Tech Roundup: Nexus 6, Microsoft Band & More

[A recurring feature on the latest in Science & Technology.]

• Ebola deaths touch 4,951 as of October 31 as Mali reports its first case; virus outbreak ends in Nigeria and Senegal.
• Scientists identify two genes  - Monoamine oxidase A (MAOA) and a variant of Cadherin 13 (CDH13) - that are associated with violent behaviour in humans following a genetic analysis of 900 offenders in Finland; deficiency of these enzymes could result in dopamine hyperactivity.
• A unique combination of freezing, melting and light winds behind Death Valley Sailing Stones mystery, researchers find; stones were fitted with motion-activated GPS units to capture the phenomena that remained unsolved since first reported in 1948.
• First ever dead heart transplant performed in Australia using donor hearts that had stopped beating for up to 20 minutes; the hearts were resuscitated using a new surgical procedure called "heart-in-a-box' machine where the organ is kept warm and beating outside the body, bathed in a special preservative solution rich in oxygen and nutrients.
• USA's National Security Agency has had agents in China, Germany, and South Korea working on programs that use “physical subversion” to infiltrate and compromise networks and devices, according to a new report by The Intercept.
• Hungarian government's proposed Internet tax to levy a fee on each gigabyte of internet data transferred draws public ire; plans suspended following large-scale protests.
• Anonymous sharing app Whisper kicks up a privacy storm after The Guardian finds it be not so anonymous; report details how users are tracked despite opting out of geolocation services and why the company rewrote its terms of service and privacy policy, which come into effect starting November 12.
• Whisper's previous terms of service: "A user's permission to our access to and tracking of your location based information is purely voluntary."
• New terms: "Please bear in mind that, even if you have disabled location services, we may still determine your city, state, and country location based on your IP address (but not your exact location)."
• Google quietly announces a trio of Nexus devices - 5.9 inch Nexus 6 smartphone, 8.9 inch Nexus 9 tablet and a streaming media player Nexus Player via a simple blog post; brands Material Design-themed Android 5.0 as Lollipop with most of Google Apps updated to reflect the new drool-worthy design principles.

Nexus 6 from Google (Image: Nexus 6)

• Apple unveils new iPads with a slimmer look and TouchID as expected; releases iOS 8.1 with Apple Pay, potentially disruptive Apple SIM and Mac OS X Yosemite alongside new iMac with Retina Display.
• Thousands of 'deleted' images posted on ephemeral photo-sharing app Snapchat released by breaching Snapsave, a third-party Snapchat alternative that lets users save snaps for posterity without the other person knowing.
• French bank BPCE and Twitter team up for S-Money service to allow customers transfer money via tweets.
• Apple's new iPhones go on sale in India, China and a host of other countries; said to be outselling Samsung Galaxy Note 4 in the latter's home turf South Korea.
• Googler and Android creator Andy Rubin leaves the search giant to start a hardware incubator; present Android chief Sundar Pichai to take over as head of entire Google product line up that includes search, Google+, maps, ads and infrastructure, in addition to his existing responsibilities covering Android, Google Apps and Chrome.
• Chinese handset maker Xiaomi emerges as the third largest smartphone maker after Samsung and Apple; Lenovo and LG round up the top five.
• Microsoft officially rebrands Nokia handset division to Microsoft Lumia; launches an impressive cross-platform health tracker Microsoft Band that works with iOS, Android and Windows.
• Facebook's juggernaut continues with more revenues coming from mobile ads; Twitter shares fall after a not so great user growth.
• Online etailer Amazon's losses balloon to US $544 million as Fire phone flops; admits the phone wasn't priced right but vows to continue working on new phones.
• Google's new anti-piracy focussed search algorithm rolls out; visibly affects ranking of piracy websites.
• Weak smartphone sales hurts Samsung; profits tumble by a stunning 74%.
• Popular news-reading app Flipboard undergoes a massive design overhaul; adds a new feature called The Daily Edition to quickly catch up on news everyday at 7 am (Yahoo! News Digest, are you listening?)