Welcome to The Feed, our new weekly round-up of tech news. And what an interesting five days it's been.
From iPhone 6 rumors to Sony's new broadband TV to a shooting involving a Facebook photo, the week in tech has been a crazy one. Here, we recap the highlights of the last 120 hours.
Foursquare Is Making Changes to Its Privacy Policy, Updates to include allowing the use of full names and the ability for businesses to access longer data logs. (12/31)
Michigan's Social Media Law Protects Accounts of Students and Employee's, The Internet privacy protection act, better known as House Bill 5523, "prohibit[s] employers and educational institutions from requiring certain individuals to grant access to, allow observation of, or disclose information that allows access to or observation of personal Internet accounts." (12/31)
Study: Majority of World Leaders on Twitter, The Digital Policy Council recently released a study showing that 75 percent of the world’s heads of state are now on Twitter. (1/1)
Apple Rumored To Be Testing iPhone 6, No pics or specs as of yet but an iOS developer revealed that a device named "iPhone 6,1" running iOS 7 was making requests from an IP address within Apple's Cupertino campus. (1/2)
HTC Reportedly Readies New Flagship Phone for CES, The phone, codenamed M7, is said to boast a 13 megapixel rear camera, 2 GB of RAM, a 1.7 ghz quadcore processor and a 4.7-inch full HD 1920 x 1080 pixel display. Expect full HD to be the must-have spec for smartphones this year. It will also reportedly abandon physical menu buttons for on-screen controls. (1/2)
2013 Lineup of Macs May Feature 5G Wifi Connectivity, Apple is allegedly making a major upgrade to the hardware of its Mac lineup this year. Macs are expected to be equipped with a new technology, 802.11ac, also known as 5G Wifi. Sources say that Apple is in the process of cutting a deal with Broadcom, a manufacturer of 802.11ac chips. (1/3)
Paying For Eyeballs: Why Buying Fake YouTube Views Has Never Been Easier, Chase Hoffberger, writing in The Daily Dot, tells the story of how he pushed a silly, 19-second video he made past 60,000 views simply buy giving $50 to a guy named Kenzo. (1/3)
Sony is Planning a Cable-Killing Broadband, Too, Sony's service is said to be a package of channels that consumers can access over a broadband Internet connection, no cable required. Details on the service are scarce, but presumably Sony could marry it to their existing PS3, BluRay player and SmartTV offerings. (1/3)
Teen Accidentally Shoots Her Brother While Posing For A Facebook Pic, Believed to be drinking at a New Year's Eve after-party, Savannah and Manuel Ortiz decided to throw an impromptu photo shoot posing with a gun. They'd intended to post the photo to Facebook. That is, until the gun unexpectedly went off, shooting Manuel in the head, and instantly killing him. (1/4)
This Demented Cartoon Robot Could Have Been The Official Android Mascot, The crazy-eyed, manic cartoon, and its various disturbing permutations, are the creation of Google Android engineer Dan Morrill, who used them as stand-in mascots on internal media during the early days of the OS's development. The proto-Androids never saw the light of day, of course, and now they offer a peek into a bizarro alternate universe where Android is the scourge of children's nightmares everywhere. (1/4)
