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The sheer volume of pod waste is staggering. As Murray Carpenter notes in his book Caffeinated, the K-cups discarded in 2011 would have encircled the globe more than six times, and in 2013, more than 10 times. Across the coffee pod industry, hundreds of millions of pounds of unrecyclable trash are now being made, used, and then tossed away each year in the US.

App cap for April 7

In the end, Gmail ended up running on three hundred old Pentium II computers nobody else at Google wanted. That was sufficient for the limited beta rollout the company planned, which involved giving accounts to a thousand outsiders, allowing them to invite a couple of friends apiece, and growing slowly from there.

Rubbish!!!

That sounds convenient. And it is—but not for you, for Google. (jeeeezus)

The U.S. National Security Agency knew for at least two years about a flaw in the way that many websites send sensitive information, now dubbed the Heartbleed bug, and regularly used it to gather critical intelligence, two people familiar with the matter said.

RT @Techmeme: Amazon is wooing app developers for upcoming smartphone with money, Amazon Web Services, more

RT @Techmeme: Amazon is wooing app developers for upcoming smartphone with money, Amazon Web Services, more

RT @xeni: Tonight, @rabite is again a free man.

RT @mediagazer: Android TV: Why Google Needs a Second Path to Television (@xpangler / Variety)

RT @mediagazer: Android TV: Why Google Needs a Second Path to Television (@xpangler / Variety)

All versions of Android are immune to CVE-2014-0160 (with the limited exception of Android 4.1.1; patching information for Android 4.1.1 is being distributed to Android partners).

That’s bad, but it’s nothing compared with what a new psychology paper has to say about the personalities of trolls themselves. The research, conducted by Erin Buckels of the University of Manitoba and two colleagues, sought to directly investigate whether people who engage in trolling are characterized by personality traits that fall in the so-called Dark Tetrad: Machiavellianism (willingness to manipulate and deceive others), narcissism (egotism and self-obsession), psychopathy (the lack of remorse and empathy), and sadism (pleasure in the suffering of others).

Microsoft today launched its Office 365 Personal subscription, a cheaper alternative that is limited to just two devices: one PC or Mac and one tablet. Instead of $99.99 per year or $99.99 per month for the Home subscription, the Personal option goes for $69.99 per year or $6.99 per month. It’s available online at Office365.com, at Microsoft Stores, and through the company’s online and retail partners.

Amazon’s first smartphone is one of at least two handsets the company is currently working on. We’re told that the second, an entry-level device that will feature lower-end specs and a very competitive retail price, will launch sometime after the phone pictured here. The device set to debut in the coming months will be a higher-end model that has been in development at Amazon for several years. According to details from multiple sources, Amazon’s first phone will be powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, and it will also include 2GB of RAM. It will run a heavily customized version of Google’s Android operating system similar to the version that powers Amazon’s tablets.

TechCrunch has learned that Amazon’s upcoming flagship smartphone, running a forked version of Android, will have head-tracking capabilities offering up limited 3D effects. This key feature will be reserved to just a few built-in gestures, according to a source with first-hand experience of the company’s mobile ambitions.

We want to make our data even more accessible, and the best way to do that is to work directly with our customers to get a better understanding of their needs. To that end, we have agreed to acquire Gnip, a leading provider of social data and a long-standing Twitter data partner. As Twitter has grown into a platform that delivers more than 500 million Tweets per day, Gnip has played a crucial role in collecting and digesting our public data and delivering the most essential Tweets to partners.

Because Android is frequently customized for specific devices or manufacturers, it's possible some versions besides 4.1.1 and 4.2.2 are vulnerable. For that reason, Android users should download Heartbleed Detector, a free app developed by Lookout. In the vast majority of the tests Ars carried out, it found various Android versions contained a vulnerable version of OpenSSL, but that the Heartbeat extension that hosts the coding bug wasn't enabled, making the devices immune to attack. The sole exception was when Ars executed the app on a handset running version 4.1.1, which returned the screenshot below.

Unless you’re a budding Ansel Adams, odds are you take most of your photos using your phone. And whether it’s photos of your hiking trip or a night out, sending photos to friends and family just got easier. Starting today, you can save time and insert your Auto Backup photos from your phone into Gmail messages on the web using the new Insert Photo button.

So we’re looking at as much as 80 percent of the city that isn’t naturally oriented to add to the housing stock. Oh, and tech? The industry is about 8 percent of San Francisco’s workforce.

And despite the S5’s place atop the Samsung smartphone line, Rassweiler said that aside from its ability to survive getting wet, there’s not much else extraordinary about the phone, at least internally. “Inside we see mostly a lot of recycled components that we’ve seen before. There’s really nothing special inside where Samsung is pushing the envelope,” he said. “There’s no breakthroughs, there’s nothing earth-shattering. It’s really just a continuation of what has come before.”

The Internet firm has been in discussions with several landlords about leasing at much as 600,000 square feet in Manhattan—about half the size of the Chrysler Building. A space that large would represent a roughly 80% expansion for the company, which first established a small outpost in New York in 2000.

Google's updated terms of service added a paragraph stating that "our automated systems analyze your content (including emails) to provide you personally relevant product features, such as customized search results, tailored advertising, and spam and malware detection. This analysis occurs as the content is sent, received, and when it is stored.

Microsoft seems to be improving its Xbox One software on a monthly basis, and April is no different. Starting today, the software maker is rolling out its latest update to Xbox One consoles, bringing some new features and improvements along the way. Xbox 360 owners will be familiar with friend notifications when players arrive online, but the Xbox One strangely lacked this feature at launch. Today’s update brings the friends notifications back, along with the ability to identify friends who are playing multiplayer games.

The hack relies on photographing a latent print from something like a glass in a bar, then using lab techniques to transfer the image of the print into wood glue, which is then applied to someone else’s finger to activate the sensor …

Unfortunately, there's also one feature that has been removed in this update -- video calling. According to the Glass team that's based on wearer feedback and since less than 10 percent of people were using it, the feature is gone until they (or someone else working on Glassware) can make it better. It's not all bad news though, because a longer, complete list of new features is promised for the Explorers community -- hit the how to buy page at 9AM ET tomorrow to join the club.

Pioneer in-dash multimedia systems compatible with Apple's CarPlay include the $1400 AVIC-8000NEX, the $1200 AVIC-7000NEX, the $900 AVIC-6000NEX, the $750 AVIC-5000NEX and the $700 AVH-4000NEX. These receivers are available from authorized Pioneer dealers such as Best Buy, Crutchfield and Car Toys.