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Pippa Middleton, the sister of Kate Middleton the Duchess of Cambridge, has had her iCloud account hacked and thousands of private photographs stolen, according to The Independent.

The information retrieved is believed to include personal photos of the royal family and of Middleton with her fiancé James Matthews.

The publication noted Middleton's lawyers confirmed her account has been accessed and that her and Matthews have requested their privacy to be respected. 

The royal correspondent for the Daily Mail reported that 3,000 photos had been taken from Middleton's account and a person going by the name "mas" was attempting to sell them to media organizations. 

The most notable hacks of this kind happened in 2014, when celebrities such as Jennifer Lawrence, Kate Upton and Kirsten Dunst had their information stolen, including nude photographs, via an iCloud hack. 

If you are concerned about your personal iCloud account, the best move is two-factor authentication. Here's how to help yourself.

Apple has been contacted for comment. 

Things just keep getting worse and worse for Samsung.

After weeks of investigating cases of Galaxy Note7 phones catching on fire, destroying people's cars, and even injuring people, Samsung and the United States Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) issued an official recall for 1 million of the phones sold in the U.S.

As per the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), affected Note7 phones with defective batteries must be turned off and can't be used during flights. Many public transportation agencies like New York City's MTA have also urged riders not to use the Note7.

And then just as safe replacement Note7 shipments started arriving on Wednesday and Samsung announced about 500,000 phones of the 1 million recalled in the U.S. had been exchanged, a Galaxy Note 2 catches on fire during an IndieGo flight from Singapore to Chennai.

India's Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) and Samsung are currently investigating why the phone caught on fire in the first place. 

"We are in touch with relevant authorities to gather more information, and are looking into the matter," a spokesperson from Samsung India said in an emailed statement to Mashable India.

Following the incident, the DGCA has reportedly advised flyers to "exercise caution while flying with Samsung Note devices" according to spokesperson who spoke to The India Times. "They should either keep these devices switched off or not travel with them."

The last thing Samsung needs is another disaster that paints the company in more bad light.

Note (excuse the pun) the wording and how it urges against using essentially all Samsung Galaxy Note phones during flights. That includes any Note produced since the original device launched in 2011.

It's basically a declaration that SAMSUNG PHONES ARE DANGEROUS.

Talk about terrible timing.

The last thing Samsung needs is another disaster that paints the company in a worse light. It's especially tough at a time when the company's doing everything it can to prevent further tarnishing of its brand. It's also trying to reassure consumers that it has the Note7 situation under control and that new devices are safe to use.

What Samsung doesn't need right now is people scrutinizing the quality of all of the phones it produces. 

But alas, you can't control public perception. People are going to point fingers — even if the Note 2 incident is pure coincidence — at Samsung and demand answers.

And that's what sucks the most for Samsung. The Note7 issue may blow over quickly if it's able to successfully recall even 95 percent of the defective phones, but the brand damage will probably take a lot longer to repair.

Consumers, as loyal as some of us are, really aren't that loyal. We vote with our money and if a company can't assure that its products are safe to use, we'll leave in a heartbeat. Trust is not something easy to regain after major disasters.

Still, if you're a Samsung Galaxy Note user, I wouldn't worry at all.

While we won't know the real cause of the Note 2 incident until the official investigations are completed, it seems highly unlikely the fire is related to the Note7 defects, which prompted the global recall.

As eagle-eyed techies know, the Note 2 was released in 2012 and Samsung no longer sells the phone. And based on the image of the damaged phone that was made public, it looks like the removable battery expanded, which caused it to catch on fire. 

The cause could very likely be a third-party battery and not an official one. While some third-party batteries meet very strict quality control requirements, there are many that don't and those are the ones that are more likely to catch on fire.

Scary as a phone catching on fire on a flight is, it's happened before. Last year, an iPhone 6 inexplicably burst into flames aboard a flight going to Hawaii. And in 2014, there were two reported cases of iPhones catching on fire in people's pockets. Do a Google search and you'll find many more that happen every year.

It's unfortunate, but like I said earlier after the Note7 explosions started rolling in: Any phone could explode. There's no such thing as an explosion-proof phone. 

In fact, any device with a battery could potentially explode or catch on fire. Companies do their best to create controllers that monitor and regulate a battery to prevent it from overcharging and overheating, but defective batteries can happen (as was the case with the Note7) and people can (and do) push their phones beyond their advertised limits.

Generally, most phones go through their lifespans without any issues. If you're using an old Note or Samsung phone with removable batteries, we highly recommend using official batteries and not cheap knockoffs; the lower prices are tempting, but not worth potential risk and injury.

