10 things you need to know in tech today

folarin okunola

July 8, 2015 10:43 AM

Start your morning with the ten trending happenings in tech today.

Amazon CEO, Jeff Bezos

1. It looks like Apple Watch sales are tanking. Apple hasn't broken out specific sales figures for its new smartwatch, but analytics firm Slice Intelligence thinks they have plummeted to around 5,000/day, down from roughly 35,000/day on April 13.

2. Some of the world's leading cryptography and security experts have condemned UK/US proposals to mandate backdoors in encryption. They warn that "the costs would be substantial, the damage to innovation severe, and the consequences to economic growth difficult to predict."

3. Facebook is opening a new wind-powered data centre in Fort Worth, Texas. It is the social networking giant's fifth, and will cost at least $500 million.

4. Tinder is introducing verified profiles. It means that if you encounter someone famous, you will know it's really them. The company also announced it is currently seeing 26 million matches a day.

5. Sony says it will "never" exit the smartphone business. Hiroki Totoki, the CEO of Sony Mobile, has given an interview reaffirming the company's commitment to the mobile business — despite its recent struggles.

6. Facebook is revamping its video player, letting users pop videos out of the newsfeed and move them wherever they want on the page. It's part of the social networking giant's efforts to juice up its video offerings to take on YouTube.

7. Amazon may be forced to stop showing the names of products it doesn't sell in search results. The online retail giant currently displays competitors' products if a customer searches for an item from a brand that doesn't sell on the site.

8. Google is facing increasing pressure to extend the "right to be forgotten" to US users. Currently, the ability to have search results about yourself removed in certain circumstances is only implemented in Europe. But US privacy group Consumer Watchdog is lobbying the Federal Trade Commission to look into whether Google should introduce the controversial "right" in the US too.

9. Greece is losing financial access to the internet. Capital controls put in place in the country have left Greeks unable to pay for internet services like iTunes and cloud storage services.

10. The team that discovered Heartbleed have found another "high severity" security flaw affecting the internet. Heartbleed was the biggest security issue discovered in 2014, and researchers think they have now found another similar problem.

Source: Business Insider.

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