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Facebook While Facebook prepares to offer readers a way to  subscribe and pay for news  directly from inside its app, the social network continues to tinker with how it presents publishers’ content elsewhere. In the latest development, TechCrunch has learned and confirmed that Facebook has removed Instant Articles — Facebook’s self-hosted, faster-loading article format for mobile — from Messenger. “As we continue to refine and improve Instant Articles — and in order to have the greatest impact on people and publishers — we’re focusing our investment in Instant Articles in the Facebook core app and are no longer offering Instant Articles in Messenger,” a spokesperson said. “We believe that Messenger is an exciting channel for new and interesting news consumption experiences, including the opportunity to build unique messaging experiences in Messenger that many publishers (including TechCrunch) have executed successfully via the Messenger Platform.” Instant Article...

100 Bitcoin The Bitcoin community is not taking kindly to  BitPay  this week.  Influential  developers are accusing the major payment processor of fraud, Bitcoin users on  social media  are calling for boycots, bitcoin.org  is  removing recommendations of the company’s products, and NBitcoin developer Nicolas Dorier has  launched  an initiative to fork some of BitPay’s projects altogether. Here’s why. Bitcore The controversial issue has to do with Bitcore . Bitcore is a type of Bitcoin node developed by BitPay. It is specifically designed to offer a development platform, on top of which it is easy to build all kinds of Bitcoin applications. Anyone can use this open-source tool; some of the better-known applications that utilize it include video-streaming service  Streamium ,  Trezor ’s web interface and BitPay’s own  Copay  wallet. Within the  next a couple of days , most likely on August 23, the long...

CIVIC Blockchain-driven digital identity fraud firm Civic has partnered up with  wikiHow​  ​to provide its user base with login security. The partnership will mean that around 150 million monthly wikiHow users will now able to use Civic’s identity platform to log in securely with a verified identity, without needing a username and password. Vinny Lingham, CEO of Civic, said in a statement: “We are pleased to officially welcome wikiHow to Civic’s Partner Network. This collaboration illustrates our continuing, strong momentum in building our ecosystem for on-demand, secure and low-cost access to identity verification services.” Civic says it will help improve wikiHow’s user experience, providing users with a more secure account creation and login process. WikiHow is an open source online “how-to” platform that operates in 87 different languages. Its focus is on “teaching anyone in the world how to do anything” in a collaborative, shared-learning environment. The advantage...

Google Wifi If you use a modern home Wi-Fi solution like the  Google Wifi  or our favorite mesh system, the  AmpliFi HD , you’re undoubtedly enjoying lightning fast internet all over your home. It’s great for phones, tablet, and other light-duty devices, but we have a better recommendation for your PC, streaming devices, or anything else that needs the fastest and most reliable connection possible. Wiring your house for Ethernet is a pain in the neck, which is why devices like the  TP-Link AV200 Nano Powerline Adapter Starter Kit  are so fantastic. You get the same reliability and sustained speeds as you would with cat5, but you don’t need to install anything at all. Plug one box in near your router, another box near your PC, and you’re done! Here are the highlights from the product page: Up to 200Mbps speed for seamless HD video streaming and online gaming300-meter range over electrical circuitry for better performance through walls and floorsMiniature desi...

Long before Taylor Swift was the subject of serious  ire  and  scrutiny , she was interested in laying out puzzles and being the sole keeper of the key. Her  album liner notes  have always had hidden clues, as complicated as a Zodiac cypher, put there obviously enough for fans to figure out but never quite so obviously as to be confirmable. She’s known for naming names, but more often than not she has actually let fans do that last bit of work for her. On her 2012 album  Red , she even didn’t have to say “Jake Gyllenhaal.” She said only “twin fire signs / four blue eyes,” left a liner puzzle that spelled out “SAGITTARIUS,” and appended  a bonus track  explicitly about being stood up on her birthday. Who else? Gyllenhaal’s birthday is December 19th; Swift’s is December 13th. Publicly, they broke up sometime in December 2010. she stumbled in the transition between paper notes and the notes app As the times shifted away from notes passed to fans...

Welcome to the 206th Android Apps Weekly! Here are the the headlines from the last week: Android Oreo will get non-root theming . A third party app called Substratum will include the feature. There are some caveats. You have to use a computer to make it work. It also breaks a bit of basic functionality. It’s nothing serious, though. It’s a bit unconventional. However, it’s one step closer to native theming on Android. Plus, Substratum is a fairly excellent app on its own. Telltale Games launched a huge summer sale this week . Included are four The Walking Dead games, both Minecraft: Story Mode titles, The Wolf Among Us, Game of Thrones, Guardians of the Galaxy, and others. The sale includes the base game as well as the season pass for those titles. That means you can get the whole game at a discount. It might be worth it for adventure game fans. Google is trying to help depressed people . They’re working with the National Alliance of Mental Illness to get people help. Google Searchin...