It's just really, really too bad for poor Samsung. The company just can't catch a break.

Seeing is safety.

I live in a relatively safe neighborhood, but some years ago, my home was burglarized. The thieves broke in through the back door. Since then, we’ve been more vigilant about locked doors and windows and installed a Nest Dropcam indoors to keep an eye on our house. It does a great job of showing my open-floor-plan kitchen, dining room and den, but is of no use for the space outside my home.

Nest Cam Outdoor takes everything that’s good about Nest Cam — easy setup, anywhere-in-the-world access and cloud-based footage recording - and adds in weatherproofing. It is an excellent addition to the Nest family of smart home devices.

What you get

For all the ways it's similar to Nest Cam, Nest Cam Outdoor looks nothing like its indoor predecessor. The $199 device is a 2.8-in.-by-3.5-in. candy-drop-shaped, all-white device. On the relatively flat front, behind protective glass, are the 1080p camera and an array of 8 night-vision LEDs. There are some tiny holes on the device for the speaker and microphone. Near that is the a single, flat power cord. It ends in a USB jack that plugs into a round AC/DC adapter. The jack side features a special cover that slides over the jack and locks onto the adapter. On the other side of the adapter runs the remaining 25 feet of power cable, which ends in a standard three-prong plug.

Nest Cam Outdoors ships with the same kind of precise and helpful installation instructions found in all other Nest smart home products, which is important since without visible attachment holes and hooks on the Nest Cam Outdoors, it’s not immediately obvious how you’re supposed to attach it to your home.

Nest makes ample use of magnets to secure and adjust the Nest Cam Outdoor. The device itself is magnetic and it ships with a magnetic base that’s curved to perfectly marry to the Nest Cam Outdoor’s smooth backside. That base also attaches magnetically to the thin metal plate that’s used to secure the security cam to your home.

While the device comes with all the hardware necessary to attach not only the plate but all the wiring to your home, I was more than a little concerned about screwing anything into the plastic siding of my house. 

However, before I even got to the installation, Nest recommended that I plug in the device while it was still indoors and connect it to my network. This was easy, especially because I already own a few Nest devices (two thermostats, Nest Protect and the aforementioned Nest Dropcam) and simply added this one to my account by scanning in, through my iPhone’s camera and the Nest app, the QR code on the Nest Cam Outdoor. Within a few minutes, I could see what the Nest Cam Outdoor can see through the Nest mobile app.

Nest smartly advises homeowners to try the Nest Cam Outdoors in a number of spots before the full installation. This entailed me climbing a ladder repeatedly while holding the web cam and my phone and trying not to die. My goal was to get all of my small, 40-foot-wide backyard and the steps leading up to my back door into the frame. Nest Cam Outdoor has a 130-degree field of view, so this turned out to be quite easy.

Eventually, I found a spot just above and to the left of my screen door that fit the bill. This had the added benefit of allowing me to hide a good portion of the power cable behind the aluminum edging that runs around the screen door. (To be honest, I was trying to install Nest Cam Outdoor without fully installing it since it’s a review unit I have to return when I’m done.)

Once I settled on the right spot, I attached the metal plate to my house, put the magnetic cradle on top of that and then attached the Nest Cam Outdoor. These are incredibly powerful magnets. Nothing felt like it was going to move or fall off my house. In my tests, the security camera never moved. I also attached the AC/DC converter to my house and rolled up the excess power wire with the included Velcro strap. I had a lot of extra wire.

A watchful eye

Nest Cam Outdoor’s camera offers a clear, stutter-free video and surprisingly good audio. As soon as I started monitoring the backyard through the Nest app, I was startled by how clearly I could hear the birds and crickets. There’s also a speaker, which is useful if you get an alert someone is at the door and you want to talk to them or scare them away. The audio output is loud and very clear. In addition, the night vision offered a relatively sharp view of my entire backyard. 

The real power of the Nest Cam Outdoor system, though, is Nest’s cloud-based video storage and retrieval system and the software interface that lets you access it.

Instead of saving any video locally, Nest stores it all — instantly and securely — in the cloud. It marries that with a sensitive motion-detection system that can send you notifications and email alerts whenever it detects motion or a person (you do get different alerts for both, though Nest Cam Outdoor sometimes identified a cat as a person).

You can follow those alerts back to the app interface (or the effective Web-based interface), where you can scroll back through up to three hours of activity. Motion events are highlighted in the timeline with video thumbnails that you can click on and playback immediately. You can also simply scroll through the whole timeline and watch a sort of time-lapse playback of the day.

