Hasta La Gadget!

By now it has become very obvious that Facebook is stealing ideas from Snapchat and trying to incorporate it into their own products and services. In fact they’re not even being particularly discreet about it, and strangely enough no lawsuits have been filed. However Snap, Snapchat’s parent company, could be looking to protect itself in the future.

According to a report from TechCrunch, it seems that Snap has acquired the patent to geofilters (which for those unfamiliar are filters used in photos based on your location) from a company called Mobli for a whopping $7.7 million. If you’ve been following the tech scene for a while now, you might recognize Mobli as being a competitor to Instagram many years ago which clearly did not make it.

TechCrunch managed to get their hands on an internal email which also confirmed that the sale of the patent to Snap was the highest amount paid for any single patent in Israel. Sources have told the publication that the patent was acquired so that Snap could protect itself from future litigation, and presumably to prevent other platforms from using it too unless they were to license it from them.

So far none of the companies or individuals involved in the sale of the patent have commented on it.

Snap Reportedly Acquires Patent For Geofilters For $7.7 Million , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.

A town in Newfoundland received a high-profile visitor this month: a massive iceberg that has turned the little community of Ferryland into a tourist hotspot. 

While the region is known for icebergs during this time of year, Canadian Press reported that this one drew hundreds of people over the weekend. 

“It’s a huge iceberg and it’s in so close that people can get a good photograph of it,” Ferryland Mayor Adrian Kavanagh told the news agency. “It’s the biggest one I ever seen around here.”

Although the iceberg is about 15 stories high, that’s just 10 percent of its mass.  

“Most folks can’t wrap their heads around how big it is,” Barry Rogers, the owner of Iceberg Quest Ocean Tours, told The New York Times.

The iceberg was just as impressive from above as it was from land: 

“Iceberg season,” which generally starts in April, has been especially busy this year, CTV reported. More than 615 icebergs have already been spotted in North Atlantic shipping lanes. Last year, there were 687 icebergs the entire season, which ends in September.

“There are certainly a significant amount of icebergs out there. When you look at the iceberg chart it’s truly incredible,” Rebecca Acton-Bond, acting superintendent of ice operations with the Canadian Coast Guard, told the CBC. 

“Usually you don’t see these numbers until the end of May or June,” she said. “So the amount of icebergs that we’re seeing right now, it really is quite something.”

Experts attribute “uncommonly strong counter-clockwise winds” pulling icebergs south from Greenland, where they break from the ice sheet, for the rise in activity. The CBC said global warming may also be playing a role.

These icebergs are traveling a similar route as the one that struck the Titanic on April 14, 1912; the ship sank early on April 15, less than 400 miles from Ferryland, killing more than 1,500.

According to Newfoundland and Labrador Tourism, Ferryland was one of the homes of the Beothuk, a now-extinct indigenous people. Ferryland was also the site of a 17th-century colony called Avalon, the remains of which are currently being excavated. Today, it’s a popular spot for viewing birds, whales and ― of course ― icebergs. 

“We love welcoming visitors to our province,” the agency wrote on its Facebook page. “Especially those of the glacial variety.”

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Mobli, an Israeli company, patented the idea of adding filters to photos based on your location back in 2012, way before Snap started using them. Now TechCrunch says the ephemeral messaging app has purchased that patent for $7.7 million in order to m…

PARIS, April 21 (Reuters) – French police were on Friday hunting a second suspect in connection with the fatal shooting of a policeman in Paris, French Interior Ministry spokesman Pierre-Henry Brandet said.

Speaking on Europe 1 radio after Thursday’s shootout on the Champs Elysees shopping street, in which an assailant was also killed, Brandet said a second man had been identified by Belgian security officials and flagged to French authorities.

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WASHINGTON, April 20 (Reuters) – An Egyptian-American woman detained in Egypt for nearly three years on human trafficking charges was flown back to the United States on Thursday on a U.S. military plane, accompanied by a top White House official, a senior administration official said.

Aya Hijazi, an Egyptian who holds U.S. citizenship, was acquitted by a Cairo court on Sunday along with seven others who had worked with street children. Hijazi was released from jail on Tuesday, having been held for nearly three years.

She was flown to Joint Base Andrews, the U.S. military airfield on the outskirts of Washington.

President Donald Trump had privately asked Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi to help out in the case when Sisi visited the White House on April 3, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Trump did not mention the case publicly when he met with Sisi. 

U.S. officials had raised Hijazi’s case with the Egyptians soon after Trump took office on Jan. 20, the official said.

Hijazi was accompanied on the flight by Dina Powell, the deputy White House national security adviser for strategy. Powell had been in the region traveling with U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis.

Hijazi, 30, founded Belady, a non-governmental organization that promotes a better life for street children.

She had been in custody for 33 months in violation of Egyptian law, which states that the maximum period for pretrial detention is 24 months.

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