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Facebook has announced this week the start of "2G Tuesdays," an initiative that will slow down employee's Internet speed so they can "close the empathy gap" between the heart of the tech world and emerging markets like India and parts of Africa.

2G speeds are incredibly slow but are still used in many parts of the world. Compared to an LTE connection, loading a simple page or app like Facebook could take what feels like an eternity.

Now, the slow speeds will not be mandatory, but every Tuesday when employees log in to the Facebook app, there will be a prompt in their News Feed to try out the connection for an hour.

"For that next hour, their experience on Facebook will be very much like the experience that millions of people around the world have on Facebook on a 2G connection," engineering director Tom Alison says. "They're going to see the places that we need to improve our product, but they're also going to see the places where we have made a lot of progress."

Facebook continues to optimize the app, as well, to perform better on slower connections.

Samsung has teased us earlier with a new Galaxy tablet and finally couple days ago we got some leaked good quality pictures of what is a massive slate. It was leaked by the leakster like none other, Evan Blass, but now shortly after Samsung has made it official.

Galaxy View is a tablet that is not meant for travel. You would be hard-pressed to call it mobile really, and it comes with a kickstand for a reason. The reason being its humongous 18,4 inch display that has a Full HD resolution. The display dwarfs that of the iPad Pro which "only" has a 12,9 inch touchscreen.

The measurements are 275.8 x 451.8 x 11.9 mm (iPad Pro: 305.7 x 220.6 x 6.9 mm) and it weighs 2.65kg (nearly six pounds) – that's closing on four times more than iPad Pro. Obviously this device is meant to be used in an all-in-one PC way.

The other details include a 2,1 megapixel front-facing camera, octacore chipset, 2 gigs of RAM and 32 or 64 gigs of storage expandable with a microSD card. There's both a WiFi and an LTE version but Samsung hasn't yet revealed the pricing or the availability. Leaks have previously suggested that the cheapest 32 GB version would retail for $599.

IBM is set to acquire the digital and data assets of the Weather Channel in a deal that could top $2 billion.

While the deal will include the website, apps and intellectual property it will not include the legacy TV channel business.

Weather Co., the parent company of The Weather Channel, was acquired by private equity firms in 2008 for $3.5 billion and has built its digital assets significantly since then.

The deal is not completely surprising since IBM has stated interest in Weather Co.'s forecasting unit, WSI, for some time. Additionally, the two companies already have a partnership that involves IBM's AI service Watson and selling weather data and business solutions to different industries.

The French-based music streaming company Deezer has canceled its IPO indefinitely citing "market conditions."

Deezer had planned to raise €300 million on the French stock exchange, but will now wait to go public. The company says it "is well funded and well positioned as it continues to pursue its growth strategy" even without the public funding.

The streaming service was expected to use the funds to build its customer base through partnerships, marketing and free introductory services.

Deezer, founded in 2007, has 6.3 million customers across the globe, with 1.5 million of those as monthly paying subscribers. The rest are subscribers through bundles with carriers or other services, and Deezer only gets a small cut of that revenue stream. The company reported a loss of €27 million last year on revenue of €142 million.

Source:
TC

Apple reported their quarterly earnings today, with all metrics basically in-line.

The company reported $51.5 billion in revenue, and $11.1 billion in net profits, setting a 12-month corporate record for profits at $53.4 billion.

Apple sold 48.05 million iPhones, a bit under expectations, but still good for a 22 percent increase year-over-year. The company says it expects to sell between 74-76 million iPhones for the holiday quarter, growth of under 5 percent year-over-year at best.

Macs continued to see low single-digit growth, and margins increased to 39.9 percent compared to expectations of 39.3 percent. Apple also now has $206 billion in cash, a number that is hard to fathom.

On the other side, the iPad seems to be in serious trouble, with shipments down 20 percent year-over-year to 9.88 million units; the lowest number since 2011. It is becoming increasingly clear that the tablet market has peaked, and that owners are not upgrading on a yearly cycle but rather every two or three years, if at all.

Apple is launching its newest addition to the iPad lineup next month. The all-new iPad Pro is technically above all other models but it might be the price that scares customers.

According to the industry sources DigiTimes cites, Apple has made orders for a measly 2,5 million units of it's top of the line iPad. Of course it's just one of the iPad models but nonetheless the suppliers were expecting higher number of orders.

It is undeniable that price of the device in this economy has an effect. Comparing to the other iPads the iPad Pro is in a price league of its own, starting at a whopping $799 and depending on the options rising well above thousand dollars. The iPad Mini 4 costs only $399 and iPad Air 2 $499, and Apple still sells older versions that are even cheaper: iPad Air starting at $399 and iPad mini 2 at $269.

Even despite pricing and after all this, there's still one hugely important obstacle. Apple's iPad sales figures have been going downward for more than a year. There simply wasn't – or isn't – enough customer to keep up the growth. Surely iPad Pro will bring in the profits (per device) but even Apple is cautious about the unit amounts.

The UK Metropolitan Police have arrested a 15-year-old today in connection with the major cyberattack on TalkTalk.

Earlier this week, TalkTalk's website was hacked and names, addresses, account information and credit card/bank information were stolen from possibly 4 million customers. It appears that TalkTalk was hit by a DDoS attack that gave the attackers time to use SQL injection hacks. It also seems that many of the passwords stored via the website were in plain text, a huge letdown for customers and privacy in general.

