Charlotte Henry

Amazon expanded its Amazon Scout autonomous delivery service. eDelivery reported that the company started testing the service in Irvine, southern California Wednesday. It initially tested the service back in January 2019, in Snohomish County, Washington.

A small number of the cooler-sized robots will begin delivering from today (7 August) in Irvine, part of the Los Angeles metropolitan area, in daylight hours from Monday to Friday . They will follow pre-set delivery routes while accompanied by an Amazon employee. They travel at a walking pace, with the ability to avoid obstacles in their path… Customers in the area order as they normally would via the site or app and can choose from the same delivery options including same-day, one-day and two-day shipping for Prime members.

Apple quietly conducted a record buyback of stock in the second quarter of 2019. It totaled $24 billion. AppleInsider analyzed the move.

It appears clear that Apple expects its share price to grow much higher in the future. So rather than carefully timing its repurchases to only occur when the stock price hits its lowest levels, Apple continues to buy shares back nearly as fast as it can all the time, even as the stock price jumps up and down as it continues to increment higher. Since 2012, Apple has now funded a total of $271.3 billion in stock buybacks. Most of these shares were repurchased at what would today be an incredible discount. While analysts have occasionally picked out a given trough in Apple’s stock price and declared that its buybacks were a huge mistake, it’s hard to imagine in hindsight how Apple could have better invested $271 billion of its past iPhone profits.

Apple is reportedly set to launch a Mac bug bounty program before the end of August. Forbes also reported it handed out special iPhones to top hackers.

The iPhones will be given to the rock star hackers that participate in the Cupertino company’s invitation-only bug bounty program, where participants disclose bugs in Apple products in return for monetary rewards. The payments can go as high as $200,000, as announced at the 2016 Black Hat conference. What makes these iPhones special? One source with knowledge of the Apple announcement said they would essentially be “dev devices.” Think of them as iPhones that allow the user to do a lot more than they could on a traditionally locked-down iPhone. For instance, it should be possible to probe pieces of the Apple operating system that aren’t easily accessible on a commercial iPhone. In particular, the special devices could allow hackers to stop the processor and inspect memory for vulnerabilities. This would allow them to see what happens at the code level when they attempt an attack on iOS code.

Huawei tweeted last week asking followers to give their opinion on who owns them. The Next Web reported that the final replies were probably not quite what the company wanted, with many claiming it is run by the government.

This seems like a risky move for a $100+ billion company that’s just had a major scandal, but maybe Huawei is just giving up on traditional sterile PR maneuvers and is actually reaching out to get the public’s perspective… Basically, it’s almost impossible to verify Huawei‘s ownership, but the real issue has also always been about who controls the company — #WhoRunsHuawei. The weirdest thing about Huawei‘s poll, however, is that the whole drama surrounding its ties to the Chinese government has pretty much died down in the press. There are still some political complications, but the US is easing up on Huawei, and countries like the UK have said there’s no technical reason to leave the company out of 5G infrastructure.

Spotify was amongst the tech firms that revealed their financial results last week. After a deep dive into the numbers, Music Business Week found that that the streaming service spent a total of $375 million in cash on podcast companies so far in 2019. The deals are valued at $404 million. They demonstrated just how seriously Spotify wants to challenge Apple in the podcast game, and they company might not be finished yet.

Spotify has previously confirmed that, in February, it spent approximately €300m ($343m) on two US-based ‘cast firms: distribution software company Anchor, and independent content producer Gimlet Media. Now we know exactly how much Spotify spent on these two firms, in addition to true crime podcast maker Parcast (trading as Los Angeles-based Cutler Media LLC) which it bought in April. The upshot: if Spotify sticks to its previously-announced plan of spending between $400m and $500m on acquisitions this year, it has about $100m left in the tank.

Oppo revealed a new ‘Waterfall’ display Monday. It had 88-degree curved edges and the display extended nearly the whole way around the side of a smartphone. The Next Web took a look.

While the waterfall screen looks cool, Oppo will have figure out ways to prevent accidental taps and swipes, which seem inevitable given the nearly wraparound screen…At this point, it’s hard to say whether there’s any sense in such displays. They might seem more ‘immersive,’ but content that shows up on the sides will be hard to see and interact with. This might just be a passing fad – but I’m happy to be proven wrong.

