.

A Post tweet later noted that "Our Twitter account was briefly hacked and we are investigating."
The fake tweets were not just about war. One posted on UPI said "Just in: Bank of America CEO calls for calm: Savings accounts will not be affected by federal reserve decision."
The Post is owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp.

Several media organizations have had their Twitter feeds hacked over the past two years including Agence France-Presse, the BBC and others.

A Pentagon official said the tweet about hostilities with China was "not true."

Agence France-Presse (AFP) 

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Taylor Like a Supermodel While Leaving the Gym

Taylor Like a Supermodel While Leaving the Gym

Credit: Bauer-Griffin/GC Images

Taylor Swift's street style is incredible, but her just-leaving-the-gym styles are just next level. The singer was photographed leaving the gym in California yesterday, and the photos are not your average paparazzi shots: she literally looks effortlessly graceful model.

When the sun catches her this perfectly, it looks like she's shooting the cover art for her next album.

But we can assure you that she was just leaving the gym, as evidenced by this photo

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Ed Sheeran Just Got Majorly Dissed

Ed Sheeran Just Got Majorly Dissed 

Ed Sheeran just got majorly dissed by Noel Gallagher. The legendary Oasis band member said that he didn't want to live in a world with the "Thinking Out Loud" singer!

When asked about his upcoming performances in London's Wembley Stadium — which can fit 80,000 people — Noel couldn't believe that many people wanted to see him. (Ed was so popular that they had to add two tour dates because Sheerios demanded it.)

"I don’t think I can live in a world where that’s even possible [for Ed to headline three gigs at Wembley Stadium]," he told NME

"When you hear that kind of polished pop and then there’s a ginger guy with a guitar it seems subversive, but it’s not."

Of course, the "Don't" singer responded in the most perfect way, tweeting, "i can live in it, its really enjoyable."

We're so proud of everything he's accomplished, and we think that he really does deserve all his success! He's even performing at the Brit Awards and starting his own record label for up-and-coming artists. So, yes, we do like living in a world with Ed's successful career 

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Calum Hood Celebrates 5 Seconds of Summer's Brit Awards Nomination

Calum Hood Celebrates 5 Seconds of Summer's Brit Awards Nomination

5 Seconds of Summer just earned a Brit Awards 2015 nomination for Best International Group, and Calum Hood celebrated in the sweetest way! The bassist tweeted about how amazing it was to be nominated, and discussed how thankful he is for his bandmates.

Then, he also honored Ashton Irwin, Michael Clifford, and Luke Hemmings, writing that he was "super happy" to have them in his life.

That's so sweet!

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Google won't fix a security bug that's in almost a billion Android phones

Google won't fix a security bug that's in almost a billion Android phones

A day after Google publicized a flaw in Windows 8.1 before Microsoft could do anything about it, news broke about a security vulnerability in Android that the Mountain View company, well, won't fix at all. Tod Beardsley, an analyst from Rapid7, a security data and analytics firm, found a serious bug in the WebView component of Android 4.3 and below (it's an older bit of software that lets apps view webpages without launching a separate app) that potentially opens up affected phones to malicious hackers. Android 4.4 and 5.0 are unaffected by the bug, but as 60 percent of Android users -- that's close to a billion people -- still use Android 4.3 or lower, it still affects a lot of people. Unfortunately, as Beardsley found out, Google won't fix it, leaving it up to the various OEMs and manufacturers to issue a patch instead.
The quote from Google to Beardsley is as follows:

If the affected version [of WebView] is before 4.4, we generally do not develop the patches ourselves, but welcome patches with the report for consideration. Other than notifying OEMs, we will not be able to take action on any report that is affecting versions before 4.4 that are not accompanied with a patch.

According to Beardsley, it seems that Jelly Bean devices are simply too old to support -- supporting old software versions is fairly unusual, after all. But in this case, he asks Google to reconsider, due to the wider consequences this security flaw could potentially unravel. Until then, however, it might be a good idea to upgrade to Android 4.4, or perhaps get a new phone altogether.
Rapid7

Nicole Lee

Engadget 

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