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Benson Leung, the Google engineer who moonlights as a tester of dodgy USB Type-C cables, has sadly performed his last act of tech vigilantism—at least for now. When testing a Surjtech 3M USB A-to-C cable, the cable was so bad that it fried his Chromebook Pixel laptop and two USB PD (power delivery) analysers.

At the time of publishing, it looks like the Surjtech cable has already been removed from Amazon, but Leung's review lives on. Basically, as soon as the cable was plugged in and turned on, it completely fried the Vbus line on the Twinkie USB PD analyser. "This is permanent damage. I tried resetting the Twinkie analyzer and having the firmware reflashed, but it continues to exhibit this failure," Leung wrote.

Not only did the cable kill the analyser, though, but it also fried both USB Type-C ports on Leung's Chromebook Pixel: "Neither would charge or act as a host when I plugged in a USB device such as an ethernet adapter."

Microsoft has confirmed that it has acquired the London-based startup SwiftKey, maker of the popular predictive smartphone keyboard of the same name. According to a press release, development for both iOS and Android platforms will continue, even as Microsoft explores “scenarios for the integration of the core technology across the breadth of our product and services portfolio.” Microsoft is believed to have paid about £170 million ($250 million) to acquire SwiftKey.

The acquisition is neither a new nor unexpected development for Microsoft. SwiftKey is easily one of the most popular keyboard apps available with over 300 million devices utilizing its functionalities and Android support for over 100 languages. Not only that, the company has the distinct pride of having developed a special language model to assist physicist Stephen Hawking.

SwiftKey also has what it calls GreenHouse, a place “to seed ideas and help them grow.” Currently, it features a range of experimental Android apps, such as the SwiftKey Neural which is reportedly the first of its kind to use neural networks. All things that fit perfectly with Microsoft’s desire to “develop intelligent systems that can work more on the user’s behalf and under their control.”

(credit: Cairo)

Four former and current University of California, Berkeley students have sued Google in federal court in San Jose, California, claiming that the company scanned their academic-affiliated Gmail accounts.

The plaintiffs allege that their Gmail accounts were scooped up, processed, and retained by the company for analytics, advertising, and tracking purposes from November 2010 until March 2014—in directly contrast to what their universities had told them previously. In April 2014, Google announced that it had ended the practice of scanning Google Apps for Education accounts.

The new proposed class action lawsuit, known as Corley et al v. Google, alleges similar behavior across Gmail users at several universities nationwide, including San Diego State University and Yale University. Potentially, the case could affect tens of millions of students and former students nationwide.