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Apple TV Continues To Evolve As A Smart Home Hub

Apple Pay will be enabled on iPhone 6 and 6 Plus devices through an update to iOS 8. iOS 8.1, which has already been seeded to developers, includes hidden Apple Pay settings and set up screens. With Apple Pay set to launch on or around the time of Apple's October 16 event, that also means we should be seeing iOS 8.1 at that time as well.

Threats and harassment involving people in and around gaming also, sadly, appear to be proliferating and go back some time. For two years, gaming critic Sarkeesian has been dealing with harassment and threats from some who dislike her videos that critique the depiction of women in games. [UPDATE: It should be noted that Gamergate people have complained of harassment as well. The pro-Gamergate reporter Milo Yiannopoulos, for example, Tweeted a photo several weeks ago of a syringe with fluid in it, presumably mailed to him by someone who dislikes him or his work. He mostly appeared to laugh it off.]

If, as the communications philosopher Marshall McLuhan famously said, television brought the brutality of war into people’s living rooms, the Internet today is bringing violence against women out of it. Once largely hidden from view, this brutality is now being exposed in unprecedented ways. In the words of Anne Collier, co-director of ConnectSafely.org and co-chair of the Obama administration’s Online Safety and Technology Working Group, “We are in the middle of a global free speech experiment.” On the one hand, these online images and words are bringing awareness to a longstanding problem. On the other hand, the amplification of these ideas over social media networks is validating and spreading pathology.

A comedy club in Barcelona is experimenting with charging users per laugh, using facial-recognition technology to track how much they enjoyed the show. The software is installed on tablets attached to the back of each seat at the Teatreneu club. Each laugh is charged at 0.30 euros (23p) with a cap of 24 euros (£18). Takings are up so far.

This made sense to me, because I miss it too. The modern social web is a miracle of progress but also a status-driven guilt-spewing shit volcano. (Then again, without Twitter no one would know about tilde.club.) Back in the 1990s—this will sound insane—some of us paid a lot of money for our tilde accounts, like $30 or $40 a month or sometimes much more. We paid to reach strangers with our weird ideas. Whereas now, as everyone understands, brands pay to know users.

'Steve was the most focused person I've met in my life. 'It's terrifying that when you really truly focus, it seems a bit illegal. 'You can achieve so much. 'What focus means is saying no with every bone in your body to something you know is a good idea but you say no because you're focused on something else. I remember talking to Steve Jobs and asked why he was perceived as harsh. 'And I said couldn't we be more moderate? And he said why? And I said because I care about the team. 'And he said: 'No Jony, you're just really vain. You just want people to like you. I'm surprised at you, because I thought you really held the work up as the most important and not how you are perceived by people.'' 'People misunderstand Steve because he was so focused'

HBO CEO Richard Plepler, speaking at an investor presentation hosted by HBO parent company Time Warner, said the company will start selling a digital version of its service that won’t require a pay-TV subscription in 2015.

Meanwhile, not all of comScore’s data is that reassuring. The company says a whopping 24 percent of 18-to-34-year-olds say they’re not subscribing to pay TV. More than half of those folks — 13 percent of the total number polled — say they’ve cut the cord, while 11 percent say they’ve never had a cord, period.

It feels like Android L and the Nexus 6 are set to drop at any moment—you can almost sense the #NexusWarriors gathering at the fringes of the internet, ready to storm all the comment sections everywhere and tell you how great the Nexus 6 is. And maybe it will be, but for now all we have is a taste of what's to come with a leaked copy of Google's new Android ads with the slogan "Be Together, Not The Same." It includes a cameo by what appears to be the Nexus 6 running Android L. Also, I'm pretty sure the phone is rendered to scale with the people in this ad.

After an extended testing and preview period, Google has announced the final release of Android L, it's latest version of the world's most popular mobile platform. Android 5.0 Lollipop is debuting on three new Nexus devices — the Nexus 6 smartphone, Nexus 9 tablet, and Nexus Player streaming media device — and will be available on the Nexus 5, Nexus 7, Nexus 10, and Google Play Edition devices in the coming weeks.

First, with Motorola, we developed the Nexus 6. This new phone has a contoured aluminum frame, a 6-inch Quad HD display and a 13 megapixel camera. The large screen is complemented by dual front-facing stereo speakers that deliver high-fidelity sound, making it as great for movies and gaming as it is for doing work. It also comes with a Turbo Charger, so you can get up to six hours of use with only 15 minutes of charge.

So far, Apple lists three of the top four US operators—AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile—as partners. In the UK, there’s EE, a joint venture between T-Mobile and Orange. Apple says participating carriers may change.

The 5K Retina iMac is out, and it looks incredible so far on paper — so incredible that I’m seriously considering selling my new Mac Pro to get the Retina iMac instead. In fact, the case for the Mac Pro for anyone but advanced video editors, 3D modelers, and heavy OpenCL users is now weaker than ever.

The company’s rebuke, delivered Friday in a sharply critical letter to the law enforcement agency, comes after BuzzFeed News disclosed that a DEA agent had created a bogus Facebook account, impersonated an upstate New York woman, and posted racy photos of her and an image of her young son from her seized cell phone — all without her knowledge. The agent used the account to contact suspected criminals.

Developer Says Apple Sent Him Screenshots Of Porn In Order To Confirm How Easy It Is To Search For Porn With His App

RT @Techmeme: Apple's music sales down 13% this year; Beats Music to relaunch as part of iTunes in 2015

RT @Techmeme: Apple's music sales down 13% this year; Beats Music to relaunch as part of iTunes in 2015

RT @Techmeme: AT&T Locking Apple Interchangeable SIMs in iPad Air 2 and Retina Mini 3 (@kellyhodgkins)

RT @Techmeme: AT&T Locking Apple Interchangeable SIMs in iPad Air 2 and Retina Mini 3 (@kellyhodgkins)