Tech

It's not your average nightlight

Smart home company Leeo has unveiled its first product: a smart nightlight.

The light also monitors temperature and humidity in your home and alerts your phone when your smoke or carbon monoxide detectors go off. The device plugs into your wall and has a microphone so it can monitor those detectors, sending you or other people in your call list a warning if there’s smoke in your house.

There’s no doubt the Leeo nightlight is a nifty product. But it’s not clear it’s worth $100 for a device that’s like a combined smoke detector, a NEST and a regular ol’ nightlight, and may not do any of those things as well.

Leeo formed in 2013 and plans to release a series of connected home devices that connect to your home’s Wi-Fi.

It's not what you think, but it is very cool

After months of heated debate among rental platforms, hosts and lawmakers, city leaders voted to regulate and allow short-term rentals

Updated, Wednesday Oct. 22, 11:25 a.m. ET

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted 7-4 Tuesday to legalize short-term rentals facilitated by companies like Airbnb, while requiring hosts who use such services to collect taxes like more typical hotel operators do. If Mayor Ed Lee approves the proposal, home-sharing will officially be legal in the City by the Bay.

The new law, proposed by Board President David Chiu in April, also sets up a regulatory framework for this branch of the sharing economy, including a registry for all hosts and rules about who is and is not allowed to offer tourists a place on their couch. The final vote came after months of debate, hearings and lobbying on both sides.

“Everyone agrees that the status quo is not working,” Chiu told TIME shortly before the vote. “We have seen an explosion of short-term rentals without any regulatory or enforcement structure to handle this new activity. . . . This is a balanced, reasonable approach.”

An op-ed from California Sen. Dianne Feinstein arguing against the legislation, published by the San Francisco Chronicle on Monday, helped reignite previous debates about whether the legislation should include amendments limiting rentals to a total of 90 days per year (in order to help preserve the “residential character” of neighborhoods) or requiring that all hosting platforms pay back taxes before the law goes into effect.

Both amendments eventually failed. Those who supported the back tax requirement, which Feinstein called “commonsense,” said that companies like Airbnb should have been collecting and remitting hotel taxes since they started operating. Those who opposed the back taxes amendment argued that there might be drawn-out legal battles over those bills, saying the city could not afford to wait to start regulating short-term rentals—especially because, under the new law, business facilitated by companies like Airbnb will funnel an estimated $11 million per year into the city’s coffers.

Those opposed to the 90-day limit, meanwhile, argued it would limit the amount of income available to hosts who rely on short-term rentals to maintain their residence in the city. Before this law was passed, San Francisco prohibited any rentals for less than 30 days, a rule put in place to help preserve rental stock for full-time San Franciscans rather than tourists.

The new law will allow locals to rent out only their primary residences, a caveat meant to stop landlords who have taken apartments off the market to rent them out full-time on platforms like Airbnb as long-time residents struggle to find housing.

Chiu said that Airbnb fought many pieces that were in the final version of the legislation, such as the tax-collection requirement and the mandate that every host has insurance coverage. “No one got everything they wanted,” he said. Renters must also adhere to their existing contracts. The new law does not, for instance, trump any lease that prohibits a person from renting out their apartment, though it does prevent them from being evicted on their first offense.

At the Tuesday hearing, short-term rental supporters filled the seats of the hearing room in City Hall, raising their arms and twiddling their fingers in support of lawmakers who made arguments for the legislation. And they broke into cheers, despite the prohibition on noise-making, after it passed.

“This is about real, live people of San Francisco who rely on home-sharing . . . to put a new roof on their house, to put their kids through college,” Supervisor Scott Wiener said during the debate, to much finger twiddling. “What we’re doing is allowing people to actually make ends meet.”

The iCloud attack coincided with the iPhone 6 releases in China

Chinese users recently attempting to access Apple’s iCloud online data storage service may have had their personal information stolen in what one cybersecurity firm claims was a high-level cyberattack backed by Chinese authorities.

GreatFire, an independent Chinese censorship watchdog, said the hack was a “man-in-the-middle” attack, in which hackers get access to users’ files by getting them to enter their login information into a fake login site. The hackers then set in “the middle” of users and the service, grabbing data at it’s transmitted between the two.

Apple confirmed the attack Tuesday, stating that it is “aware of intermittent organized network attacks using insecure certificates to obtain user information.” The firm added that the attacks “don’t compromise iCloud servers, and they don’t impact iCloud sign in on iOS devices or Macs running OS X Yosemite using the Safari browser.”

