Female journalist groped during live broadcast in Cologne

A journalist was groped during a live broadcast as she was reporting about Carnival in Cologne, Germany, which has been on high alert after a string of sexual assaults on New Year’s Eve

Esmeralda Labye, a Belgian journalist working for Radio Télévision Belge de la Communauté Française, was covering Carnival when three drunk men made lewd gestures behind her on air before touching and verbally harassing her, CNN reports.

See also: First arrest made for sexual assault in Cologne New Year’s Eve attacks

At first, Labye was aware of the men’s presence among the thousands of people out celebrating the festivities …

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Female journalist groped during live broadcast in Cologne

Teen sues TV station for $1M over unauthorized broadcast of his genitals

(credit: NURV.com)

A South Carolina teenager has sued a Colorado television station over allegations the station broadcasted a picture of his erect penis taken from a cell phone video uploaded to YouTube.

The case, known as Holden v. KOAA, asks for $1 million in damages and accuses the station, its reporter, its parent companies (NBC and Comcast), and other defendants of violating federal child pornography laws, invasion of privacy and negligence, and other allegations.

According to the lawsuit, the teen was 14 years old and living in Colorado at the time of the incident. (The incident occurred two years ago, but Ars will not name the individual as he is still a minor.) The cell phone video had been taken of the teen and put online as a way to blackmail him. His father’s girlfriend, Heather Richardson, soon contacted the KOAA TV station to let them know about the situation. KOAA sent a local reporter, Matthew Prichard, to the family’s home in Pueblo, Colorado, where Prichard interviewed the boy and filmed the offending material. The suit claims that the boy’s father specifically told Prichard to keep his son’s name out of the report.

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Teen sues TV station for $1M over unauthorized broadcast of his genitals

Live images of an alleged Microsoft Lumia 650 XL raise all sorts of questions

Okay, we’re officially confused. The Lumia 650 was supposed to be the absolute midranger, while the Lumia 850 was meant to sit higher up the Microsoft smartphone lineup, and rock a front-facing flash, and the general consesus was that both will be 5-inchers.

These latest live images that have just surfaced, coming out of China, seem to paint a different picture. The source states that the smartphone in the photos is the Microsoft Lumia 650 XL, with a 5.4-inch 720p display. Judging by the side-by-side shot with a Lumia 1520, the alleged 650 does indeed look like a 5.4-inch device.

There’s nothing inherently wrong about that, the previous generation Lumia 600-series had the 640 and 640 XL at 5″ and 5.7″, respectively, so even if one diagonal is smaller, two differently-sized versions are sort of the norm with Microsoft (you’re not forgetting the Lumia 950 and 950 XL either, are you).

Scrolling down the Baidu post, we see that the 650 XL is powered by the Snapdragon 210/212 (only difference being CPU clock rate, both go by the MSM8909 internal designation at Qualcomm). Rumors so far had settled on this chip for the 650, so it looks entirely plausible that this 650 XL packs the same silicon.

But here’s where the puzzle falls apart – this supposed Lumia 650 XL looks just like the Lumia 850 from previous leaks, pretty detailed as of late too. Single speaker cutout towards the top of the front glass panel, instead of the 650’s slits at the edges, a metal-looking frame, and most importantly – a front-facing LED flash.

Alleged Lumia 650 XL/Lumia 850?

So it’s the 850 XL then, you say, or simply the Lumia 850, and it just comes in a single display size at 5.4 inches, instead of the rumored 5 inches. Well, alright then, by how can the 850 be powered by the lowly Snapdragon 200-series, what’s going to happen to Microsoft’s upper midrange? After all, there’s not much space between the 850 and 950 for yet another device with, say, a Snapdragon 617, which was so far the rumored 850 chipset.

Hopefully, some of these questions will be answered soon, if the Microsoft Lumia 650 does indeed get unveiled later this month.

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Live images of an alleged Microsoft Lumia 650 XL raise all sorts of questions

BlackBerry lays off 200 employees in Canada and the US

BlackBerry has just parted with “approximately 200 employees” total in both Waterloo, Ontario, and Sunrise, Florida. The company hasn’t disclosed which branches of its operations the cuts are focused on, but earlier reports pointed at the BlackBerry 10 and Devices departments.

