An Apple exec just revealed how much Apple Music is really going to pay record labels (AAPL) | ||
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Apple is going to give labels, publishers and other music owners over 70% of revenues from its new music streaming service. Last week a leaked Apple Music contract suggested that the company was only going to pay out 58% of its revenue in licensing fees. This didn't go down very well, especially considering Apple is not going to pay music owners anything for the songs played during the three month free trial following the launch of Apple Music in June, according to a Re/Code report. But once the free trial is over, the only way to keep using the service is to pay Apple $10 a month. In an interview with Re/Code, Apple exec Robert Kondrk, who negotiates music deals alongside Eddy Cue, revealed the real numbers where this $10 monthly fee is going to go. Apple will pay music owners 71.5% of Apple Music's revenue in the US. Outside the US this could fluctuate, but will average out at around 73%. How much the musicians who wrote the songs will actually get depends on the contracts they have with the music labels and publishers who distribute their songs, the report pointed out. The total of around 70% will go to the people who own the complete sound recordings Apple Music will play and the people who own the publishing rights to the underlying compositions of the songs. Apple's revenue split is only a few percentage points more than the industry average of 70%, which Spotify also says it pays. But Apple's stance against free music streaming is supposed to reassure labels and artists that getting paid for allowing their songs to be played on Apple Music is more worthwhile than letting them be played on Spotify. Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: Should we kill off one of the most dangerous creatures in the world?  | ||
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Final Fantasy VII, one of the greatest games of all time, is getting a remake | ||
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It's finally happening. After 18 long years, a remake of Final Fantasy VII is on its way. For those not in the know, Final Fantasy VII — or FFVII for short — was a PlayStation fantasy role-playing game released in 1997. It's widely regarded as one of the greatest games of all time, and key details like arch-villain Sephiroth and the fate of Aeris have become enduring touchpoints in gaming culture. At annual gaming conference E3, developer Square Enix dropped a trailer for the game on Tuesday night. Fans have clamoured for such a remake for years, and while the studio has released a number of sequels, spin-offs and animated films, it has always backed away from a direct recreation of the original classic — until now. The teaser trailer appears to show off Midgar, the largest city on the fictional planet Gaia and home to the Shinra corporation:
There's a subtle hint to Aeris, a Midgar flower girl who gets caught up in the adventure:
As well as a road that looks suspiciously similar to one feature in one of FFVII's iconic chase scenes:
Though we never see their face, this man with a gun barrel for an arm can only be Barret Wallace, one of the game's key playable characters:
And close behind Barret comes Cloud Strife, FFVII's primary protagonist and one of the most iconic characters in the last 20 years of video gaming history:
The trailer ends with the caption "play it first on PlayStation 4" — suggesting that while Sony fans will be the first to get their hands on the eagerly-anticipated title, it won't be exclusive to the PS4. Here's the full trailer:Kotaku got its hands on a press release from developer Square Enix, and the studio says it has just "begun production." The inference is that the game is a long way off yet: LOS ANGELES (June 15, 2015) – At Sony Computer Entertainment of America LLC’s (SCEA) E3 press conference today, SQUARE ENIX® announced that it has begun production on the full remake of FINAL FANTASY® VII for the PlayStation®4 computer entertainment system. Leading the development will be key members from the original project, including producer Yoshinori Kitase, director Tetsuya Nomura and scenario writer Kazushige Nojima. The immediate reaction on Twitter is, well, exactly what you might expect: Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: PlayStation's flagship game looks absolutely stunning  | ||
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10 things in tech you need to know today | ||
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Good morning! Here are the 10 things in tech you need to know this Tuesday. 1. Facebook wants to build a new €200 million data centre in Ireland. The renewably-powered facility is planned for the town of Clonee, and will bring the social networking giant's Irish workforce to more than 1,000. 2. The UK tech scene is far more diverse than the US scene. That's according to a new study from startup accelerator Wayra. 3. US payment startup Stripe could crush one of Europe's hottest fintech firms. Stripe is launching in Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland this week — putting it in direct competition with Klarna, a rival Swedish online payment company valued at £650 million ($1 billion). 4. Facebook has launched a new photo-sharing app called Moments. It uses facial recognition to detect who is in photos stored on your phone and asks if you want to send the images to them. 5. One-word messaging app Yo is attempting to make a comeback with Yo 2.0. The update will let users send photo messages or their location, as well as the word "Yo," and could help brands monetise their followings on the service. 6. 