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Yesterday, Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced a bold and strategic plan in which the company opened up all of their closely held patents for fair use, in an effort to boost the fledgling electric car market.

This means that anyone who wants to use the technology (in good faith) will not be sued and will likely actually receive assistance from the company.

Musk says that corporations that rely solely on their patents are falling behind: "It means they're not innovating. They're not innovating fast enough. You should be innovating so fast that you're invalidating your prior patents."

The brilliant executive then went on a rant about the current patent system and how it was stifling innovation in every industry. You will find very few people who are not CEOs who disagree with him.

Here is Musk's full post:

'A Song of Ice and Fire,' the book series better known now as Game of Thrones due to its popularity on HBO, will have two new characters killed in a "grisly" manner after the fans paid $20,000 each (to be distributed to charity) to have author George RR Martin create characters for them and then kill them off in the upcoming book.

David Goldblatt, a Facebook employee, was one of the two fans to win the auction. "I'm fortunate enough to be in a position to do this cool thing, and it's going toward a good cause – I don't think I'm doing anything extraordinary." Goldblatt says he would like "to be a Valyrian if at all possible, but he figures it out himself. I wouldn't want to impinge upon his creative process." As part of the prize, the winners will get to choose their "character's station in the world (lording, knight, peasant, whore, lady, maester, septon, anything)."

While hundreds of characters including some very notable ones have been killed off in the series, Martin says he does feel sad when they die. He will not have the same regret for the new characters, however. "Despite my sinister repute, I actually find it hard to kill off characters that I've been writing about for some time. Good guys or bad guys, they're all my children. But this time the slaughter should be easy, since the victims will be laying down their lives in a good cause. I will do my best to make their ends memorable."

According to a new report, Samsung is working with bicycle designer Giovanni Pelizzoli building a new Smart Bike that can be controlled by your Samsung smartphone.

The Samsung Smart Bike was revealed at a design trade show in Milan. The rider can add their smartphone in a mount between the bike's handle bars, using it to control smart features which include turning on "laser beams" to create bike lanes or viewing directions.

Those same beams are also automatic at night since they use the ambient light sensors of your phone.

The bike also includes a camera on the back that syncs with the Smart Bike app and can be used as a rear view camera. From a design standpoint, the bike is constructed of curvy aluminum tubes that supposedly absorb the vibrations of bumpy roads.

Microsoft has announced the launch of a beta version of its Outlook Web App (OWA) for Android available now in the Google Play Store.

The beta has some stringent restrictions, however, that may be extended to the full release. You must be running Android 4.4 (or newer), your device cannot be larger than 5.2-inches (sorry no tablets or the Galaxy Note) and your mailbox must be running on Office 365 for business.

As with most betas, the new OWA release in its current form will be to help the company collect feedback, fix bugs and improve stability.

Currently, there are just a few devices that have access to the app, but you can vote to have your device added via this link here: OWA for Android Pre-Release.

Microsoft launched OWA for iOS about a year ago, and promises the Android version will have all the same features.

Oculus CEO Brendan Iribe has conservative expectations for the first-generation consumer model of the Rift headset, saying he hopes for just "north of a million units [in sales]" over the life of the first consumer version of the Oculus Rift."

"It's not going to be a console-scale market," Iribe added. "It always could be, but that's not the goal. The goal is to set expectations low, get the enthusiasts and early adopters to get into the space, get their feedback, get developers making really great content..."

There is still no set time frame for the release of the Rift, although many believe 2015 will see its launch.

After the first model is released, Iribe says he expects the second consumer version to hit two years after. That headset will be the first to see its full potential, Iribe admits, and one that should see mass-market appeal. "That's when we'll get these incredible, holy grail [games], the killer app for VR," he said. "And that's when we think the scale will really goal, and hopefully you'll get many millions of people into VR, playing great games and other stuff."

The use of streaming video services continues to grow, especially in the U.S., where 47 percent of households now have a subscription to at least one of the biggest three services: Netflix, Amazon Prime and Hulu Plus.

In addition there are at least another two percent of households that have a TV connected to the Internet, but do not have one of those services. In 2011, the figure was 24 percent for households with TVs connected online.

Breaking down the figures to individual services, reads the study, 78 percent of Netflix subscribers watch their movies and TV shows on a TV.

Of those surveyed, 34 percent said they watch online video daily, and 61 percent do so at least once per week.

Finally, cord cutting is on the way up, with 80 percent of Netflix subscribers saying they also have a pay TV service, compared to 88 percent five years ago.

Major chipmaker Intel has lost their appeal of a massive 1.06 billion euro fine handed down by the European Union five years ago.

The European Union's second-highest court says previous regulators did not act "too harshly," and the fine will stand.

In 2009, the European Commission ruled that Intel gave rebates to PC OEMs HP, NEC, Dell and Lenovo for buying most of their processors from Intel rather than rival AMD, and also that the chipmaker paid a major German retail chain to only buy Intel chips.

"The Commission demonstrated to the requisite legal standard that Intel attempted to conceal the anti-competitive nature of its practices and implemented a long term comprehensive strategy to foreclose AMD from the strategically most important sales channels," the court said in a 297-page decision.

Oculus VR founder Palmer Luckey is sure to have made consumers happy with his latest comments, saying that the company will sell the Rift VR headset at cost, with the company not looking to make a profit on them.

"We're going to be selling it at cost," Luckey said in an interview. "Whatever it costs us to make, that is what we're going to sell it for."