GreatFire said the hackers involved with the iCloud breaches used servers accessible by only state-run organizations and Chinese authorities, a sign the attacks had the blessing of such authorities. The hack came just as the iPhone 6 was released in China after a delay over the government’s security firms.

The iCloud attack follows a report earlier this month that “a very large organization or nation state” was putting malicious spyware onto iPhones and iPads belonging to Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protestors. GreatFire also previously reported that Chinese authorities had launched attacks on GitHub, Google, Yahoo and Microsoft in an apparent effort to censor those services.

“This is what nation states do to ‘protect’ their citizens. There is nothing surprising or unexpected in this revelation,” said Phil Lieberman, president of cybersecurity firm Lieberman Software. “It would not be hard to find other countries doing similar things.”

The search giant had seen its revenue fall in four of the previous five quarters

Yahoo said Tuesday that third-quarter grew 1%. Here are the most important points from the company’s earnings report.

What you need to know: Yahoo beat Wall Street estimates with $1.15 billion in third-quarter revenue, up from $1.14 during the same quarter last year. Surprising analysts is always nice, but the Internet search giant should be especially happy about the revenue bump, even if it is just a 1% increase. Sales had declined in four of the previous five quarters, including a 3% year-over-year drop in this year’s second quarter.

Yahoo also reported earnings excluding certain costs (and a huge windfall from selling shares in the initial public offering of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba) of 52 cents per share, which trounced analyst predictions of 30 cents per share. The company’s profit jumped to $6.8 billion compared with the help of $6.3 billion in cash, after tax, that the company netted from selling a chunk of its Alibaba shares in September. In the year-ago quarter, Yahoo had reported a profit of $297 million.

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer described the quarter in a statement as solid.

“We achieved this revenue growth through strong growth in our new areas of investment – mobile, social, native and video – despite industry headwinds in some of our large, legacy businesses,” Mayer said.

Yahoo shares soared in after-hours trading, gaining almost 2.8% after finishing Tuesday trading up by 2.3% – one of many stocks on the tech-heavy Nasdaq composite to enjoy a strong day.

The big number: Yahoo said its third-quarter mobile revenue topped $200 million, the first time the company has revealed the amount of money it makes from showing ads on mobile devices. The company said gross mobile sales for the year will exceed $1.2 billion. Mayer said that Yahoo’s mobile investments – which include a $300 million acquisition of mobile analytics startup Flurry – have paid off for the company. In the current quarter, mobile revenue made up only around 17% of overall sales, far less than rivals like Facebook and Twitter.

“Not only are our mobile products attracting praise and engagement from users and industry awards, they are generating meaningful revenue for Yahoo,” Mayer said.

Meanwhile, Yahoo’s display ad revenue – the equivalent on online billboard ads – dipped again, falling 5% year-over-year to $447 million in the third quarter. (Interestingly, Yahoo said in its earnings release that the number of ads sold in the third quarter increased about 24%, but that seems to have been offset by the fact that the price of each ad declined by an equal amount.) Search ads continue to grow for Yahoo, though, with third-quarter revenue in that sector rising 4% to $452 million.

What you might have missed: Yahoo plans to spend some of the more than $6 billion in cash it netted from the recent Alibaba IPO on one or more tech start-up acquisitions, according to The Wall Street Journal. Mayer is expected to discuss Yahoo’s plan for potential acquisitions as well as cost-cutting measures – a discussion that comes a few weeks after activist investor Starboard Value revealed it had taken a stake in Yahoo and pushed for Mayer to reduce costs and consider a combination with AOL.

This article originally appeared on Fortune.com

In the wake of hacks agains Target, Home Depot and JPMorgan, analysts say companies' boards need to be more vigilant on cybersecurity

As an increasing number of major retailers and financial institutions are falling victim to hacks like those against Target, Home Depot and JPMorgan, many experts say corporate boards aren’t doing enough to protect customers from cybersecurity breaches.While corporate boards are a step removed from companies’ day-to-day operations, the increasing risk of data breaches means that boardmembers need to be more involved in cybersecurity, observers say, whether by pushing for security oversight or reshuffling executives who don’t react properly to crises.

“We live in the post-Target era,” said John Kindervag, security analyst at Forrester. “There’s a moral obligation to consider firing an executive team because of a data breach. It’s a huge business failure.”

Corporate boards rarely review cybersecurity plans or involve themselves in the particulars of data protection, traditionally viewing security as an information technology problem. According to a PriceWaterhouseCoopers report released last month, just 42% of 9,700 executives in over 150 countries said their boards are involved in security strategy; just 25% said their boards are involved in reviewing security and privacy threats.

