Texas family blame Apple’s FaceTime in suit over fatal crash

SAN JOSE, Calif. — A Texas couple whose five-year-old daughter died in a crash involving a driver who was allegedly using Apple’s FaceTime video chatting app is suing the tech company.

The lawsuit filed this month in Santa Clara Superior Court accuses Apple of not implementing iPhone features that would automatically disable FaceTime based on technology that calculates highway speeds.

Apple hasn’t responded to the lawsuit and didn’t immediately respond to an email Saturday seeking comment.

Moriah Modisette was killed in a 2014 Christmas Eve accident near Dallas. The lawsuit obtained by California television KTLA claims police found FaceTime running on the iPhone of the driver who struck the Modisette family at 65 mph (105 km/h).

The family claims Apple knew the risks of using FaceTime while driving because the company patented “lock-out” technology in 2008.  

Twitter hoax reports Queen Elizabeth died

Many people would argue that 2016 has been the year of celebrity deaths. Others might say it was the year of “fake news.” A story from Britain this week showed it could perhaps be both.

Late Thursday, a Twitter account with the handle @BBCNewsUKI sent out a message claiming Buckingham Palace had announced the death of Queen Elizabeth II, the reigning monarch of the United Kingdom. “Circumstances are unknown,” the tweet read. “More details to follow.”

The news had an air of believability: Elizabeth is 90 years old and has been in poor health recently. This year, for the first time in three decades, she failed to attend a Christmas Day church service near her country home in Norfolk after suffering what was described as a “heavy cold.” The queen has not appeared in public since she fell ill.

Additionally, if the queen were to pass away, it is the BBC that would make the announcement. In fact, Britain’s public service broadcaster is known to hold regular rehearsals in case a member of the royal family dies unexpectedly.

The tweet, of course, was not real. @BBCNewsUKI followed up its tweet with the rather less-BBC-like message, “Love a Tuesday off if the queens dead, announce it before it’s too late.” The account was a fairly obvious fake, and it was soon suspended by Twitter.

But rumors that the queen was dead still sparked a frenzy online, with users rushing to add condolences and others attempting to verify the news.

A number of Twitter users began tweeting that there had been a “media blackout” in an attempt to hide news of the queen’s death from the public. By Friday, it was one of the top trending topics on Twitter - though many of the tweets appeared to be mocking the idea. One curious user even jogged down to Buckingham Palace to look for signs of activity. “Silly twitter,” he concluded.

The incident appeared to confirm that rehearsals for the death of a British monarch, long murmured about by BBC journalists, really exist.

If a “Category 1” royal — a list which would include the queen and her husband, the Duke of Edinburgh, Prince Charles and Prince William — were to die, the BBC has to quickly pull together a remarkably complicated but somber event. Normal broadcasting would be interrupted for an official announcement — probably a statement from Buckingham Palace itself — and the national anthem.

It is also expected that all comedy on the BBC network would be canceled until the after the funeral is held, as it was after the death of King George VI in 1952.

Twitter boss says edit tweet feature is 'definitely needed'

CEO Jack Dorsey asked Twitter users what improvements they most wanted to see, and as you'd expect, he got an avalanche of replies -- over 5,700 so far. The most requested feature was the ability to edit tweets after you've sent them, rather than having to delete and start again. Dorsey agreed that "a form of edit is def needed," and that the company is "thinking a lot about it." However, he thinks anything beyond quick edits would require a changelog, and some users suggested any edits would worsen trust issues with the site.
Dorsey suggested that there are two types of edits Twitter could implement. The first would allow a window, say five minutes, to fix any typos, bad links and other user errors. The other would allow you to make edits anytime, much as you can on Facebook. However, as with Facebook, Twitter would be forced to implement a revision history in that case so that edits don't go "off the public record," Dorsey said.

