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Inactive Twitter Accounts to be Removed in December

Andrew Orr ·

Inactive Twitter accounts will be removed in December, freeing up these usernames for reuse.

Twitter is sending out emails to owners of inactive accounts with a warning: sign in by December 11th, or your account will be history and its username will be up for grabs again. Any account that hasn’t signed in for more than six months will receive the email alert.

Twitter hasn’t yet said exactly when recouped usernames will be made available to existing users. The account removal process “will happen over many months — not just on a single day,”

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New York City Wants to Ban FedEx Robots

Andrew Orr ·

FedEx robots called Roxo appeared in New York City for a preview party of the company’s Small Business Saturday event. Despite not being there for testing, New York City’s mayor tweeted that they weren’t welcome, and criticized FedEx for taking jobs away from humans.

FedEx told TechCrunch that the bots were there for a preview party for its Small Business Saturday event and are not testing in New York. Even this promotional event was too much for city officials concerned with congestion and bots taking jobs from humans.

After reports of the bot sightings, the mayor tweeted that FedEx didn’t receive permission to deploy the robots; he also criticized the company for using a bot to perform a task that a New Yorker could do. The New York Department of Transportation has sent FedEx a cease-and-desist order to stop operations the bots,  which TechCrunch has viewed.

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Floppy Disk Signed by Steve Job Auctioning at $7,500

Andrew Orr ·

A Macintosh floppy disk signed by Steve Jobs is up for auction with an estimated value of US$7,500.

Macintosh System Tools Version 6.0 floppy disk, signed in black felt tip, “steve jobs.” In fine condition, with slight brushing to the ink. A hugely desirable format for Jobs’s seldom-seen autograph—known as a reluctant signer, he often declined to comply with the requests of collectors. As a piece of Apple’s iconic Mac OS software, boasting Jobs’s elegantly stylish lowercase signature, this is a museum-quality piece of computing history.

This item is Pre-Certified!

TMO Deals

Learn 14 Languages with this Language Education Online: $101.15

Bryan Chaffin ·

We have a deal on a 1-year subscription for Babbel Language Learning. With this deal, you get access to all 14 languages offered by Babbel. You’ll get to practice with 10-15 minute bite-sized lessons, and Babbel uses speech recognition technology to keep your pronunciation on point. And, it comes with 10,000 hours of online language education. 1 year through our deal is $119, but coupon code BFSAVE15 at checkout brings it down to $101.15. There’s also a 2-year option available in the deal listing, too, and the coupon code works there, too.

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Disney+ Now Has a 'Continue Watching' Feature

Charlotte Henry ·

Disney+ had some technical glitches during its otherwise successful launch. It now has a ‘Continue Watching’ feature that was meant to be available originally, Techcrunch reported.

It should show up automatically as a new fourth row, under the “Originals” section. It behaves just as you’d expect, giving you a list of in-progress movies and shows that you’re watching, with a progress bar and the amount of time remaining. Tapping any of the images will jump right back into that content at the place where you left off, and the resume feature works across your logged-in devices. Turns out that this feature was supposed to be live at launch but was removed temporarily prior to the service going live so that the service’s engineers could focus on making sure other elements worked as intended for consumers.

Cool Stuff Found

Full Marc Benioff Fireside Chat with Tim Cook

Charlotte Henry ·

Tim Cook joined Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff onstage at Dreamforce last week. The two men discussed Steve Job’s legacy, Apple’s environmental plans, and privacy. However, the also talked about Apple moving into the enterprise space, and the relationship their firms had. The whole conversation is available on YouTube and is worth a watch.