An American teenager became Fortnite world champion Wednesday. 16-year-old Kyle Giersdorf scooped the $3 million prize at New York’s Arthur Ashe Stadium, BBC News reported. It was the biggest prize pot in the history of e-sports. A total of 40 million players tried to qualify online for the tournament.

Mr. Giersdorf, known online as Bugha, stood laughing and shaking his head as the crowd erupted when his name was announced. He told the BBC he wants to save most of his prize. “All I want is a new desk and maybe a desk for my trophy,” he said. The final game was described by the commentators as a “ridiculous victory lap” as the winner played with a smile on his face whilst beating his rivals.The event is seen as a major moment in e-sports, which is estimated to be a billion-dollar industry in 2019. However, its record for the biggest prize pool is already set to be broken by another event called The International, taking place in August. The Fortnite finals saw 100 players battling on giant computer screens.

Apple and Intel announced Thursday that the iPhone will acquire the chipmaker’s smartphone modem business. Wired looked into the $1 billion deal. One analyst explained that it highlighted how Apple is slowly taking control of its 5G future with the purchase.

The modems in Apple devices have been an exception to the company’s usual tight integration. Competitors such as Samsung and Huawei build their phones around chips that bundle the main processor and modem circuitry. That offers cost and space savings. In Apple’s devices the custom processor and externally sourced modems have been separate components. Kevin Krewell, principal analyst at Tirias Research, says buying Intel’s modem unit will allow Apple to make integrated processors and modems of its own. As with Apple’s other chip programs, that should provide cost savings and opportunities to create unique new features. “Apple has long wanted to control its platform completely,” he says.

We’ve seen Apple’s billboards pushing its privacy credentials in the U.S. and Canada. Now,  they’ve appeared in locations around Europe, Cult of Mac reported.

Apple often makes privacy a selling point of the iPhone. It has long been considered one of the biggest advantages its smartphone has over Android-powered rivals. These billboards make it so that the privacy-conscious have only one handset in mind when they go shopping. Spotted in three locations around Germany, each of the ads has a big, bold message that is based on the location. One in Hamburg, which proudly calls itself the “gateway to the world,” reads, “Das Tor zur Welt. Nicht zu deinen Informationen.” It translates to “The gateway to the world. Not your information.

WhatsApp is to roll out a payments system in the crucial Indian market, Reuters reported. Users will be able to make and receive payments through the messaging app. Apple Cash offers a similar facility, although it is only currently available in the U.S.

WhatsApp is ubiquitous across India, where data consumption is surging thanks to cheap internet, but a full launch of its payments feature had been delayed amid some false messages circulating on the platform that have led to mob lynching and more government scrutiny, according to local media. The Menlo Park, California-based firm has also been trying to comply with Indian regulations including data storage norms that require all payments-related data to be stored locally…Digital payments, lending and e-wallet services have been growing rapidly in India, led by a government push to bring more of the country’s cash-loving merchants and consumers into the formal economy.

A new survey confirmed what many of us suspected already – young people have abandoned TV news. UK regulator Ofcom also found that half the UK now gets its news from social media, the Guardian reported.

Young people in Britain have almost entirely abandoned television news broadcasts, according to Ofcom, while half of the country now gets its news from social media. While the average person aged 65 and over watches 33 minutes of TV news a day, this falls to just two minutes among people aged 16-24, according the media regulator’s annual news consumption report. The decline has been driven by audiences moving away from traditional live broadcast channels, where they might watch a popular drama and leave the channel on during the evening news bulletin, towards watching catchup content from streaming services.

Tinder introduced a new feature to help LGBT users in countries with discriminatory laws, Techcrunch reported. The feature means the profiles of users who identify as LGBT will not show up on the app in those countries.

As part of the update, users who identify on the app as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or queer will no longer automatically appear on Tinder when they arrive in an oppressive state. This feature, which Tinder dubs the Traveler Alert, relies on your phone’s network connection to determine its location. From there it will give users the choice to keep their location private. If users opt-in to make their profile public again, Tinder will hide their sexual orientation or gender identity from their profile to safeguard the information from law enforcement and others who may target them, the company said. Once a user leaves the country or changes their location, their profile will become visible again.