Almost two-thirds (63 percent) of Twitter and Facebook members surveyed said they got news from those social networks. For Twitter, that's an 11 point increase from 2013, when 52 percent of its members said they got news there. For Facebook it's a 16 point jump since 2013, when 47 percent of its members said they looked to it for news.
"The main takeaway of the study is that even while the overall number of users has not changed much from 2013 to 2015, the portion of the users that are getting news in this space has increased substantially," Amy Mitchell, director of journalism research at Pew.
However, the social networks remain a secondary source of news for most of their members. Six out of 10 members (60 percent) told the Pew researchers that the networks were "not a very important way" for them to get their news.
"Only 9 percent of Twitter people and 4 percent of Facebook people say it's the most important way that they get news, which to me implies other sources -- including more traditional sources -- are still viewed as the most important source," Jon Sotsky, director for strategy and assessment at the Knight Foundation.
"People encounter news in this space, as opposed to going there seeking news," Pew's Mitchell pointed out. "They're going to a social network to do something else -- and when they're there, they come across news."

Instant Articles

Just how important a source of news the social networks are varies with age. For example, the researchers found about half of users between the ages of 18 and 34 said that the sites were "the most important" or "an important" way they got news.
"When you consider the group that is migrating toward getting their news on social media -- young people -- you're talking about people that advertisers want the most," John Carroll, a mass communications professor at Boston University.
One reason getting news on social networks is on the rise may be that the nets are putting more news before users' eyes. Facebook, for instance, earlier this year launched Instant Articles, a service that allows media companies to publish stories directly to the Facebook platform instead of linking to outside sites.
For news outlets, Instant Articles can offer a better user experience associated with their content.
"When you look at Instant Articles on Facebook, they come up in a more native user interface. They look more integrated with Facebook, and they come up a lot faster," said Brian Blau, a research director at Gartner.

Facebook Addiction

The Instant Articles tool also benefits Facebook, because it keeps members on Facebook rather than someone else's news site.
"Facebook wants to be the Web for all its users," BU's Caroll said. "The more they can house content on the Facebook platform, the better they like it, because they can retain their users longer and mine more data from them."
Traditional media outlets should be wary of becoming dependent on Instant Articles, he cautioned.
"You have the potential of these Instant Articles becoming addictive to publications, for them to rely on the audience they draw, and then Facebook changes things so they're not so favorable to the publications," Carroll explained.

New Horizons traveled more than 3 billion miles over a nine-and-a-half year stretch to reach the Pluto system.
A close-up image of a region near Pluto's equator shows a range of mountains reaching up to 11,000 feet in height (see above). The lack of craters suggests they're relatively new.
"This is one of the youngest surfaces we've ever seen in the solar system," said Jeff Moore, geology, geophysics and imaging team leader at NASA's Ames Research Center.
The latest image is a view of Charon, the largest of Pluto's five moons. It shows an interesting feature NASA describes as a "mountain in a moat" -- a depression with a peak in the middle. New Horizons took this shot from a distance of 49,000 miles, about an hour and a half before it made its closest approach to Pluto.
An earlier image of Charon surprised scientists because its apparently unmarked surface raises questions about how it escaped being hit by asteroids and other space debris.
An image of Hydra, the outermost known of Pluto's moons, seems to show it is coated with water ice. New Horizons captured that image when it was approximately 400,000 miles away from the distant moon. Though pixellated, the image reveals important information about Hydra's physical properties, including the size and shape of the moon and other structural details.

New Awakening?

The general U.S. populace seemed to have settled into ho-hum mode, judging by its tepid reactions to previous achievements in space exploration, but NASA seems to have ignited renewed excitement with the New Horizons mission.
"Without a doubt, we're seeing terrific public interest," said Kevin Cook, vice president of marketing and communications at the Space Foundation.

What Else New Horizons Discovered

New Horizons' photos show that Charon has a 600-mile-long swath of cliffs and troughs, which suggest that internal geological processes created widespread fracturing of the moon's crust, including a canyon between four and six miles deep on the moon.
In contrast, the Grand Canyon is only 6,000 feet -- just over a mile -- at its deepest.
Dark surface markings deep in Charon's north polar region have a diffuse boundary, which might indicate a thin deposit or stain on the surface. NASA team members nicknamed the region "Mordor," after the dark land in J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings.

The Mountains of the Moon

The mountains of Pluto probably were formed about 100 million years ago.
That makes them very young, considering the solar system is more than 4.5 billion years old, and suggests the region they're in -- which covers about 1 percent of Pluto's surface -- might still be geologically active now.
However, Pluto can't be heated by gravitational interactions with a much larger planetary body, which is how such mountain ranges usually are formed on icy moons.
That gives rise to questions about just how the mountains were formed, and may cause scientists to rethink what powers geological activity on other icy worlds.