“They’ll say to the CEO, what are we doing about security, and then don’t get involved at all until they get breached,” says Avivah Litan, security analyst at Gartner. “Most companies don’t communicate at that level with the board. They’re out of touch and they’re totally clueless about information security.”

Securities and Exchange Commissioner Luis Aguilar put it more gingerly to board directors earlier this month at a New York Stock Exchange cybersecurity conference. “There may be a gap that exists between the magnitude of the exposure presented by cyber-risks and the steps, or lack thereof, that many corporate boards have taken to address these risks,” Aguilar said. There’s a discrepancy, too, between what shareholders demand of boards and what they’re actually doing — a survey published by Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) last month shows that nearly 70% of shareholders view board oversight actions prior to hacking incidents as “very important.”

Negligent boards may find themselves facing questions from angry shareholders and customers after a cyber breach. In June, ISS made the unusual recommendation that Target shareholders oust seven out of 10 members of its board after credit card information belonging to 40 million customers was compromised, laying blame on two board committees in particular.

“The data breach revealed that the company was inadequately prepared for the significant risks of doing business in today’s electronic commerce environment,” ISS advised. “The responsibility for oversight of these risks lies squarely with the Audit Committee and the Corporate Responsibility Committee.” Shareholders re-elected the board, but ISS’ condemnation was a wake-up call for retailers. Target is now facing an investigation from the Federal Trade Commission into the details of the breach.

Home Depot, meanwhile, was a founding member of a threat-sharing group of major retailers earlier this year, and its board received regular updates on cybersecurity, according to a spokesman. “IT and IT security have regularly been items on our board meeting agendas for several years now, and the board has received regular updates on the breach since it occurred,” said that spokesman. But the hardware retailer was caught flat-footed by a data breach this year that jeopardized 56 million customers’ credit cards, and managers ignored weaknesses in cyber defense before the attack, the New York Times reported last month.

Analysts say a strong board of directors should know how to ask management the right questions about cybersecurity. “The board is not responsible for identifying risk, but it sure as hell needs to know that management understands that responsibility and knows how to respond to it,” said Rick Steinberg, former governance practice leader at PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Ultimately, it might be a financial motivation that gets corporate boards to take a closer look at their firms’ cybersecurity standards. Target’s net income dropped more than $400 million in the quarter the breach was announced compared to the year before; the company said direct costs from the data breach would reach $148 million in the second quarter of 2014 alone. The total expense of any breach, including lost profits from nervous consumers, are often incalculable. “A data breach is the equivalent of an oil spill,” said Kindervag. “It’s a fundamental business issue.”

Big Red beats out the competition

This post was done in partnership with The Wirecutter, a list of the best technology to buy. Read the full article below at TheWirecutter.com

If you’re in the United States and looking for a carrier with good coverage, fast bandwidth and—this may surprise you—affordable single-line plans, you should consider Verizon Wireless. We found it has the widest coverage map, the fastest network and the lowest costs for individuals. But it’s not the only answer for everyone: Some situations call for other carriers, and we discuss that below.

How We Decided

We reached that conclusion after a good 70 hours poring over the large and small print of wireless plans, checking coverage maps and calculating the cost of smartphone service: 500MB of data per month, 2GB and 4GB. We did the math for all those scenarios with expensive and affordable phones, ran the numbers for two and four phones on the same plan and recalculated again for those who want to use their own device not purchased through the carrier.

Finally, we inspected prior research and testing from a host of reputable sources and publications and consulted experts from around the industry.

Why Verizon is best for most people on an individual plan

Our endorsement rides on some assumptions: wireless coverage where you need it trumps all else; the lowest total cost of owning your smartphone or device, based on your typical usage; and that a lack of tethering or a wide choice of Android phones aren’t necessarily deal-breakers. (Though we have other recommendations if they are deal-breakers.)

Verizon has the widest coverage map, the fastest network, and the lowest costs for the medium solo-usage scenario—analysts estimate this ranges between 1.2GB and less than 1.5GB a month. Its “Single Line Smartphone” plans limit the two-year total cost of a new iPhone with 2GB of data a month to $1,640, versus $1,680 at Sprint (that’s an iPhone 6/iPhone 6 Plus exclusive lease deal, while non-Apple high-end phones cost $2,090), $1,730 at T-Mobile, and $2,120 at AT&T.