GETTY IMAGES Earlier this summer Google engineer  James Damore  posted a treatise about gender differences on an internal company message board and was subsequently  fired . The memo ignited a firestorm of debate about sex discrimination in Silicon Valley; this followed months of reporting on accusations of harassment  at Uber  and  elsewhere . Sex discrimination and harassment in tech, and in  science  more broadly, is a major reason why women leave the field. Nationally, there has long been handwringing about why women are underrepresented in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math), which has led to calls for increased mentoring, better family leave policies, and workshops designed to teach women how to negotiate like men. WIRED OPINION ABOUT Alison Coil is a full professor of physics at the Center for Astrophysics and Space Sciences at the University of California at San Diego. Last month three senior researchers at the Salk...

ckBerry has always placed a high priority on the needs of businesses, especially when it comes to security. All of the company's Android phones come with the 'DTEK' security suite, and BlackBerry has done a pretty good job of pushing out Google's monthly security patches. Now, BlackBerry may be looking to license its secure version of Android to other companies. According to a report from  The Economic Times , BlackBerry is calling its version of Android "BlackBerry Secure," and it includes all the security features currently shipping on its Android devices. The company's Senior Vice President, Alex Thurber, said, "We have a number of different contracts that we are working on right now. We expect some to be announced soon. We have an agreement with Optiemus for the India market for BlackBerry Secure." You may not have heard of Optiemus, but they are one of three companies licensing the BlackBerry brand to sell phones (the other two being TCL...

This time, a leak occurred in the company Google – the public decided to show how Pixel 2, supposedly codenamed Walleye, will look, and also talked about the platform on which it will be built. If the novelty looks like it does on the render. Perhaps this is the main idea of ​​designers? The company has found the ideal form for itself, and only will change the filling and make only accurate design adjustments? Techno-spies reported that once again, users will be offered to buy  Google Pixel 2  with a 5-inch display or Pixel 2 XL with a screen of 5.5 inches. Novelties will receive the Snapdragon 836 platform, created according to the standards of 10-nanometer process technology, and will be expected to work on Android O. At the moment there is no information about the new platform from Qualcomm. But if it is in the plans of the chip maker, then almost certainly it will be an overclocked version of Snapdragon 835. By and large, the design of the second generation was decided ...

Changes big and small are coming to Android and these are our favorites. Android O  will soon be here, though it will take a while for most of us to see it. With it comes more of the tweaks under the hood with each release: changes to make batteries last longer, apps run better, and to keep our information safer. But there is also a lot of other cool stuff there! Things that sound small but will make a big difference like better ways to manage fonts and emojis, as well as bigger changes like new ways to show notifications. Everyone has a favorite feature from the list of changes, and that's what we're going around the table with this week. See what we're most looking forward to when Android O arrives. Jerry Hildenbrand I have two things, but they kind of go together so it's not cheating. The new window controls like picture-in-picture combined with new ways to use the keyboard mean developers can build apps that work even better on  Chromebooks . It's great ...

Google has a tendency to create multiple products that end up competing with each other, to some degree. Android and Chrome OS, Google's handful of messaging clients, the list goes on. But two of Google's subscription services, YouTube Red and Google Play Music, will soon merge into one offering. The merge was confirmed during a panel session at the New Music Seminar conference in New York, by YouTube's head of music, Lyor Cohen. He explained that Google needs to merge the services to help bring in new subscribers, saying "The important thing is combining YouTube Red and Google Play Music, and having one offering." Google later provided a statement to  The Verge , which stated that the company is still evaluating options and would notify users before any changes. Google's music ecosystem is a bit complicated, but I'm not sure if a merge would solve that. Google Play Music is a more typical music streaming service, while YouTube Music focuses on music vi...

For as much as some pundits like to believe that Snapchat poses a serious threat to Instagram, the popular photo-sharing site owned by Facebook is as popular as ever. Not only has Instagram seen its user base grow considerably over the past few years, the cumulative number of Instagram users continues to accelerate with each passing year. Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom recently revealed that Instagram now boasts more than 700 million users, according to a new report  from  The New York Times . Of that subset, an estimated 400 million users check the website or the app on a daily basis. Interestingly enough, approximately 560 million of Instagram’s total user base now resides outside of the United States, a data point which speaks to the site’s broad appeal across the globe. As a quick point of comparison, Snapchat currently boasts upwards of 160 million daily users. To help illustrate Instagram’s tremendous growth over the past few years, consider this: From ...

Facebook collects a lot of your data, but you might never get to see what they really learn about you. Data Selfie aims to give you a glimpse by letting you analyze your own Facebook usage. While there’s no way to know exactly how Facebook analyzes your data without working for the company, Data Selfie gives you a rough approximation. Once you add it to Chrome, the extension tracks your activity on Facebook. Everything from what you click on to what you type. Data Selfie stores that information locally and doesn’t share it with anyone (though obviously Facebook is tracking it). After a while of usage, you can generate a report that will let you explore what someone could learn about from your activity. It shows simple things like the pages and people you spend the most time with, as well as complex thoughts like how you lean politically, or whether you’re more relaxed or emotional. If you’ve never paid attention to how simple things like your Facebook activity...

