9to5 Staff

Reddit has hired seven people to join its growing team, among them David Forsythe, a mobile engineer that specializes on Android. The hiring is further evidence that an official Android app for Reddit could be on the horizon, following the company’s acquisition of Alien Blue for iPhone and subsequent rebranding of the app as its official iOS client.

Forsythe did not directly confirm that he will be working on an Android app, although he cites experience building things like web apps and mobile apps in the past. Despite being one of the most highly-trafficked websites online, Reddit surprisingly still lacks a mobile-friendly website for smartphones and tablets.
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Following the launch of its official iPhone and iPod touch app earlier this year, crowdfunding service Indiegogo has now launched an official Android app on the Play Store. Indiegogo promised that an Android app was coming back in July after its international traffic on mobile devices doubled in the previous year.
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Google announced on Wednesday (via Search Marketing Land) that it will soon shut down Tech News in Spain because of a recently passed copyright law in the country that will prove too costly for the service to continue running. The law, which goes into effect January 1, 2015, would require Google to pay licensing revenues to Spanish publishers if their content, including headlines, is included in Tech News.
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Facebook introduced a new “Trending” section on the web in January to display trending stories that are frequently shared and discussed on the social network. Today, the company announced that it has improved this feature by organizing trending topics into five categories so that it’s easier for people to explore stories from different sources.
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If you can afford to spend upwards of $200,000 on a brand new Lamborghini, then chances are you are doing quite well for yourself. If that is the case, then look no further than the luxury car maker’s new Tauri 88 smartphone in gold and leather. For just $6,000, you are getting an Android-based smartphone with some impressive specifications under the hood. You can’t miss this deal.
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While YouTube remains the gold standard for uploading videos online, a new study finds that its presence on Facebook is increasingly declining as page owners opt to upload more video directly to the social network over sharing YouTube embeds. The latest research from social media analytics company Socialbakers reveal that, in November, the number of Facebook videos uploaded directly to the site overtook the number of YouTube videos on Facebook for the first time ever.
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Many details surrounding the Nexus 6 were leaked in the months leading up to the smartphone’s launch in late October, although one oft-rumored tech specification that proved to be absent was a fingerprint scanner akin to Touch ID on the iPhone. The initial reports calling for a fingerprint scanner weren’t necessarily wrong, however, based on new evidence uncovered in Android’s open source code.

Ars Technica reports that Google was prepared to include fingerprint scanner support for both the Nexus 6 and Android Lollipop, although a commit message filed through Android Open Source Project (AOSP) in late August called for removal of that support on “Shamu,” the internal codename for what ultimately became the Nexus 6. The commit simply read “shamu: remove fingerprint support.”

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When a content creator uploads a video to YouTube with music, an automated system called Content ID automatically matches the clip against an extensive database to see if the audio is permitted or infringes copyright. Yet, until now, it was impossible for a YouTube creator to know whether a specific track was allowed or not until after uploading a video.
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Google on Monday released Android Studio 1.0, the first stable version of its Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for building and managing apps. The tool, available for Windows, Mac and Linux, was under development for the past two years and is intended to replace Eclipse as the official Android IDE for developers.
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Sony announced on Wednesday that Android 5.0 Lollipop is rolling out this week for the Xperia Z Ultra Google Play Edition, while confirming that other devices in the Xperia Z lineup will receive the latest software version in early 2015. Sony pledged in October that it would bring Android Lollipop to its entire lineup of premium Z-series devices.
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Google announced on Wednesday that it has fundamentally changed its reCAPTCHA security feature by removing CAPTCHAs entirely and adding a one-step solution for users to prove they aren’t robots. Instead of typing a few warped words, the new version of reCAPTCHA simply has a box labeled “I’m not a robot” that users can hover over.
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Samsung on Wednesday announced that it will be repurchasing $2 billion worth of its own common and preferred stocks to increase shareholder value through securing share price stability. Samsung investors have become increasingly worried in recent months as the South Korean electronics maker has faced declining Galaxy smartphone sales.
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