Facebook recently acquired the startup for over $2 billion, ensuring that Oculus has enough funding to survive whether or not they turn a profit or not, ever. "If we were running purely on our own and trying to make money just from hardware, we would need to make enough profit from each unit to pay for running the company for several years, until we launched the next one," said Luckey, clearly happy to have been acquired by the social media behemoth.

Of course, the company has plenty of ways to make money without profiting on the actual hardware. Oculus is likely to obtain licensing fees from game developers, especially for games that can only be played on the VR headset. This would be considered the "console model" currently enjoyed by Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft.

According to new reports, Samsung is preparing to unveil a curved glass Galaxy Note 4 at September's IFA trade show for consumer electronics.

Samsung has launched new Note devices at the last few IFA events, so it would not be too shocking if they revealed the next iteration this year.

Making this year notable is sources are claiming Samsung will ship two models, one with a standard display and one with a curved OLED for "niche markets."

Samsung released the Galaxy Round with a curved display for niche markets last year, and LG released the Flex. Neither were hot sellers.

Besides the display, the Note 4 is expected to once again feature high-end specs and a screen potentially larger than last year's 5.5-inch IPS.

Source:
9to5Google

Apple has filed for a patent that could give us a hint about the future of iPad covers.

The patent details "accessory device for a tablet device" that can display notifications and other information.

In addition, the cover would have the ability to communicate with the iPad so that different lights would go off in different formations depending on what type of notification is being displayed (email, message, FaceTime, etc).

Other manufacturers have tried similar accessories, including HTC and Samsung, to varying degrees of success.

A couple of photos of the patent:

Norway's new Rights Alliance anti-piracy group has announced plans to get infamous torrent tracker The Pirate Bay blocked in the nation.

The group will be sending a petition to the Oslo District Court later this month, and the group is citing the newly enforced copyright law that came into effect over the summer. The new laws allow copyright owners the right to force ISPs to block sites and services "where material which clearly violates copyright is made widely available".

If the petition is accepted, the Pirate Bay will be the first site in the history of the nation to be blocked by ISPs not due to child pornography.

The Rights Alliance first sent a letter to Norway's largest ISP, Telenor, asking to block the site, but the ISP refused. The ISP says it will not block any site unless required by law.

Earlier this week, popular notetaking app Evernote, and RSS feed service Feed.ly were taken down by multi-hour DDoS attacks.

Evernote managed to stay active with major lag and issues while Feedly was rendered unavailable.

Within four hours, Evernote did manage to claim it was back "up and running," though users could experience "a hiccup or two for the next 24 hours."

Feed.ly CEO Edwin Khodabakchian confirmed the attack was an attempt at extortion. "The attacker is trying to extort us money to make it stop. We refused to give in and are working with our network providers to mitigate the attack as best we can."

Mozilla has confirmed that the company's $25 Firefox OS-powered phones will be available in at least India and Indonesia later this year.

So far, Mozilla has partnered with four OEMs and five carriers to launch Firefox phones in Latin America and some nations in Europe, but the phones have not been as cheap as $25. Most retail for between $75 and $100, still cheap by smartphone standards, but not cheap enough to attract consumers that will otherwise purchase an Android or Windows Phone device if given the choice or will stick with feature phones.

Especially in emerging markets like India, $75 is too expensive, in general, and hundreds of millions of citizens still have feature phones. Mozilla Chief Operating Officer Gong Li notes: "One U.S. dollar means a lot of things to consumers in emerging countries. It's difficult to sell smartphones that cost more than US$50 in those markets."

The new $25 handsets are built in collaboration with Chinese chip maker Speadtrum Communications. "With a $25 price tag, there is no price gap between a smartphone and a feature phone," Mr. Gong said. "This attractive price point would help motivate feature-phone users to switch to smartphones."

Amazon has shut down the ability to pre-order hit movies from Warner Home Video including "The Lego Movie" as it tries to gain added leverage with the major supplier.

Among the hit films that are unavailable in physical copies are the aforementioned Lego Movie, "300: Rise of an Empire," "Winter's Tale" and "Transcendence." Amazon still offers the digital download.

Amazon is currently in a similar row with Hachette Book Group, delaying shipments of the publisher's books and removing pre-order ability for new titles. Amazon is trying to gain better prices on e-books and as the world's largest book retailer it has some leverage to try this.

Hachette has so far refused to give in, and it is unclear who will cave first.

All we know is that consumers are the only losers in this situation.

Source:
NYT

After weeks of rumors and a leak last night, Amazon has officially unveiled its Amazon Prime Music streaming service.

The e-commerce giant says the new service has over a million tracks, hundreds of curated playlists and allows for unlimited streaming without any ads as long as you are a Prime subscriber. Prime costs $99 per year and offers free 2-day shipping on millions of products, free access to Amazon's streaming movie/TV catalog and hundreds of thousands of books for free via Kindle.

While the deal is certainly great for Prime users, there are some notable songs and artists missing. As of writing, Universal Music Group's entire catalog is not available, unless you want to purchase the tracks via Aamzon MP3. Additionally, there are no brand new tracks like you would find on Spotify, as all the tracks available are older than six months.

"When Prime launched nine years ago, the program offered Free Two-Day Shipping on one million items. Today, that selection has grown to over 20 million items. Prime Instant Video now offers unlimited streaming of more than 40,000 movies and TV episodes, up from 5,000 at launch three years ago. And the Kindle Owners' Lending Library now features more than half a million books to borrow for free," said Jeff Bezos, Amazon founder and CEO. "Today we're introducing Prime Music--more than a million songs from some of music's best artists, plus hundreds of expert-programmed Prime Playlists, all at no additional cost. Prime Music is the latest great addition for Prime members and we think they're going to love it."