1. Verizon Wireless is under scrutiny after news reports out of Cleveland detailed cellphone bills that customers said were skyrocketing unexpectedly. The people claimed their cellphone usage patterns had not changed significantly, but their bills told a different story. Bills from Verizon Wireless reportedly showed customer data use doubling or even tripling over a period of just a few months, resulting in sticker shock for many people.
One of those people was Teresa Dixon Murray of Cleveland’s The Plain Dealer. When she published an article about her own family’s surprising surge in data use, thousands of people contacted her to say that their own bills were also on the rise. Murray reports that the Federal Communications Commission is also receiving numerous customer complaints about Verizon Wireless bills.
2. Samsung Galaxy Note 7 devices have caught fire in China, but not in a good way. The phones literally are igniting, according to social media reports, but Samsung said this is not a result of the faulty batteries that have forced the company to recall the Note 7 in the United States. The world’s largest smartphone maker said the problems in China were probably caused by external heat sources.
3. Japan’s Prodrone said it plans to market large drones with two robot arms. The company said the drones will be able to carry objects that weigh as much as 10 kilograms (22 pounds). Prodrone said the robot arms will be able to cut cables, turn dials and flick switches. The company has not yet said how much the drones will cost.
4. Oracle had two big announcements this week as it kicked off its OpenWorld conference in San Francisco. The company is buying cloud security specialist Palerra for an undisclosed sum. Oracle also is launching a new version of its cloud infrastructure, called the Elastic Compute Cloud. Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison said his company is gunning for Amazon, currently the leading provider of cloud infrastructure.
5. Amazon and Intel have invested in a Canadian company that uses sensors to interpret arm movements. Thalmic Labs is working to enable people to use computing devices without touching them. The company raised $120 million from a group of investors that includes Intel, Spark Capital and the part of Amazon that is funding technologies that could complement Alexa, Amazon’s voice-activated virtual assistant.
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