The heat is continuing to build under Samsung over the Galaxy Note 7 recall. The phone has been banned from being used or charged on many airline flights, and the Consumer Product Safety Commission in the U.S. has officially recalled the phone on top of Samsung’s own recall of the estimated 2.5 million phones currently out in the wild.
Now, Tim Baxter, Samsung’s head of American operations, has issued a video apologizing for the snafu and telling people, basically, to return the phones for a new one right now. By some accounts, nearly 100 of the phones have now self-immolated, catching homes and cars on fire and injuring a child.
Baxter said Samsung has replaced 130,000 phones so far and also says that the new Note 7 phones are safe. He adds that they are working with the CPSC to complete the recall as quickly as possible in the U.S.
Be careful what you sue for
Speaking of cell phones, the battle between the FBI and Apple over accessing the data in a terrorist’s iPhone has taken a new turn.
Several news outlets, including the AP and the parent company of USA Today, are suing the government in order to learn exactly HOW the team that hacked the phone did it – and exactly how much the government paid them to do it. Apple CEO Tim Cook has said that having a key out in the wild to break into an iPhone would basically be a privacy disaster, although early indications were that the hack would only work on iPhone 5C’s, which are almost obsolete now.
The third party in the lawsuit is Vice Media, and the lawsuit is asking that the information be made public as part of the Freedom of Information Act.
Surf’s up – way, way up!
Hey, it’s Friday, and surfs up… just about anywhere when you decide to go drone surfing. And, yep, it’s pretty much exactly what you’re thinking it is.
Why get towed behind a dumb ol’ boat when you can get your surf jones satisfied by a spindly, delicate, high-powered $18,ooo-ish flying buzzsaw? Anyway, it’s just cool to watch this guy tear it up while getting pulled along by FreeFly’s big 8-rotor ALTA 8 drone, which is usually used for things like movie cinematography, or hauling around payloads weighing up to about 20 pounds.
What’s next, snowboarding by drone? Well yes, of course it is.