Flying in a Winter Wonderland

The Pluto system is a scientific wonderland, according to Johns Hopkins University. Its Applied Physics Laboratory designed, built and operates the New Horizons spacecraft, and manages the mission for NASA.
For one thing, Charon's diameter is 750 miles, more than half that of Pluto, whereas most satellites are much smaller than their parent planets.
Further, the two bodies orbit about a center of mass that's outside Pluto's surface, known as a "barycenter," so they are considered a double planet. No other double planet exists in our solar system.
Astronomers want to learn how Pluto and its moons were formed, and they want to understand why Pluto and Charon look so different.
Pluto's atmosphere is also of interest. It contains nitrogen, carbon monoxide and methane. The Earth's atmosphere contains only one gas, water vapor, while Mars has two -- water vapor and carbon dioxide.
"We are learning of new surface phenomena and confirmation of the exotic reactions that occur in these outer solar system bodies," said Jekan Thanga, an assistant professor at Arizona State University's School of Earth and Space Exploration.

New Frontiers and NASA Budget Cuts

New Horizons is part of NASA's New Frontiers program -- a series of space explorations to research several of the solar system's planets.
Another New Frontiers program, Juno, consists of a space probe launched in 2011 to explore Jupiter, and OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, Regolith Explorer), a planned asteroid study and sample-return mission.
Whether the New Frontiers program will encourage more funding for NASA, which repeatedly has been hit by budget cuts under several administrations, is uncertain.

The details are scant, but Angry Birds 2 apparently will be "bigger, badder and birdier," going by a tweet from Rovio.
Rovio hasn't specified if Angry Birds 2 will launch on both Android and iOS, but the company indicated that the game will hit "app stores," plural. Exclusivity could hurt a company that's still searching for it's next massive hit.
The first entry in the Angry Birds series won the hearts of critics, casual and core gamers alike. While times have changed, along with the fortunes of Rovio, the franchise's longevity indicates the sequel may win the support of current fans and even attract more, said Ted Pollak, Jon Peddie Research senior analyst for the games industry.
"Angry Birds' popularity has persisted long enough that it's bordering on becoming an evergreen franchise, "As long as Rovio continues to make quality versions of an historically popular game, success amongst its fan base is likely, and with a good possibility of drawing in new users."
Still, Rovio has been after more than just another base hit, as its revenues have tapered quarter after quarter. It wants a home run.

The Sequel

Not every sequel succumbs to the sophomore curse; Rovio has had 15 games to hone its craft ahead of Angry Birds 2.
Market conditions are right. Mobile revenues were up 20 percent, year over year, in June, and Bethesda's "Fallout Shelter," -- supposedly a marketing tool for Fallout 4 -- just smashed Candy Crush Saga on iOS charts, raking in US$5.1 million in its first two weeks, according to a report from SuperData Research.
While the health of the mobile market offers promise -- it amassed $317 million in June revenues -- Rovio's own figures over the past three years suggest that fans have had their fill of birds cooked 15 ways, said Rob Enderle, principal analyst for the Enderle Group.
Its 16th variation on the original Rovio recipe could struggle.
"Sequels can do better than original games, so there is a chance," Enderle told TechNewsWorld. "Interest in Angry Birds has waned over the years, though, making it unlikely in this case."

Adjusting Its Trajectory

About two years into the release of Apple's first smartphone, Angry Birds launched exclusively for the platform. Rovio raked in about $10 million dollar in revenue in Angry Birds' first year, and by the end of 2010, it had released an Android version of the game.
The company's revenues increased by about 963 percent, once the game was available on both Android and iOS. From there, however, Rovio's revenues have been on a downward trajectory.
Seeking to keep the wind beneath its wings, Rovio began to borrow licenses for popular properties, most notably Star Wars, and moved into merchandising.
Still unhappy with the company's performance, Rovio's board replaced Mikael Hed as CEO at the start of this year. Rovio's 2014 earnings before interest and taxes were down about 73 percent from the previous 12-month period, the company reported in March.
Rovio likely will make it's best case for the Angry Birds franchise when it debuts at the end of this month. Consumers will play judge and jury.

The latest release of iOS also contains two new smart folders. One automatically collects any photos captured with the front-facing camera in an iOS device -- which typically is used for selfies -- and the other aggregates any images used for screen shots.
Other new features in beta three of iOS 9:

• a setting to enhance the quality of streaming over cellular networks;
• display of Siri search results with a down swipe;
• display of more apps per folder on an iPad; and
• the debut of a News app. When the app is launched, you can select a number of content sources. News from those sources will be displayed on a News Screen.

"Apple is not only expanding functionality in iOS, but also adding significant capabilities," said Brian Blau, a research director at Gartner.
"While these preview features are't final," he told TechNewsWorld, "it's good to see that Apple continues to advance their platform to give users more robust access to content, such as with improved streaming quality, and security through two-factor authentication."

Apple Polishes Security

Two-factor authentication typically requires the user to acquire a code either by text message, phone call or email when trying to log into an account from a new device.
Apple's new authentication method will be an improvement over it's existing two-factor verification method, which is less than elegant. With the new system, an Apple ID won't be sufficient to log on to an Apple service from a new device or browser. Users also will need to authenticate their identity with a password and six-digit verification code.
For those who have an Apple device that's already been verified and is running the latest versions of Apple's operating systems, the code automatically will be displayed on that screen. If an Apple device isn't close by, the user can receive the code through a text message or phone call.