The Metro Police, working with the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) and the National Crime Agency executed the search warrant and arrested a 15 year old boy in County Antrim on suspicion of Computer Misuse Act violations.

TalkTalk's CEO also received a ransom note demanding money, and police are investigating that, as well.

Netflix content boss Ted Sarandos has said today that the original drama 'Beasts of No Nation' has been streamed over 3 million times in 10 days since it was released, a huge number for an independent film.

The streaming giant purchased the rights to the film earlier this year for $12 million.

"We are just thrilled with the total audience reach of this film, not just in North America, but the world," Sarandos said. "In the first week of release, Beasts of No Nation was the most watched movie on Netflix, in every country we operate in."

More importantly for the company, Sarandos says the film has been popular in places like Japan and Brazil, where U.S. developed indie films are normally not popular in the slightest.

Microsoft's VP of devices Panos Panay has confirmed that the oft-rumored Surface Mini tablet was a real thing.

Panay says he kept a prototype version of the 7-inch tablet near his bed so he could draft emails in the night or jot down any ideas or notes he may of had. "It was like a Moleskine," he added.

The executive did suggest that he no longer uses his prototype and that Microsoft has moved away from the idea of the smaller tablet, although that is unsurprising given that the tech is likely over two years old at this point.

Microsoft did note in the Q4 last year that it had decided "to not ship a new form factor" for the Surface but never mentioned the Mini by name.

Microsoft has taken to New York City for their new flagship store, opening the store at 677 Fifth Ave.

The store will showcase the company's hardware, including the new hit Surface Book notebook, the latest Lumia 950 smartphones and new Surface Pro tablets. In addition, the company will also showcase the Xbox One and its Microsoft Band fitness tracker.

Microsoft is said to have been looking for an NYC flagship since 2009, but the time was just not right until now.

The store will be five stories, and include 84-inch TVs to play Xbox games on, a full "community theater" with hours of workshops every week, a full floor dedicated to Dell-built Windows devices, and a full floor for employees and meetings and events.

According to early real estate estimates, Microsoft could be paying a fortune for the space. Rental prices go for as high as $3,350 a square foot on Fifth Avenue, and the new flagship is over 20,000 square feet.

JPMorgan Chase Bank, the U.S.' largest bank, has announced their own digital wallet service: Chase Pay.

Chase will be partnering with MCX to have Chase Pay accepted in their stores, restaurants and gas stations. MCX includes major retailers 7-Eleven, Alon Brands, Best Buy, CVS Health, Darden Restaurants, HMSHost, Hy-Vee, Lowe's, Michaels, Publix, Sears Holdings, Shell Oil Products US, Sunoco, Target Corporation and Walmart.

In some cases, customers will pay by showing a unique QR code and in others, they will have to use Chase Pay inside MCX's own CurrentC app. That makes things interesting especially since the CurrentC app is currently in a very limited beta.

Chase also has some leverage in launching Chase Pay. Retailers/merchants will pay lower transaction fees for Chase Pay transactions compared to other methods, said the bank.

Gordon Smith, Chase's CEO of consumer & community banking, said the service is expected to launch in mid-2016.

Source:
recode

New Twitter CEO Jck Dorsey has given a third of his Twitter shares back to the company's employees, placing them directly into the employee equity pool.

The shares, which are worth about $200 million, will "reinvest directly in our people," added Dorsey. The move follows the executive's decision to lay off 8 percent of the workforce, inlcuding hundreds of engineers.

"I'd rather have a smaller part of something big than a bigger part of something small," Dorsey tweeted. "I'm confident we can make Twitter big!"

The shares amount to 1 percent of the outstanding shares of the struggling company.

Just months after raising money, Uber appears to be on the verge of raising another $1 billion from investors.

If accurate, reports have Uber seeing a valuation above $60 billion, making it easily the biggest capitalized private tech company in the world.

Despite the huge valuation, Uber founder and CEO Travis Kalanick noted that the company has no plans on going public anytime soon. "We're like eighth graders. We're in junior high and someone is telling us that we need to go to the prom, and it's just a little early. Let us get into high school before we start talking about these sorts of things," he said.

So far to date, Uber has raised over $8 billion dollars, an almost unheard of number.

If you were looking to do a little bit of gaming with the new Microsoft Surface Book but didn't want to completely deplete your wallet, Microsoft has added a new Nvidia GPU option to its lineup.

The notebook will cost $200 more than the base model (with integrated Intel graphics) but will add a discrete Nvidia GPU that seems to be the equivalent of a custom GeForce 940M.

Otherwise, the notebook has the same nice specs including a 6th-generation Intel Core i5, 8GB RAM, 128GB SSD and all day battery life.

For more information on the Surface Book, check our initial read here.

The most popular version of Popcorn Time appears to be down and out for the count.

Following last week's drama where half of the founding members left Popcorn Time over concerns about the built-in VPN's revenue, the servers and domain for popcorntime.io are down permanently.

According to TF, the operators of the site tried to transfer the ownership of the domain but the registrar Gandi denied the changes. That was the beginning of the end.

"I shutdown all the servers, there is nothing I can do anymore. I deleted any logs that can be harmful for any other dev," founder 'Wally' added.

There are other forks of Popcorn Time available out there but none with the fan base or features of the former .io variant.