The European Union, which is working on finishing up its investigation of Google’s Search business in Europe, may soon look into Google’s Android app store-related business practices, GigaOm reveals. Portugal’s Aptoide, an alternative Android app source that houses more than 200,000 titles and has more than 6 million active users, met with the European Commissions last week in preparation for its complaint submission.
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If you find your electric bill has skyrocketed this summer, your air conditioner may not be the only culprit. The Los Angeles Times reports that cable set-top boxes are now consume more power in our homes than any other household appliance other than air conditioners. The reason for this is that set-top boxes are using almost as much power when they’re supposedly shut off as when they’re turned on while you’re watching TV.
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The finale of the fourth Game of Thrones season shattered all previous illegal download records, TorrentFreak reports. First, a quarter-million people shared a single file at the same time. Beyond that, more than 1.5 million users downloaded a pirated copy of the show within the first 12 hours after it aired, with the number expected to move past 7.5 million in the following days.
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If there is one characteristic that has defined Samsung over the past few years, it’s the company’s willingness to try absolutely anything. If a rival enters a new market — or if there is even a rumor that a rival will enter a new market — Samsung looks to get there as fast as it possibly can. Touchscreen smartphones, tablets, TV voice controls, media streaming boxes and smartwatches are all examples of this, and now it appears as though Samsung will look to compete with Facebook-owned Oculus VR in the near future.
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If you’re a hefty reader who isn’t overly attached to physical books then you may want to check out a new app that promises to for books what Spotify has done for music and what Netflix has done for movies. Per Android Police, a new app called Oyster has just launched on Android that offers an all-you-can-read book subscription service that will cost you just $10 per month.
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Maybe obsessively collecting every video game known to man has its rewards after all. Engadget brings us word that avid gamer Michael Thomasson has sold his collection of more than 11,000 games and 100 different consoles on gaming auction site GameGavel for $750,250, which is a pretty astonishing sum given that there’s no way whoever is paying that much money for his collection will ever play the vast majority of those games.
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It’s not every day that reporters get a peek inside one of Amazon’s warehouses, but thanks to a great article from Wired, we can get a sense of just how big these warehouses are. Wired was shown around one of Amazon’s massive “fulfillment centers” in Phoenix, Arizona, to show how Amazon has become a platform for third-party sellers, much as its Amazon Web Services (AWS) has become a platform for any company that uses the cloud, from small startups to Netflix.
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Android’s malware problem has taken a new twist, as such apps now come bundled with certain phones. Instead of creating apps that can pack hidden, malicious capabilities, some device makers in China are apparently ready to ship smartphones with built-in malware. Such is the case with the Star N9500, a Galaxy S4 clone from China, which comes with a Trojan on board masquerading as the Google Play Store, German publication Heise reports.
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People, you really ought to read an app’s permissions before you download it. Reddit’s Android community has flagged an obvious scam app called Subway Train Game in the Google Play store that has been installed more than 1 million times in less than a month.
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There are plenty of interesting external battery packs that are ready to charge smartphones, tablets and other devices via USB, but all of them are limited to providing additional power to mobile devices only. ChargeAll, a new Indiegogo project, aims to fix all that, as this new external power pack comes with support for laptops and other electronics that require up to 85W of power.
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