13 European startups became "unicorns" valued at more than $1 billion over the last 12 months. The list includes TransferWise, Shazam, and Rocket Internet — and is a massive jump from the just three new unicorns created a year before that. 7. Microsoft just made 2 big announcements that will seriously worry Sony. At the E3 gaming conference, the company announced an extensive backwards-compatibility program for the Xbox One, and is also partnering with games company Valve and its virtual reality headset — in addition to its partnership with Facebook's Oculus Rift. (Oh, and wildly popular game Minecraft is also coming to Microsoft's augmented reality headset HoloLens.) 8. LastPass, one of the most popular password security companies, has admitted it was hacked. The app lets users use just one strong password to log into all their services, but it has now been attacked. This doesn't necessarily mean that every password stored using the service has been compromised, however. 9. Evernote CEO Phil Libin wants to step down. Libin considers himself a "product person" and feels the company needs a "professional" CEO. 10. Facebook is being taken to court because it allegedly violated European privacy rules. Belgium’s privacy commission is suing Facebook over alleged violations of Belgian and European privacy laws. Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: Facebook tried to copy Apple with its big Oculus unveiling and it failed miserably  | ||
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Some 'Destiny' players are getting locked out of their accounts after 'The Taken King' announcement | ||
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If you purchased the Digital Guardian Edition of "Destiny" at any point, you might be unable to access the game right now. Some players (myself included) are unable to enter their games through the PlayStation 4 dashboard, instead seeing an option to pre-order "The Taken King," which was just announced Monday night. These "Destiny" players are instead seeing notices that read "Playable in 90 days."
Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: Mark Cuban explains why downloading Snapchat is a huge mistake  | ||
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Sony's going to beat Apple to the a la carte TV game | ||
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Sony just threw down the gauntlet on per-channel, streaming TV subscriptions (aka "the inevitable future of television"). PlayStation president and group CEO Andrew House told attendees of its E3 2015 press conference: "Starting in July, we will begin offering a la carte channels nationwide, and will be the first paid TV service to allow users to subscribe to individual channels without the purchase of a multi-channel bundle." That is huge. Before Apple, or any of the major cable companies did it, Sony is taking charge on individual channel television subscriptions. More simply: pay what you want, for what you want. No required bundle; no minimum package – just pay for what channels you want to watch. It sounds too good given the current TV subscription market. And, at launch this July, it won't be that great. For starters, only three channels are being offered at launch: Showtime, Fox Soccer Plus, and a "new, exclusive channel from Machinima." So even though Sony's PlayStation Vue service – the TV service it operates through its PlayStation consoles, currently on a traditional cable package pricing model – carries local programming, you won't be able to choose any of it at launch. Nor will you be able to pay for and watch any of the other channels, like Food Network or TLC or Nickelodeon (among many others).
Still, it's a start, and the move puts pressure on not just Apple, but also the content providers (to say nothing of the pressure exerted by HBO Now, HBO's standalone service that essentially offers an individual channel subscription). Apple's version of streaming TV was reportedly delayed from a recent announcement – many expected it to offer some version of a la carte programming subscriptions, pushing back on the traditional model of bundles of channels sold as subscriptions. PlayStation Vue is currently available in five major cities: Chicago, Los Angeles, New York City, Philadelphia, and San Francisco. The a la carte service goes live this July with three channels to start; Vue will go live nationwide at some point in 2015, according to Sony. A $2 discount will be offered for customers who subscribe to the PlayStation Plus paid membership program, per channel, though Sony hasn't specified how much just yet. To start, Showtime will cost $11/month, FOX Soccer Plus will cost $15/month, and Machinima channel will cost $4/month; it looks like a range of pricing will be offered from channel to channel, depending on content and provider. SEE ALSO: Here's the adorable PlayStation game Sony's been working on for the past 8 years AND: You'll be able to battle robot dinosaurs in the next game from the developers of 'Killzone' Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: It looks like 'Star Wars' fans are finally getting the video game they deserve  | ||
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Egypt court sentences Morsi to life in jail for spying | ||
