Hotel search platform Trivago has filed for $400 million IPO

Trivago, the hotel search platform majority held by online travel firm Expedia Inc, filed with the U.S. regulators on Monday for an initial public offering of up to $400 million. Trivago said it planned to offer American depositary shares, representing Class A shares of its affiliate, travel B.V.

A portion of the ADSs will be issued and sold by the company and a portion by certain shareholders, the company said. The selling shareholders include Trivago’s founders. In 2012, Expedia paid 477 million euros ($531 million) for a 62 percent stake in Trivago. Expedia, which is not selling any ADSs, and its affiliates will hold Class B shares after the IPO, the company said.

Expedia Chief Executive Dara Khosrowshahi told investors in July that management and Trivago’s founding team had agreed to an IPO to value Trivago as a standalone company. Monday’s filing did not reveal how many shares the company planned to sell or their expected price. Trivago plans to list on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol “TRVG.”

JPMorgan Securities LLC, Goldman Sachs & Co and Morgan Stanley & Co LLC are the underwriters to the offering. The amount of money a company says it plans to raise in its first IPO filings is used to calculate registration fees. The final size of the IPO could be different.

Trump win could result in increased domestic surveillance and spying, warns Snowden

Donald Trump’s election as U.S. president raises concern that Washington may increase the intrusiveness of domestic intelligence gathering, former U.S. spy agency contractor Edward Snowden said on Monday, warning that democratic checks and balances were losing ground to authoritarianism.

Snowden lives in Moscow under an asylum deal after he leaked classified information in 2013 that triggered an international furore over the reach of U.S. spy operations. He spoke at a teleconference hosted by Buenos Aires University’s law school.

“We are starting to substitute open government for sheer authoritarianism, a government based not upon the principle of informed consent granted by people who understand its activities but rather a trust in personalities, a trust in claims, a trust in the hope that they will do the right thing,” Snowden said.

Washington pledged not to engage in indiscriminate espionage following Snowden’s 2013 disclosures. But Snowden questioned if that policy could be modified by new officials “who have a very different set of values and can govern in the dark.”

“If government does actually win our trust, because they go for some years and they do operate in a way that we should support, what happens when it changes?” he asked. “This is kind of the challenge that we’re facing today in the United States with the result of the last election.”

Supporters see Snowden as a whistleblower who boldly exposed government excess. But the U.S. government has filed espionage charges against him for leaking intelligence information. Trump, who scored an upset win over Democrat Hillary Clinton in last Tuesday’s election, broke with many in his own Republican Party during the campaign and emphasized his success as a businessman and reality TV show star. He promised sweeping security measures to deal with the threat of attacks on the United States.

His election was greeted with concern from the American Civil Liberties Union over statements he made during the campaign supporting increased surveillance of U.S. Muslims, mass deportation of illegal immigrants, reauthorisation of waterboarding and changing libel laws to increase press restrictions.

Snowden, asked if he thought the election of Trump, who has praised Russian President Vladimir Putin as a strong leader, might increase chances of him being pardoned by the U.S. government, responded: “Who knows?”

Google offers new collaboration tools for app designers

Google has released a slew of tools that designers and developers can use to build app interfaces. While they appear to be tied to the company’s Material Design language, which it launched in 2014, it looks like you’ll be able to use them regardless of what design principles you choose to follow.

Gallery lets you upload, share and comment on designs. It offers version control as well as a way to present your work without the need to attach PDFs or slide decks. If you’ve used collaboration tools like InVision, Gallery might seem familiar to you.

Remixer and Stage allow you to create interactive app prototypes for iOS, Androidand the Web. They also let you tweak visual elements on-the-fly and even test movement and animations.

In addition, Google has collated all its Material Design resources – from guidelines to icons – and put them all on a new site, material.io.

This isn’t the first time Google has made resources available to the community in recent history. In March, it released Resizer, which is meant to test breakpoints, responsive grids and surface behaviors and UI patterns for Material Design on the Web.

The company hopes that these new tools and content will help more designers adopt Material Design in their work. You can sign up to get early access to Gallery and Stage here, and try Remixer by grabbing it from this GitHub repository. Let us know what you think of them in the comments.