After a device has been authenticated, the user won't need an authentication code again unless the device data is wiped, passwords are changed, or the device is removed from the user's approved device list.
A browser can be treated like a device; once a browser is authorized to access an account, the user won't need to obtain a code for subsequent log-ins.
Unlike Apple's existing authentication system, the new one is built into iOS 9 and El Capitan. That allowed Apple to streamline the process and perhaps entice more people to use the security measure.
The new system also gets rid of the 14-character code deployed by the existing scheme, which was difficult to remember for most users, but did come in handy if a password was forgotten and access to an account needed to be regained.

Surprises to Come?

New features for the iPad show that while many tablet makers have embraced the idea of slates as primarily content consumption devices, Apple continues to press the idea that its tablets are content-creation machines.
Features such as multitasking and split-screen view on an iPad Air 2 are all "developments that relate to the use of the iPad as a full-featured computing device," noted Charles Golvin, chief analyst at Abelian Research.
"As is often the case with Apple, many of the features they introduce as 'new' are, in actuality, closing or overcoming gaps between Apple's and competitors's current products," he added.
"In these releases, I would point to the natural language search in Spotlight, the proactivity that Google Now introduced, and the long-missing transit option in Maps that Nokia Here premiered several years ago," Golvin told TechNewsWorld.
"Still missing from Maps," he said, "is the cycling option that Google has offered for some time."
Whenever Apple releases a new beta of its operating systems, the code often is scrutinized for clues to features in future hardware products.

In actuality, both vehicles responded as they were supposed to, the companies said in response to the media brouhaha.
The incident occurred on Tuesday when John Absemeier, director of Delphi Automotive's Silicon Valley lab, was a passenger in his company's Audi Q5 as it drove along San Antonio Road. The Delphi autonomous car began to change lanes when a Google self-driving Lexus SUV began to move into the same lane.
The Delphi-controlled Audi Q5 responded quickly once it detected that the lane was no longer open, and it terminated the lane change until the road ahead was clear. This type of vehicular conflict is common among human-driven cars and often results in fender benders or more serious accidents; however, in the case of Tuesday's incident, the vehicles responded appropriately to the situation, and an accident was avoided.

Much Ado About Nothing

That's not the way the incident has been reported in a slew of articles published Friday.
Many suggest that the "near collision" raises concerns about the safety of autonomous vehicle technology, and some fret over the fact that Google's self-driving vehicles soon will be tooling down the streets of Silicon Valley.
However, both companies involved in the episode insist this is a case of media hype and little else.
"Any accounts that the cars 'almost collided' simply aren't correct," said Google spokesperson Courtney Hohne.
"This was an everyday driving scenario that both cars handled as they should have," she told TechNewsWorld.
"In this case, it was a lane change maneuver where both cars began their execution at the same time," added Delphi Automotive spokesperson Kristen L. Kinley.
"The vehicles did not come within a lane width of each other, and the Google car did not 'cut us off,'" Kinley told TechNewsWorld. "Both vehicles did exactly what they were supposed to do."

Expected Response

Rather than an example of what can go wrong with self-driving cars, Tuesday's occurrence demonstrates how self-driving cars can avoid accidents by reacting quickly to avoid common human errors, both companies said.
The Delphi car "leverages complex software algorithms to assess its situation -- much like a human driver would -- to avoid going into a lane if another car decides to move over at the same time," said Delphi's Kinley.
"Timing a merge or making a lane change is a common scenario a human driver would encounter, and one where experience and intuition plays a major role -- such as speed up or slow down to find an opening," she pointed out.
"This is unlike automated vehicles which need to work through a decision via a highly complex network of technology and data processing to calculate the correct move," Kinley explained. "Our car did exactly what it was supposed to. Our car saw the Google car move into the same lane as our car was planning to move into, but upon detecting that the lane was no longer open, it decided to terminate the move and wait until it was clear again."

Overreactions Abound

The "story" behind the fact that an accident was avoided is simply that the self-driving technology performed as expected.
"The subject has so much news value that anything that gets attention is written up," Egil Juliussen, director of research and principal analyst at IHS Automotive Technology, told TechNewsWorld.
"If a driver controlling the vehicle had started the same lane change, it could have easily resulted in an accident -- and that is not an uncommon occurrence with human drivers," noted Jeremy Carlson, senior analyst for autonomous driving at IHS.
"What we are seeing is that there is so much interest in what is going on with self-driving cars that anything that is close to news is going to get blown up," he told TechNewsWorld. "The media has taken this out of context."

Real-World Situations

Autonomous cars likely will be subject to many more years of testing before they become widespread, and those watching from the sidelines should expect more "incidents" down the road.
"This is the objective of road testing," said Praveen Chandrasekar, automotive and transportation research manager at Frost & Sullivan.