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Cairo (AFP) - An Egyptian court sentenced ousted Islamist president Mohamed Morsi to life in prison on Tuesday on charges of spying for Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, and Iran. The court also confirmed death sentences against 16 other defendants on charges of delivering secret documents abroad between 2005 and 2013. The court still has to decide whether to confirm or commute death sentences it handed down against Morsi and more than 100 others in a separate trial on charges related to their escape from prison during the 2011 uprising that ousted veteran strongman Hosni Mubarak. In Egypt, a life sentence is 25 years in jail. Tuesday's verdict can be appealed. The army ousted Morsi, Egypt's first democratically elected president, in July 2013 after mass protests calling for an end to his divisive one-year rule. He has already been sentenced to 20 years in jail in a separate trial on charges of inciting violence. Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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An Apple exec just revealed how much Apple Music is really going to pay record labels (AAPL) | ||
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Apple is going to give labels, publishers and other music owners over 70% of revenues from its new music streaming service. Last week a leaked Apple Music contract suggested that the company was only going to pay out 58% of its revenue in licensing fees. This didn't go down very well, especially considering Apple is not going to pay music owners anything for the songs played during the three month free trial following the launch of Apple Music in June, according to a Re/Code report. But once the free trial is over, the only way to keep using the service is to pay Apple $10 a month. In an interview with Re/Code, Apple exec Robert Kondrk, who negotiates music deals alongside Eddy Cue, revealed the real numbers where this $10 monthly fee is going to go. Apple will pay music owners 71.5% of Apple Music's revenue in the US. Outside the US this could fluctuate, but will average out at around 73%. How much the musicians who wrote the songs will actually get depends on the contracts they have with the music labels and publishers who distribute their songs, the report pointed out. The total of around 70% will go to the people who own the complete sound recordings Apple Music will play and the people who own the publishing rights to the underlying compositions of the songs. Apple's revenue split is only a few percentage points more than the industry average of 70%, which Spotify also says it pays. But Apple's stance against free music streaming is supposed to reassure labels and artists that getting paid for allowing their songs to be played on Apple Music is more worthwhile than letting them be played on Spotify. Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: Should we kill off one of the most dangerous creatures in the world?  | ||
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200 years after Waterloo, Britain still battling Napoleon | ||
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London (AFP) - Two hundred years after the Battle of Waterloo, Napoleon is still under attack in Britain, where the image persists of a military genius consumed by a fanaticism comparable with Hitler or Stalin. The emperor of French revolutionaries and regicides continues to strike fear in his neighbours across the Channel, long after his death on the South Atlantic island of St Helena, according to British historian and author Andrew Roberts. "Mothers used to quieten their children with the threat that if you don't watch out, Boney will get you," he told AFP. "There were still children in the 1950s being scared by this particular threat." Indeed, the title of his latest 900-page biography -- "Napoleon, the Great" -- raised more than the odd eyebrow. Firstly, most Britons would argue that "the Great" was not a fitting epitaph for "little Boney", who is still ridiculed for his small size and lust for war. For good measure, Channel 4 recently revealed in a documentary that the imperial penis "reached 1.5 inches" or 3.8 centimetres. "He was also very unlucky that he came to power at the same time as the greatest political caricaturists that the British ever created -- James Gillray and Thomas Rowlandson," said Roberts. "They always made him, somehow, to be small like a dwarf but also completely bloodthirsty." Their drawings depicting "the Lilliputian", "the Corsican plague" and "Beelzebub" recently went on display at an exhibition in London's British Museum. "I don't suppose anybody in history had been vilified and ridiculed in the way that Napoleon was vilified and ridiculed ever before," said Tim Clayton, a Napoleon expert. "Because you were frightened of him, you had to belittle him, make him seem not so frightening," added Sheila O'Connell, curator of the exhibition.
- Propaganda -
"Unfortunately, the British do have a very old-fashioned view of Napoleon, one that was created by the propaganda of the Napoleonic wars," said Roberts. Since then, the conservative image of Napoleon as "a monster and an evil dictator" has stuck, with the notable exception of great wartime leader Winston Churchill, who described him as "the greatest action man since Julius Caesar". "He was a conqueror," added Roberts. "Of course he was ruthless. However, all of these things must be seen in the context of a total war, one that lasted 22 years." "To blame him... for all the wars that took place and killed so many people in Europe, about six million people, I think is totally unfair." Faced with colleagues such as historian Adam Zamoyski, for whom Napoleon was "megalomaniac, incompetent and a usurper", Roberts argued that his hero was as much the victim of aggression as the perpetrator. The British, Austrians and Prussians launched the first war against revolutionary France in 1792, when Napoleon "was still a second lieutenant of artillery". However, he could be blamed for "the appallingly opportunist attack in the peninsula against Spain and Portugal in 1807 and 1808 and, of course, the invasion of Russia." His overall military record -- despite his crushing and decisive defeat at Waterloo on June 18, 1815 -- stands at 47 victories and seven "ties" in 60 battles.
