The Daily Crunch 09/02/16

Samsung's Galaxy Note 7 is blowing up – but not in the good way, and Project Ara's also coming apart at the seams. All that and more in The Daily Crunch for September 2, 2016. And if you're reading this in an app on a smartphone, you're part of the problem.

1. Samsung's exploding Note 7 decade is real bad news

Samsung's got a really big problem, and it couldn't have come at a worse time: Exploding batteries in a (admittedly small) number of Galaxy Note 7 devices have prompted the company to launch a voluntary recall for all units, which is around 2.5 million devices according to Samsung itself. It's also halting sales until it can correct the error. A non-exploding iPhone option is set to debut next week, so... sucks about your luck, Sammy.

2. Project Ara was not made for this world

Google's Project Ara smartphone always seemed a little too geeky to be true. The project involved a smartphone design that relied on module components a user could install easily themselves, and swap out as needed, including cameras, radios and more. But it's not meant to be, as Google has apparently shelved the product. It might still live on via licensing to third-party manufacturers, but I doubt we're going to see any kind of launch at scale ever. RIP Ara.

3. Last.fm's leaky bucket

It's the week of old password breaches. 2012 was terrible for these, apparently, as Last.fm revealed that it suffered a breach wherein over 43 million account credentials were lost, including passwords that were hashed but not salted, using an older form of hashing that's vulnerable to brute-force hacking. Boo.

4. Alexa will even inhabit Echo competitors

Alexa is not being choosy when it comes to dance partners: The Amazon virtual assistant is going to be part of LG's upcoming Echo competitor, which makes it not really a competitor at all since Amazon is probably far more interested in spreading Alexa as a service than in selling hardware speaker cylinders.

5. Zuck and Musk bad times theater

Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg have seemed to enjoy something of a bromance to date, but that all probably changed when Musk's rocket blew up and took Zuckerberg's expensive internet satellite with it. Some people though Zuckerberg's official FB statement on the matter contained major shade, but the conversation imagined by Devin and Anthony for TC probably is a more accurate representation of their true feelings.

6. Robots just want to help

Where am I going in life? Hitachi's EMIEW3 humanoid robot might not be able to answer that question, but it can probably tell me where the bathroom is at Haneda airport, where a pilot project just kicked off to use the little bots as information and customer service workers. My first question for them would be "can you dance and can you please show me."

7. Slow death of non-smartphone computers continues

You could use the internet from something that isn't a smartphone app, but why would you? In the latest instalment of "apps are eating the world," it looks like smartphone apps have jumped up to almost 60 percent of our time spent online collectively in the U.S. 98 percent of that time is now spent in Pokémon Go or Facebook (jk but probably not jk).