Remember that time that Yahoo failed to disclose one of the biggest data breaches of all time? Remember how they then sold to Verizon for $4.48 billion dollars? Well as a result of an investigation of federal regulators' charges, they've been fined $35 million dollars. I'm sure other $4+ billion dollar companies will be super worried about fines when the numbers are that low and everyone will learn their lessons, right? 

The LA Times has more on this story.

Amazon has always been pretty tight-lipped about just how many Prime subscribers have, but thanks to a letter to their shareholders they revealed that they've reached the 100 million mark which is a pretty big accomplishment. 2017 was a good year for Amazon and it doesn't appear that they're about to let up anytime soon. The Verge has more on this story.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has revealed in his annual shareholders letter today that his company has over 100 million Prime members, marking the first time in the 13-year history of Amazon offering its Prime membership that the company has ever revealed its number of subscribers.

Analysts have speculated for years as the scope of Amazon’s premium service, which Amazon has kept secret for years. According to Bezos, Amazon Prime also saw its best year ever in 2017, with the company shipping over five billion products with Prime and signing up more new members than in any previous year.

We have just posted up Episode #432 of Weekly Tech Update! In this episode we will be discussing Sega games coming to the Nintendo Switch, Apple's got a problem and it's getting harder to solve and we'll discuss the world's most admired man - spoiler alert, it's not Mark Zuckerberg. We have those stories and more...

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We have just posted our evaluation of the True-Fi software from Sonarworks. This is a pretty amazing piece of software that lets you setup your headphones to be true reference headphones. If your hardware is on the list, you'll have a great experience and have a music experience that is equal across all platforms. Take a look and see what True-Fi has to offer.

As much as I'd like to encourage everyone to run out and buy True-Fi from Sonarworks, it's not for everyone. If you are happy listening to bass-heavy music and don't really care about good quality sound, you might want to pass. If you care about audio quality and are willing to browse the list to see if your headphones are supported (list is growing all the time), you may want to give it a shot.

 

Sega has been drooling over Nintendo's success with the NES Classic and SNES Classic, so they too are joining the classic bandwagon with their Sega MegaDrive Mini. This is a mini Gensis console that promises a lot, but I won't get my hopes up until it's actually on the shelves. The Genesis was probably my favorite 16-bit console back in the day.

First, there was the NES Classic. Then the SNES Classic. And now, the Sega Genesis is making a miniature comeback too. Behold, the Sega MegaDrive Mini, just announced in Japan to commemorate the system's 30th anniversary. (MegaDrive was the original name for the Genesis, in case you didn't know.) 

Source: CNET

AMD is getting their act together and is following up their first generation Ryzen CPU with it's successor. At this point we are all hoping for some Intel crushing performance, but I fear that the latest chips will only see minor performance improvements. I'd like to think that AMD is really back in the performance game, but the cynical side of me says they will just release a Ryzen 1.2 instead of a 2.0. Model numbers, specifications and more information at the link below. Pre-orders are available.

At the more affordable end, there's the six-core Ryzen 5 2600, which will go for $199. It's clocked between 3.4Ghz and 3.9GHz, and it should be a solid competitor to Intel's similarly priced Core i5-8500. The new chips are built on AMD's 12 nanometer Zen+ architecture, so you can think of them as a slight upgrade over last year's models. Its true platform followup, Zen 2, is expected to debut next year.

Source: Engadget

Google is working on a few things in their next major GMail release, and in addition to putting your calendar beside your emails, quick replies, snoozing and more, they are also rolling out a feature that makes email a little more secure. You will have the option to enter a passcode to open the email (sent by SMS) as well as have the ability to prevent forwarding, copying, download or printing these emails. This is a great step in the right direction for Google if they want to take on the enterprise.

The features are very similar to some found in Microsoft’s full Outlook application, and Microsoft is also adding the ability to restrict emails on its Outlook.com service. These features will largely appeal to businesses that want more control over how emails are used by recipients, but they won’t stop people from taking a screenshot or a photo of an email.

Source: TheVerge

We have just posted up Episode #431 of Weekly Tech Update! In this episode we will be discussing Facebook is on trial and it's not looking any better, Spotify and Hulu join forces and finally removing the sticker no longer voids warranty. We have those stories and more...

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With Mark Zuckerberg in the spotlight this week regarding security, user privacy and more, there has been a lot of scrutiny about what exactly is going on behind closed doors at Facebook over the past few years. It seems in fact, that Mark doesn't attend meetings regarding privacy, and he doesn't want to. What he does want to do is contribute money to lawmakers so maybe they can go easy on him and let things slide. While it is not a ton of money to any specific individual, the fact that Facebook donates to individual congressmen and women as well as to individuals in the senate seems a bit sketchy.

Cory Booker, who has received $44,025 from Facebook since 2014 (the largest amount), questioned Zuckerberg on the 2016 ProPublica investigation that showed Facebook allowed advertisers to target by race. Kamala Harris, who took the second largest amount ($30,990) grilled the CEO on why Facebook did not notify users in 2015 that Cambridge Analytica had misused their data, causing Zuckerberg to squirm uncomfortably.

Source: TheVerge

If you have an iPhone and have broken the screen out of warranty, you know how expensive it is to get Apple to fix it. Thankfully there are a number of companies that can replace the screens for MUCH cheaper with units that are equal in vibrance, color, brightness and more. The downside is that if you have the nerve to let someone other than Apple touch your device, the latest iOS update may actually kill the digitizer on your device so touch input will no longer work. This is a move by Apple to protect you from yourself (and make sure they make way more money doing costly repairs). Thanks Apple!

According to Oberdick, every iPhone screen is powered by a small microchip, and that chip is what the repair community believes to be causing the issue. For the past six months, shops have been able to replace busted iPhone 8 screens with no problem, but something in the update killed touch functionality. According to several people I spoke to, third-party screen suppliers have already worked out the issue, but fixing the busted phones means re-opening up the phone and upgrading the chip.

Source: Vice