The news comes a month after CEO John Chen asserted that the company’s OS is “far from dead”, a statement which was needed to clear the air after the previous day it was announced that BlackBerry will be switching entirely to Android for future smartphones. And while continuing support for existing devices certainly means that the OS is “far from dead”, the lack of future BB10 devices does warrant cuts in the workforce.

The layoffs are part of the struggling company’s turnaround plan, which seems to be on the right track, given the last financial reports from December last year. At $15 million in the red, the company’s loss was 4.5 times less than analysts had predicted, and the Priv seems to be doing nothing but good for BlackBerry.

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BlackBerry lays off 200 employees in Canada and the US

8 gadgets & tech you should definitely use in 2016

Internet connection is tardy, find it tough to share files between iOS and Android, charging is slow, these are some of the most common complaints that people have with their gadgets.Here are some gadgets and technologies that provide simple solutions to these and many other such problems.

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8 gadgets & tech you should definitely use in 2016

Hangouts to increase call quality with direct P2P connections

Hangouts has gotten a few tweaks here and there recently. There have been some small UI changes as well as a couple interesting new features. Now, Google is trying out a new way to potentially improve audio and video quality over Hangouts by no longer routing those communications through Google servers.
Instead, Google will attempt to make a direct peer-to-peer connection between the users who are calling each other. This would be a more efficient way to make the connection and should lead to better audio and video quality, according to Google. Users are being told of the new … – Source

Hangouts to increase call quality with direct P2P connections

BlackBerry Priv: High on price, low on performance

BlackBerry launched its first Android smartphone BlackBerry Priv in India at Rs 62,990. We bring you a complete review of the device and is it worth the price.

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BlackBerry Priv: High on price, low on performance

Holy Sheep, this GoPro commercial will make your heart race

This is one way to start sheepherding: with a winged adventurer swooping down on a herd of sheep like some avenging technologically-equipped god.

Except this particular adventuring deity, Marshall Miller, is hooked to a paraglider and wearing a GoPro.

It appears to be separate from the company’s far less thrilling Super Bowl commercial, which shows people mugging during mild sports on vacation with a consumer-friendly $199.99 version of the camera.

SEE ALSO: Super Bowl advertisers just want America to have fun this year

Miller, a veteran BASE jumper and “flying cowboy,” has taken his GoPro on other adventures, including …

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Holy Sheep, this GoPro commercial will make your heart race

Verizon’s mobile video won’t count against data caps—but Netflix does

Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam. (credit: Fortune Live Media)

Verizon Wireless is testing the limits of the Federal Communications Commission’s net neutrality rules after announcing that it will exempt its own video service from mobile data caps—while counting data from competitors such as YouTube and Netflix against customers’ caps.

The only way for companies to deliver data to Verizon customers without counting against their data caps is to pay the carrier, something no major rival video service has chosen to do. While data cap exemptions are not specifically outlawed by the FCC’s net neutrality rules, the FCC is examining these arrangements to determine whether they should be stopped under the commission’s so-called “general conduct standard.” The FCC is already looking into data cap exemptions—also known as zero-rating—implemented by Comcast, AT&T, and T-Mobile USA.

Verizon last month announced its new “FreeBee Data 360” program in which content providers can pay to send zero-rated data to customers. Verizon has also been pushing its new “Go90” streaming video service, and yesterday it added a perk to Go90’s mobile app: free data.

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Verizon’s mobile video won’t count against data caps—but Netflix does

Snuggling with Uber puppies is a pretty tough job (said no one ever)

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Snuggling with Uber puppies is a pretty tough job (said no one ever)

'Cannibalism' between stars

Stars do not accumulate their final mass steadily, but in a series of violent events manifesting themselves as sharp stellar brightening. Stellar brightening can be caused by fragmentation due to gravitational instabilities in massive gaseous disks surrounding young stars, followed by migration of dense gaseous clumps onto the star, according to a new theory. – Source

'Cannibalism' between stars