Those numbers, except for T-Mobile’s, assume a standard two-year contract in which higher monthly rates recoup a lower initial phone price. That deal traditionally entails getting gouged on international roaming (hi, AT&T!), but Verizon’s numerous “world phones” with internationally compatible devices all come unlocked, allowing you to pop in cheap prepaid SIM (Subscriber Identity Module) cards while overseas.

Back in the U.S., Verizon’s deployment of “XLTE” LTE service sped it ahead of AT&T in PCMag.com’s latest tests, with LTE downloads across the country averaging 19.6 megabits per second. RootMetrics’s tests over the first half of 2014 also favored Verizon in overall performance and speed.

Flaws (but not dealbreakers)

Reading this on a laptop away from home? Verizon’s Single Line plans exclude “tethering,” or sharing a smartphone’s bandwidth over Wi-Fi. Adding tethering with a “More Everything” plan balloons two-year costs to $2,360 in a 2GB/month iPhone scenario, above comparable costs at T-Mobile ($1,730) and AT&T ($2,120).

Want an Android phone? Subsidized or not, Verizon’s Android phones come loaded with apps you can’t remove, and then you must wait for Verizon to deliver system updates. And as with Sprint, its use of CDMA wireless technology instead of the more open GSM standard relied on by AT&T and T-Mobile obstructs customers from buying a new phone from somebody besides the carrier, like a manufacturer or Google.

The best selection of Android phones

For the widest choice in Android phones, look to T-Mobile. By pricing service separate from hardware, it frees you to buy hardware directly, with less unwanted software and faster updates. Even its subsidized, locked phones come with free international low-speed data and cheap overseas calling and texting—and if you need faster service, its roaming rates still mop the floor with the competition. And its Wi-Fi-calling-capable phones can get free in-flight texting and voicemail reception on planes with Gogo Wi-Fi.

What if I want a wider selection, but need coverage in a less populated area?

T-Mobile’s coverage often fades in rural areas. If that’s an issue, and you also want unlocked phones or devices that aren’t available through Verizon, consider AT&T: It provides coverage that our sources saw as about as good as Verizon’s and offers a wider selection of phones. But while you can buy a compatible phone from another place, AT&T’s pricing favors getting a subsidized-phone contract—and then accepting its control-freak locking policy that prevents using other carriers on your phone until your contract concludes.

Both AT&T and T-Mo support simultaneous voice and data on any phone (though some Android phones at Sprint and Verizon provide that with an extra antenna).

Why we don’t recommend Sprint

Sorry, but Sprint’s LTE coverage still suffers from earlier detours with the failed 4G standard “WiMax” and its acquisition of Nextel. Most of its plans don’t include tethering, you have to wait 90 days into a contract to get a world phone’s SIM card unlocked. If you’re set on a new iPhone, you may want to consider its “iPhone for Life” option: Unlimited data for $70 a month with an iPhone 6 or $75 for an iPhone 6 Plus, with a replacement every two years. But bear in mind that other smartphones don’t allow this deal and that Sprint’s subsidized-phone deals quickly change from its cheapest to its priciest option as your data appetite increases.

No clear winner among family plans

Sprint and T-Mobile offer the best deals for most multiple-line plans, but the coverage for each can be a deal-breaker. And mastering how discounts for extra data can intersect with those for buying an unsubsidized phone can be a brain-breaker.

• In a 500MB-per-line scenario, AT&T’s unsubsidized deal is the cheapest way to get two lines, while T-Mobile is your lowest-cost option for four lines.
• With 2GB of data per line, Sprint unsubsidized is the cheapest route to two lines (although Apple users will do better by pairing two “iPhone for Life” leases), T-Mobile for four.
• At 4GB per line, Sprint’s unsubsidized options take the lead all around—but if you need two but not four iPhones, get two “iPhone for Life” leases, while for two other high-end devices, take its handset subsidy.

If you can’t deal with either Sprint or T-Mobile’s coverage, Verizon’s multiple-line pricing isn’t bad but requires a spreadsheet to grasp (as in, it’s cheaper to share 10GB of data among four unsubsidized phones than to buy less data). If you wanted shopping for wireless service to feel more like confronting the tax code, this is the corner of the market for you.

In Closing

Verizon is not the “best carrier” for every single person–your location, your travel habits, and your taste in phones can make it a poor choice. But for most people needing only one line, it’s the safest recommendation we can make, and it doesn’t hurt that it’s the cheapest either.

This guide may have been updated since publication. To see the current recommendation, please go to TheWirecutter.com.