- French 'rewriting history' -
The debate over whether he was a tyrant or hero has provided fodder for thousands of books, cluttering the shelves of British libraries and online shopping sites. With so much detailed analysis in the public domain, historian Roberts is perplexed that Napoleon can still be compared to Saddam Hussein and Moamer Kadhafi or Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin, as in a recent BBC documentary. "These men had absolutely nothing in common, except that Napoleon tried to invade Russia and so did Hitler," he said. "Not only was he a fine soldier, and a brilliant strategist, but of course he was a head of state. He was altogether a much larger figure than Wellington," said Evelyn Webb-Carter, president of Waterloo 200, which is organising the bicentennial commemorations on the British side. "People who visit the battlefield at Waterloo notice that the shops, restaurants and the cafes are very much concentrated on Napoleon, who lost, rather than Wellington, who won," added Roberts. "That does irritate the Englishman rather a lot, especially the English tourist." The London media are also stoking the embers, accusing the losers of being deluded. The Daily Telegraph ran with the headline "French rewrite Battle of Waterloo to cast Napoleon as the victor" after Frank Samson, who will play Napoleon during the battle reconstruction, said: "In terms of his historical importance, it's clear that he won at Waterloo." Even Michael Haynes, one of the English extras at the battle site, in modern-day Belgium, treacherously confesses to having "a little bit of love for Napoleon". "Even though he was a little bit of a tyrant, he was a great general."
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Final Fantasy VII, one of the greatest games of all time, is getting a remake | ||
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It's finally happening. After 18 long years, a remake of Final Fantasy VII is on its way. For those not in the know, Final Fantasy VII — or FFVII for short — was a PlayStation fantasy role-playing game released in 1997. It's widely regarded as one of the greatest games of all time, and key details like arch-villain Sephiroth and the fate of Aeris have become enduring touchpoints in gaming culture. At annual gaming conference E3, developer Square Enix dropped a trailer for the game on Tuesday night. Fans have clamoured for such a remake for years, and while the studio has released a number of sequels, spin-offs and animated films, it has always backed away from a direct recreation of the original classic — until now. The teaser trailer appears to show off Midgar, the largest city on the fictional planet Gaia and home to the Shinra corporation:
There's a subtle hint to Aeris, a Midgar flower girl who gets caught up in the adventure:
As well as a road that looks suspiciously similar to one feature in one of FFVII's iconic chase scenes:
Though we never see their face, this man with a gun barrel for an arm can only be Barret Wallace, one of the game's key playable characters:
And close behind Barret comes Cloud Strife, FFVII's primary protagonist and one of the most iconic characters in the last 20 years of video gaming history:
The trailer ends with the caption "play it first on PlayStation 4" — suggesting that while Sony fans will be the first to get their hands on the eagerly-anticipated title, it won't be exclusive to the PS4. Here's the full trailer:Kotaku got its hands on a press release from developer Square Enix, and the studio says it has just "begun production." The inference is that the game is a long way off yet: LOS ANGELES (June 15, 2015) – At Sony Computer Entertainment of America LLC’s (SCEA) E3 press conference today, SQUARE ENIX® announced that it has begun production on the full remake of FINAL FANTASY® VII for the PlayStation®4 computer entertainment system. Leading the development will be key members from the original project, including producer Yoshinori Kitase, director Tetsuya Nomura and scenario writer Kazushige Nojima. The immediate reaction on Twitter is, well, exactly what you might expect: Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: PlayStation's flagship game looks absolutely stunning  | ||
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14 dead, 70 injured in Tunisia train crash | ||
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Tunis (AFP) - At least 14 people were killed and 70 injured when a train and a lorry collided south of the Tunisian capital on Tuesday, the transport and interior ministries said. The accident happened at El Fahes, some 60 kilometres (40 miles) from Tunis, at around 6:30 am (0530 GMT) in the midst of the morning rush hour. "The death toll could rise," Transport Minister Mahmoud Ben Romdhane told Mosaique FM radio. Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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The 10 things in advertising you need to know today (SBUX, FB, SNE, KO, PEP, DIS, TWTR) | ||
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Good morning! Here's everything you need to know in the world of advertising today. 1. Pepsi is taking an audacious swipe at Coke. Pepsi's new ad campaign pokes fun at Coke's polar bear mascots, and the Share a Coke promotion. 2. It looks like Sony is going to beat Apple to the a la carte TV game. Sony's new offering launches in July, and it will be the first paid TV service to allow users to subscribe to individual channels, without the purchase of a multi-channel bundle. 3. Netflix has just relaunched its website. It gets rid of one of its most annoying features: carousel-style browsing. 4. These are the top 15 apparel brands for millennials. That's according to a study of 1,500 millennials from ad agency Moosylvania. 5. Evan Spiegel says you've been holding your phone the wrong way. In his mind, videos should always be shot vertically, not horizontally. 6. This is the story behind one of Starbucks' most embarrassing moments in history. A deep dive into the #RaceTogether campaign. 7. Disney has a secret army of mothers who flood the internet with Disney propaganda. They're known as the Disney Social Media Moms. 8. One of Twitter's biggest investors doesn't want Jack Dorsey to be the company's new CEO. Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, who owns 5% of the company, thinks Dorsey should concentrate on his other company Square instead. 9. Subway made two mistakes that are destroying its business. It failed to keep up with the competition, and it over-prioritized restaurant expansion versus restaurant improvement. 10. Facebook has launched a new standalone app called Moments. It allows you to share a batch of photos with your friends. Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: 70 people were injured while filming this movie with 100 untamed lions  | ||
