Google reportedly wanted to buy Snap for US$30 billion

While it isn’t the first time it’s happened, it seems Facebook wasn’t the only one after Snapchat’s parent company Snap Inc. Google reportedly wanted a piece of the incredibly popular pie and tried to buy the company for US$30 billion. According to Business Insider, Google verbally talked about the acquisition of Snapchat with the company’s CEO Evan Spiegel. Snap is denying that formal discussions happened. Google also won’t comment on the story. According to the report though, the offer was supposedly still on the table since the company’s IPO early on in March.

Whether or not there’s truth to this, Spiegel is known to like being in charge of his own company, especially with a product he started himself. It would’ve benefited Snapchat on the marketing side if they took the deal and Snapchat would’ve helped Google develop its AR technology. But in the meantime, Snap and Google do work close together. Google’s investment arm put money on Snapchat after it went public. While Snap is considered one of Google Cloud’s biggest customers and they promise to spend US$2 billion on Google’s cloud platform.

Source: GSMArena + 9to5Google

Samsung Galaxy Note 8’s specs get leaked ahead of launch

Evan Blass/Twitter

It’s hard for companies to keep their upcoming product launches a secret in an age where the likes of Evan Blass (@evleaks) exist. This time, the VentureBeat reporter published what is expected to be the specs of the new Samsung Galaxy Note 8. His source is someone who has been briefed about the device’s configuration. Samsung is launching the Galaxy Note 8 on August 23^rd.

Click to read more ...

LG V30 to get OLED display, new leaked render for the phone’s display surfaces

Updated on Thursday, August 3, 2017 at 10:57AM by Gadjo Cardenas Sevilla

LG has just confirmed that its next flagship, the V30 is getting a six-inch OLED display as rumours have stated before. LG says it’ll get a FullVision display, which means it gets a similar display with the G6. That means, we’d get to see an 18:9 aspect ratio with thinner surrounding bezels. GSMArena got a new leaked render showing off what the display could possibly look like. You can see it between the G6 and the Samsung Galaxy S8+ in the image above. As The Verge points out, it’ll be a smaller device than the V20 but will have bigger screen real estate. Its upper and lower bezels will be reduced by 20 and 50 percent, respectively. The LG logo will be relegated to the back of the device. Aside from that the OLED display will cover 109 percent of the DCI-P3 color and support HDR10 with VR compatibility in mind. It’ll be LG’s second OLED phone since the G Flex 2 was announced two and a half years ago. We’re expecting to see the V20 successor at IFA in Berlin on August 31^st.

The FullVision display’s immersive and expansive visual experience is enhanced on the 4.15 million pixels of the QHD+ (1440 x 2880) OLED screen. Superb image quality is achieved via emissive OLED technology which reproduces perfect black and colours with greater accuracy and across a wider colour spectrum. 

Click to read more ...

HBO data breach goes beyond ‘Game of Thrones’ episodes, includes internal documents

HBO

In terms of quantity, the recent HBO hack might seem infinitely smaller than the one Sony experienced back in 2014 but that doesn’t mean it isn’t a big deal. We’ve gotten new details about the hack and found that the hackers didn’t just get Game of Thrones episodes and spoilers but they’ve gotten their hands on thousands of internal company documents, too. The hackers first contacted the media claiming that they got some upcoming GoT episodes as well as episodes of shows like Ballers, Insecure, and Room 104. They also supposedly got their hands on Bill Haders’ Barry comedy series, which isn’t expected to air until next year. But in the first information dump, it showed that they also had personal information of a senior HBO executive, including access credentials for online services. The hackers say they’ve gotten 1.5 terabytes of data from the company and they plan to release more information in batches. A formal DMCA takedown notice has already been supplied to Google by security contractors IP Echelon. The move is standard procedure when HBO wants the search giant to take down links to leaked materials.

Source: Variety