— jack (@jack) December 29, 2016CEO Jack Dorsey asked Twitter users what improvements they most wanted to see, and as you'd expect, he got an avalanche of replies -- over 5,700 so far. The most requested feature was the ability to edit tweets after you've sent them, rather than having to delete and start again. Dorsey agreed that "a form of edit is def needed," and that the company is "thinking a lot about it." However, he thinks anything beyond quick edits would require a changelog, and some users suggested any edits would worsen trust issues with the site.
Dorsey suggested that there are two types of edits Twitter could implement. The first would allow a window, say five minutes, to fix any typos, bad links and other user errors. The other would allow you to make edits anytime, much as you can on Facebook. However, as with Facebook, Twitter would be forced to implement a revision history in that case so that edits don't go "off the public record," Dorsey said.

— jack (@jack) December 29, 2016

It might even allow a short window to edit that could further damage trust in the network. By altering tweets, news sites or prominent individuals could slightly changing their context and meaning, for instance. President-elect Trump, for one, considers the site as his own personal "newspaper -- without the losses," he once tweeted. While it's clear when he deletes tweets, many users might not notice if one has been slightly altered.
"Delete is enough. Context changing post-fact is dangerous," user Justyn Howard replied to Dorsey. He added that even short edit windows between 30 seconds and five minutes aren't really needed, since you can just delete and repost a tweet. As for a revision history, he points out that "80 people liked [your tweet]. Which version?"

— Justyn Howard (@Justyn) December 29, 2016

Other top suggestions were to introduce bookmarks so you could find favorite tweets easier, rather than just using the "like" button, which also effectively endorses the tweet. The other main demand, of course, was to improve safety and reporting options for bullies, something Twitter has been taken to task for many times. In replying to many of those requests, Dorsey called it the company's "top priority."
Twitter is already looking or has previously looked at a lot of the ideas, Dorsey said, and that's the rub of the problem with Twitter in general. It's stuck between pleasing its existing users and trying to attract new ones to a site that's notoriously difficult to grok and potentially dangerous once you get popular. Dorsey was perhaps hoping to see a genius idea that could solve all those problems and finally help make the site profitable -- or saleable.

IOS 8 Breakdown

With almost two weeks of the IOS 8 the problems have already raised. Some users of the latest IOS have complains that the IOS limits the use of calls and other messaging systems. Apple is working on the problem, IOS 8 is still available for upgrading on the store though.

Twitter tests 'buy' button

Twitter is testing a way to let users go shopping or make charitable contributions between tweets.
A small percentage of users will receive tweets from Twitter test partners Monday featuring a "buy" button that lets them make purchases or donate money. Initial partners include the musical groups Soundgarden and Panic! At The Disco, retailers Home Depot and Burberry, and nonprofits The Nature Conservancy and GLAAD.
On mobile and can't see the tweet below? Read it here.
After clicking the buy button, users will be prompted to enter shipping and payment information. Then the order will be sent to the merchant for delivery.
Users' personal information will be encrypted. And their credit card details won't be given to sellers without permission.

Twitter record smashed by Brazil v Chile World Cup match

A record 16.3 million tweets were sent during Saturday's World Cup game between Brazil and Chile, the most ever for a live event on the social network.
The game saw the World Cup hosts go through to the quarter finals after a nail-biting encounter that went to extra time, with Brazil finally winning 3-2 in the penalty shoot-out.
The final moments of the match -- which saw Chile miss their final penalty -- generated 388,985 tweets a minute.
This broke a record previously set during the Super Bowl, when 382,000 tweets were sent per minute.
Unsurprisingly, Brazilian striker Neymar, who scored the team's final penalty, was the player mentioned most frequently on the site during the game.
Twitter said on Friday that more than 300 million messages had been sent about the tournament since the group stages of the football competition began, with the event "already becoming one of the most talked about events on Twitter of all time".
Before Saturday, the record for the most-commented-on match on the network was that between Brazil and Croatia on June 12, which saw 12.2 million messages sent.

Real Madrid beats Atletico Madrid 4-1 to win Champions League final

LISBON, Portugal - Real Madrid broke down Atletico Madrid's resistance in extra time to win the Champions League final 4-1 on Saturday and finally deliver the club's record 10th European title.
Real struck three times in the second period of extra time, through Gareth Bale's header in the 110th minute, Marcelo's shot in the 118th and a Cristiano Ronaldo penalty.
It was an unfairly lopsided score after Atletico was on the brink of victory in regulation time.
Sergio Ramos's headed goal equalized for Real in the third minute of stoppage time at the end of 90 minutes.
Diego Godin put Atletico ahead when his 35th-minute header looped into a Real goal left vacant by captain and veteran goalkeeper Iker Casillas's reckless rush out.