Smartphones and other portable media players allow us to take our music, videos, and games anywhere, and having a good pair of earbuds is vital for getting the most out of our entertainment when we’re on the move. Unfortunately, many stock earphones are cheaply made and utilize undersized drivers that deliver tiny highs and a lackluster bass response. While there are many high-end earbud models available today, you don’t have to break the bank to get quality sound with budget-friendly options like the $8  Panasonic ErgoFit in-ear headphones . The ErgoFit earbuds utilize generously-sized 9mm neodymium drivers. These are larger than those found in similar in-ear headphones, giving you improved sound with a frequency response of 10Hz to 24Hz. This wider frequency response offers crisp treble and heavier bass so you don’t have to sacrifice sound quality when listening to your music, playing games, and watching videos on your mobile device. More:   The best iPh...

Finding an image on  Google Photos  just got a tad easier. In an Android-only update Thursday, Feb. 2, Google reworked the albums feature, adding enhanced organization to the ways albums are displayed. The albums tab is now divided  into three parts . Along with sorting your actual albums, the app now separates images based on what app you shot them with. A third category auto-organizes photos by location and what’s inside them. While the auto albums isn’t a new feature, the new organization makes them easier to find. More:   Google Photos is one year old — here’s what’s next for it Along with the three new sections, the photos inside the albums are  easier to search through . That’s because Google switched up the large cover photo at the top to take up half as much room. That small design switch allows users to see more albums on the screen at one time, speeding up the process of finding a specific one. Version 2.8 of Go...

6Facebook Inc cruised past Wall Street's earnings and revenue expectations on Wednesday with strong growth in its mobile ad business, demonstrating that controversy over so-called "fake news" and inaccurate advertising measurements had little impact on its financial performance. With quarterly profit of $3.57 billion, more than double the $1.56 billion it reported a year ago, the company showed no signs of slowdown in growth. The results handily beat analysts' expectations, and shares ticked up about 0.2 percent in after-hours trading. The company had warned in November that ad growth would likely slow "meaningfully" due to limits on ad load - the total number of ads Facebook can show to each user. But there was little sign of that in the fourth quarter as total revenue soared to $8.81 billion from $5.84 billion a year ago. "I think the rate of growth will decline, but it will remain very high," said analyst Michael Pachter of Wedbush Securities...

Snapchat owner Snap Inc shot the opening salvo in its $3 billion initial public offering on Thursday, outlining aggressive expansion plans but offering new investors no say on how the company is run and no promise of profits. Snap's publication on Thursday of its IPO registration document sets the stage for its upcoming marketing campaign to convince investors to look past its widening losses and the firm grip of its founders, and focus on its rapid growth of active users. The number of Snap's daily active users grew to an average of 158 million at the end of December, up 48 percent year-on-year, Snap revealed. However, its net loss widened to $514.6 million in 2016 from $372.9 million the year before. While Snap will have time to polish its marketing pitch in the run-up to the IPO planned for March, some analysts were taken aback that the company was just beginning to reap cash from its product. "What surprises me the most is that it is still very early days when it c...

Alphabet Inc's Google said on Friday it would sell its satellite imaging business, Terra Bella, to Planet Labs, a San Francisco-based private satellite operator founded by former NASA scientists. The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. As part of the deal, Planet Labs will acquire the Terra Bella business including the SkySat constellation of satellites, Alphabet said. bit.ly/2kqmTfL Google will enter into a multi-year contract to purchase Earth-imaging data from Planet Labs after the deal closes. Google had acquired Terra Bella, originally known as Skybox Imaging, for $500 million in 2014. The deal will help Planet Labs broaden its available data and add new customers. Planet Labs is one of several startups aiming to harness technology allowing satellites to become smaller and less expensive, making it easier to deploy large networks of satellites at less risk and lower cost than previously.

A year after Amazon’s Echo starred in a Super Bowl commercial, Google Home gets its turn in the spotlight with a 60-second ad that will air Sunday during this year’s Super Bowl. It’s not Google’s first Super Bowl ad; that happened all the way back in 2010 when Google ran the well-received  Parisian Love ad . But it is the first Super Bowl ad for Google Home, the company’s in-home voice assistant that’s only been  available to consumers since October . You’ll recognize the commercial as very “Googley” — it has a very personal and homey feel and portrays a cross-section of people using the device in various times of need. The ad ends with the tagline, “Home by you. Help by Google.” There’s no pricing information or even anything that tells consumers where to buy Home Google is battling Amazon — and to a lesser degree right now, Apple (Siri) and Microsoft (Cortana) — for the expanding voi...

Snap Inc’s initial public offering filing seemed to show a company with a basic math problem: the company's cost of revenue for 2016 - the amount it had to spend just to keep the messaging service running - was $47 million higher than its $405 million in sales. The high cost of revenue, which in Snap's case consists mainly of payments to Alphabet Inc's Google for hosting the service, means that, on an annual basis, Snap lost money on every one of its 158 million users in 2016, even before accounting for salaries, office rents or anything else. Snap revealed in its IPO prospectus, filed with securities regulators on Thursday, that it will pay Google at least $2 billion over the next five years. But the cost side of the problem may not be as serious as it seems. The company's hosting costs are broadly in line with other social media companies. Its cost of revenue per active daily user was 97 cents in the last quarter of 2016, not much higher than the 85 cents that Face...