Technology

NASA announced that it is about to reveal a “major discovery about life outside of our solar system” this week. Some of the world’s leading voices on life beyond Earth will gather for a NASA press conference on Wednesday where a major announcement about life on exoplanets, planets that orbit stars other than our sun, will be made. Exoplanets are the major hope for life elsewhere in the universe, as many have been found that resemble our own planet and could have the building blocks of life.  Exoplanets are widely believed to be the best hope of finding life elsewhere in the universe.

President Trump has been hacked by an amateur hacker allegedly from Iraq. An Iraqi hacker hacked and defaced a server associated with presidential campaign fund-raising for Donald Trump. Hacker Pro_Mast3r, claiming to be from Iraq, targeted the server secure2.donaldjtrump.com Sunday evening. According to Ars Technica, the hacker defaced the home page with a peace message.

The world’s most valuable brand is owned by a company that you likely interact with every day. In fact, you may have even gotten to this web page using it.

That brand is Google – and it dominates the internet with a 64% market share in search, while generating 41% of all digital advertising revenue globally. As Visual Capitalist's Jeff Desjardins notes, according to Brand Finance’s most recent 2017 list, Google’s brand value has recently increased to $109.5 billion, which is just enough to supplant Apple’s $107.1 billion brand from the top of the list.

Samsung has updated its privacy policy this week, reaffirming to its users that Smart TVs secretly listen and record customers’ conversations.  In 2015 Samsung confirmed that Smart TV sets listen to peoples conversations, and were forced to issue warnings to customers not to say anything confidential while near their TV sets. Theweek.com reports: The company revealed that the voice activation feature on its smart TVs will capture all nearby conversations. The TV sets can share the information, including sensitive data, with Samsung as well as third-party services.

Japanese telecom giant Softbank - which owns Sprint - is reportedly looking at T-Mobile US for a merger. This would be the second attempt after 2014's approach was rebuffed by US regulators.

It appears the entire sector is bid on the news... even AT&T...

As Reuters details, SoftBank has not yet approached Deutsche Telekom to discuss any deal because the U.S. Federal Communications Commission has imposed strict anti-collusion rules that ban discussions between rivals during an ongoing auction of airwaves.