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REPORT: Greece's economy will be locked down with capital controls if it can't find a deal by the weekend | ||
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A report in Germany's Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper on Monday evening says European governments are ready to push for capital controls in Greece if there's no deal this week. That would mean a severe lockdown on flows of cash similar to the ones brought in for Cyprus in 2013 — strict limits on the amount that could be withdrawn from banks, taken abroad physically or passed between international accounts. The move would slam the brakes on outflows of money streaming out of Greek banks, but would also make it more difficult for the country to recover economically and remain a functioning member of the eurozone. Capital controls are easy to bring in, and hard to get out of. Other European countries can't make that move on their own — there's no institutional procedure for the rest of Europe locking down an individual member state. Greece would have to pass its own law agreeing to the move. The controls would reportedly be brought in if there's no progress by the time of Thursday's Eurogroup meeting of finance ministers. Greece's last €7.2 billion ($8.07 billion, £5.19 billion) bailout tranche is still in limbo, with the country and its creditors unable to reach an agreement on what reforms it should undertake to access the money. Athens needs that cash to make payments to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on June 30, and the European Central Bank (ECB) on June 20. Even before the Eurogroup meeting, Greece will have a crucial decision made for it — the ECB will decide tomorrow whether to raise the ceiling for the country's emergency liquidity assistance (ELA), the banking system's last lifeline. With money flooding out of Greek banks, the government will almost certainly want the ceiling raised. Here's how bank deposits look:
Bloomberg's Lorcan Roche Kelly flagged up this message from the ECB to Cyprus in 2013, the point at which it refused to keep raising the ELA ceiling, saying that more funding "could only be considered if an EU/IMF programme is in place that would ensure the solvency of the concerned banks." A similar message to Athens could force Greece's hand, and hurry either a deal or the implementation of capital controls. But Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis reportedly told Germany's BILD tabloid that Athens has nothing to present at the Eurogroup on Thursday, when Europe's finance ministers gather again. A statement from Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras accusing the institutions lending to Greece of pillaging the country with austerity measures was released on Monday, making it clear that Greek negotiators have moved as far towards a deal as they intend to. Unless some urgent crisis drives the two sides back to the table, a deal this week looks very unlikely now. Join the conversation about this story »  | ||
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Second thoughts: Is a tiny addition in time too much? | ||
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Paris (AFP) - Question: When is a minute not a minute? The answer: At 2359 Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) on June 30, when the world will experience a minute that will last 61 seconds. The reason for the weird event is something called the leap second. That's when timekeepers adjust high-precision clocks so that they are in sync with Earth's rotation, which is affected by the gravitational tug of the Sun and the Moon. Few of the planet's 7.25 billion people are likely to be aware of the change... and even fewer will have set plans for how they will spend the extra moment. But for horologists, the additional second is a big deal, and there is a wrangle as to whether it is vital or should be scrapped. "There is a downside," admits Daniel Gambis, director of the Service of the Rotation of the Earth -- the poetically named branch of the International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service (IERS), in charge of saying when the second should be added. To be clear, the leap second is not something that needs to be added to that old clock on your mantlepiece. Instead, its importance is for super-duper timepieces, especially those using the frequency of atoms as their tick-tock mechanism. At the top of the atomic-clock range are "optical lattices" using strontium atoms, the latest example of which, unveiled in April, is accurate to 15 billion years -- longer than the Universe has existed. Outside the lab, caesium and rubidium clocks are the workhorses of Global Positioning System (GPS) satellites, which have to send syncronised signals so that sat-nav receivers can triangulate their position on Earth. On Earth, big-data computers may be less manic than atomic clocks but still need highly precise internal timers. The Internet, for instance, sends data around the world in tiny packets that are then stitched together in micro-seconds. Some algorithms in financial trading count on gaining a tiny slice of a second over rivals to make a profit. There have been 25 occasions since 1971 when the leap second was added in an effort to simplify Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), the official monicker for GMT.