Red Alert 2 in VR looks like the trippiest way to play the legendary game

Red Alert 2 will forever be one of the best real-time strategy games. Even if you weren’t a fan of the timeless gameplay, the ridiculous cinematic cutscenes will be forever stuck in your mind.Even though the workings might not have aged much 16 years after its release, the visuals definitely have. And what better way to bring a game back into the current day, than to re-imagine it in VR?

Gamer and developer Ádám Horváth took up the project after having recently realized a virtual mirror to try on clothes. By creating a version of the game that runs in Unreal Engine 4, he was able to integrate VR-based gameplay. By putting on a HTC Vive, you can lose yourself in Yuri’s dimension.

The player is presented with a virtual tablet-like device that can be used to select buildings and other units that then can be placed on the game map with a laser pointer on the right-hand side. All this happens while you’re flying overhead, which makes for a great view of the playing field.

The game unfortunately only serves as a proof-of-concept for now, so there’s no guarantee we’ll see a full version anytime soon — but it does offer an exciting look at the possible future of strategy games.

Samsung Galaxy S8 might come with a new pressure-sensitive display

According to South Korean outlet The Investor, Samsung is considering adopting an innovative pressure-sensitive display technology for its new line of flagship devices, including the upcoming S8.

The publication claims the report has been corroborated by “multiple industry sources” who’ve asked to remain anonymous.

Here’s what the sources said:

Samsung is mulling to adopt the force touch technology partially from the S8 but the full adoption qill (sic) come in one or two years… It is a matter of time before other major Android smartphone makers deploy the technology that will help enhance user interface.

While The Investor was scarce with details, the pressure-sensitive display will likely work in a similar way to Apple’s 3D Touch technology.

Pressure-sensitive screens aren’t entirely new in the smartphone market. Huaweirecently introduced its own ‘hard press’ pressure-sensitive functionality with the debut of its Mate S smartphone. In fact, it was precisely Samsung that manufactured the force touch screens Huawei used for the Mate S.

The Investor has been spewing S8 rumors left and right over the past few weeks. Previously, the South Korean website speculated Samsung’s upcoming flagship device will don a killer edge-to-edge OLED display that will come in two sizes – a 5.2-inch as well as a 6.2-inch version.

Among other things, the new and improved Galaxy S8 is expected to feature aboosted camera as well as a smarter virtual assistant. It might also ditch the iconichome button.

Skype now lets you make calls without an account

Microsoft has updated Skype with a much-needed feature: A Web-based guest interface that lets you make and receive calls without the need to download the desktop app or register for an account.

To make a call, all you need to do is point your browser to skype.com and enter a handle. You’ll receive a link that you can share with anyone, and you can then start a voice or video call, group chat, and share files.

Google isn't happy about how some Android phones do fast charging

In the race for the fastest-charging battery in the Android world, Google just declared its own role in the competition: It will be the one to set the rules and control the playing field.

The latest version of Google's Android Compatibility Definition Document (CDD), which outlines the requirements hardware makers must follow to keep devices compatible with Android OS, included some interesting new language . David Ruddock of Android Police was the first to note the final bullet point of the section regarding USB peripheral mode, which is buried on page 70 of the 85 page report: 

While the first all-capped suggestion that sticking to the default levels of voltage are "STRONGLY RECOMMENDED" really jumps off the page, the real news comes with the insinuation made by the second one and what exactly it means to "REQUIRE."

Essentially, this means that Google is declaring the definitive voltage level and manner of delivery for the charging of Android devices. If a manufacturer dares to go beyond that threshold in pursuit of speedier charge times, like those promised by proprietary tech likeQualcomm's Quick Charge 3.0, they'd better think twice — or they might be locked out of the OS entirely. If that's the case, the fast-acting chips and chargers would go from an added perk to the handset to a death sentence. 

The defaults and methods Google references are set by the USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF) in order to better standardize "all of the functional benefits of USB that form the basis for this most popular of computing device interconnects." 

Importantly, this move is made for greater uniformity, not over any concerns of unstable batteries and over-powering. This is not what caused Samsung Galaxy Note7 battery woes. Instead, look at this as Google tightening its grip on Android and telling manufacturers that they're free to innovate with their hardware... just as long as they do it in the Google way.