Twitter's losing sight of what makes it so great

Wednesday, Twitter introduced some major changes to the way it does business . Not only can a single tweet now hold multiple photos (each with up to 10 tagged friends), but none of that extra baggage takes away any of your precious characters. In other words, Twitter just got a whole lot more like Facebook.

Once confined to the strictest of social network diets, tweets are now free to run rampant. Theoretically, under these new rules one tweet could contain four photos, each tagged with 10 different friends. That's a canoe full of 40 people, that still leaves you room to babble. Oh, and hope you like notifications—because there's about to be a whole lot more where that came from.
Allowing users to add even one photo without cutting into the 140 character limit would have been a big deal in Twitterland. But doing so with four photos isn't just a change, it's a total overhaul to how we tweet. And it's not a welcome one.
It's clear why Twitter felt it had to make this change; as it stands now, it's a wildly intimidating world that presents itself to newcomers as a massive wall of news, in-jokes, symbols, and otherwise general nonsense. It's extremely alienating—not that there's any shame in that! But it means that Twitter doesn't just have a hard time attracting new users; it's losing the ones that it manages to enlist. More pictures, more friends, more familiarity. In other words, more like Facebook.
It makes sense. Facebook is all-encompassing. It's easy. Your grandma is on Facebook. Nothing says usability like a social networking-granny. Most importantly, Facebook offers the kind of openness that Twitter lacks. Facebook allows for all types of content in a stream as limitless as your fingers can manage. But by trying to get in on that action, Twitter looses a major chunk of what made us fall in love with it in the first place.
There's a reason people Facebook's not the golden child anymore. As adorable as it may be, no one actually wants to pour through your grandma's twenty pictures of her grandchildren. No one cares about your paragraph-long rants. Facebook is full of all the noise that Twitter so geniously managed to cut through. In instilling a strict, 140-character limit, Twitter forced you to cut your tweets in to their most basic, witty, and informative forms. And that translated to Twitter being full of higher-quality content by default. Brevity, as they say, is the soul of Twitter.
That doesn't mean Twitter is wholly devoid of noise. There's still plenty of self-indulgence, nonsense, and misinformation that adds nothing to the overall conversation. But turning up the volume only exacerbates the problem. Tagging without character limit means more people involved in more photos, with more room to tweet about it. More wasted words spread around to more sort-of friends. Which is great for you and terrible for everyone reading it. Twitter had already made itself look more like Facebook. Now, by acting more like it, it's inching dangerously closer to alienating the people who actually care, without clearly doing anything that will solve its retention problem.
What Twitter needs to realize is that encompassing more ground doesn't necessarily mean more users. And that it's at its best when it gives us what Facebook doesn't.

Katy Perry sets Twitter milestone with 50 mln followers

Twitter Counter, a service for tracking Twitter usage, said Perry had picked up tens of thousands of followers since Thursday, as she roared her way to 50,025,667.
Perry, 29, whose "Dark Horse" tops the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart this week, opted to say nothing Friday about her online achievement.
Instead she tweeted thanks to Madonna for having invited her to curate the pop diva's Art for Freedom human rights project during the month of January.
Teen idol Justin Bieber dethroned Lady Gaga as the most-followed Twitter user in January 2013, but ceded the top spot to Perry in November.
On Friday, Bieber -- due in court on Valentine's Day over alleged drunk driving and illegal drag racing in Florida -- had 49,230,470 followers, followed by President Barack Obama with 41,219,748.
Lady Gaga, in fourth place with 41,025,492 followers, made Twitter history when she became the first to claim 20 million followers -- just under two years ago, in March 2012.
Perry's current album "Prism" entered the Billboard 200 chart at number one upon its release in October. Her goth-themed rendition of "Dark Horse" was a highlight of Sunday's Grammy awards.