- Time to go? -
But over the last 15 years, a debate has intensified about whether the change should be made, given the hassle. "The argument of critics is that it's become more and more difficult to manage these days, as so much equipment has internal clocks," says Roland Lehoucq of France's Atomic Energy Commission (CEA). "The problem is synchronisation between computers. They do sort things out, but sometimes it can take several days." The last modification, on June 30, 2012, was disruptive for many Internet servers -- the online reservation system for the Australian airline Qantas "went down for several hours," says Gambis. "It's time to get rid of the leap second. It causes complications and bugs," argues Sebastien Bize, a specialist in atomic clocks at the SYRTE Laboratory -- it means Time-Space Reference System -- at the Paris Observatory. Gambis defends the change on the grounds of principle. "Should Man be the servant of technology? Or should technology be the servant of Man?" he asks rhetorically. After all, if the world got rid of the leap second, time as counted by mankind would no longer be coupled to the exact rotation of the planet it lives on. "That would mean in 2000 years, there would be an hour's difference between UTC and the time it takes for the Earth to complete one complete turn," notes Gambis. "It would mean that, on a scale of tens of thousands of years, people will be having their breakfast at two o'clock in the morning."
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Libya jihadist group denies death of Qaeda-linked Belmokhtar | ||
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Tripoli (AFP) - Libyan jihadist group Ansar al-Sharia denied on Tuesday that the Al-Qaeda-linked mastermind of a deadly 2013 siege at an Algerian gas plant had been killed in a US air strike. The group named seven people it said were killed in the US strike in eastern Libya but Mokhtar Belmokhtar, who Washington has said was the target, was not among them. "No other person was killed," the group said in a statement.
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10 things in tech you need to know today | ||
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Good morning! Here are the 10 things in tech you need to know this Tuesday. 1. Facebook wants to build a new €200 million data centre in Ireland. The renewably-powered facility is planned for the town of Clonee, and will bring the social networking giant's Irish workforce to more than 1,000. 2. The UK tech scene is far more diverse than the US scene. That's according to a new study from startup accelerator Wayra. 3. US payment startup Stripe could crush one of Europe's hottest fintech firms. Stripe is launching in Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland this week — putting it in direct competition with Klarna, a rival Swedish online payment company valued at £650 million ($1 billion). 4. Facebook has launched a new photo-sharing app called Moments. It uses facial recognition to detect who is in photos stored on your phone and asks if you want to send the images to them. 5. One-word messaging app Yo is attempting to make a comeback with Yo 2.0. The update will let users send photo messages or their location, as well as the word "Yo," and could help brands monetise their followings on the service. 6. 13 European startups became "unicorns" valued at more than $1 billion over the last 12 months. The list includes TransferWise, Shazam, and Rocket Internet — and is a massive jump from the just three new unicorns created a year before that. 7. Microsoft just made 2 big announcements that will seriously worry Sony. At the E3 gaming conference, the company announced an extensive backwards-compatibility program for the Xbox One, and is also partnering with games company Valve and its virtual reality headset — in addition to its partnership with Facebook's Oculus Rift. (Oh, and wildly popular game Minecraft is also coming to Microsoft's augmented reality headset HoloLens.) 8. LastPass, one of the most popular password security companies, has admitted it was hacked. The app lets users use just one strong password to log into all their services, but it has now been attacked. This doesn't necessarily mean that every password stored using the service has been compromised, however. 9. Evernote CEO Phil Libin wants to step down. Libin considers himself a "product person" and feels the company needs a "professional" CEO. 10. Facebook is being taken to court because it allegedly violated European privacy rules. Belgium’s privacy commission is suing Facebook over alleged violations of Belgian and European privacy laws. Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: Facebook tried to copy Apple with its big Oculus unveiling and it failed miserably  | ||
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