This video cache, though, is a rolling three hours. Everything older disappears, unless you pay $10 a month for Nest Aware (10-day history, $30 a month for 30-day video history access; everyone who buys a Nest Cam Outdoor gets a free 30-day Nest Aware trial). 

Nest Aware also adds a little more intelligence to your alerts, giving you the ability to set activity zones (you can only set this up through the Web Site Nest Home interface). Basically, this tells the system to pay special attention to certain areas. I chose a spot near my neighbor’s fence since I’m convinced he is secretly killing my Japanese Maple. Nest Aware also gives you the ability to save and share clips, though this too has to be done through the web site.

You can also set up location-aware recording (without Nest Aware). Nest Cam Outdoor will turn off when everyone who is attached to the account (family members with the app and access to the same account) is at home.

The cat's meow

After a week of watching my back yard, I learned that my neighborhood is pretty quiet day and night. I detected my wife when she stepped outside (she liked to turn around and wave to Nest Cam Outdoor) and I got an alert when the gardeners arrived in the backyard. No one unexpected approached my back door. I did learn, though, that a neighborhood calico cat is a frequent late night visitor. 

There is nothing to stop someone from cutting the power cable and ripping the Nest Cam Outdoor off my home. Of course, whatever happened in the moments leading up to that theft would already be in Nest’s cloud and I would probably already be looking at the alert.

There are other, wire-free options like the new $199 Canary Flex. It’s a slightly larger, 6-inch device with a smaller field of view (116-degrees of HD video), but that extra girth supports a lithium ion battery, which means truly wire-free operation. I hope to try that out in the future.

With Nest Cam Outdoor, Nest delivers another excellent piece of the smart home puzzle. It’s easy to set up and install (though I don’t know if they adequately accounted for the dead space behind typical vinyl siding), and offers high-quality, real-time video assurance that your home — at least what it can see of it — is secure. I do wish I had had it that day the burglars came.

Yes, I worry some about the wire and would love to see a wireless option, but then I would also have to remember to charge it on a regular basis. That’s an extra task I do not need.

If you already own a Nest product, Nest Cam Outdoor is a great addition. It’s also an equally good place to start adding some intelligence and security to your home.

For the next 48 hours, Amazon will be hosting a sale event with crazy deals on a number of unlocked smartphones. The key word here: unlocked.

There are several benefits to purchasing an unlocked smartphone. The major one is the flexibility and freedom customers have across carriers and distances. Unlocked phones are not tied to any provider and recognize SIM cards from all networks, which allows for international calling free of roaming charges.

Most smartphones today are purchased "locked," meaning they are limited and only work with a specific mobile carrier's SIM card. Plus, locked phones often have complicated payment plans. With unlocked phones, you usually pay the whole cost upfront — meaning that once you pay the Amazon sale price below, there is no need to fork over additional payments in the future (aside from your phone bill, of course).

So which smartphone should you buy? Here are our top five picks. 

1. Nextbit Robin $199.00 (Save $100)

The best thing about the Nextbit Robin is that it uses cloud services and automatically deletes content when it detects you're running low on storage space. 

2. LG G5 $479.00 (Save $120)

The LG G5 is a rare breed in that it's a modular phone; in other words, when you hit a button on the side, the whole phone comes apart. Then you can pop on accessories, like bigger batteries, more powerful cameras and speakers.  

3. Zenfone Zoom $299.00 (Save $100)

The Zenfone Zoom by Asus has a long battery life and camera features like macro focusing and enhanced optical zoom.

4. Alcatel Idol3 $99.99 (Save $40)

The Alcatel Idol3 has been coined "a Nexus by another name." The Idol3 has great processing ability and the option to be completely reversible when turned upside down. In other words, the screen automatically flips and adjusts depending on how you are holding the phone.

5. Honor 8 by Huawei $395.00 

The Honor 8's dual cameras, fingerprint scanner, and full HD LCD screen make it one of the best values on the market. 

Thanks to the good people at SquareTrade, we can now truly verify that both the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus are indeed water-resistant. 

Pro Surfer Kai Lenny took both coveted devices surfing with him, and they both lasted for a full half hour with minimal damage. 

He insists the iPhone 7 is "exactly the same as when [I] went in with it." However, after returning with the iPhone 7 Plus, he notes that the Plus is "water-resistant but not waterproof."

A representative from SquareTrade confirmed that for the Plus, "the water definitely had an impact on the audio." But, otherwise, it still worked.  

While Apple claims that the iPhone 7 is splash and water-resistant, it does also say on its website that the "resistance might decrease as a result of normal wear." And very importantly: "Liquid damage [is] not covered under warranty." 

For kicks, Lenny also took last year's iPhone 6S and iPhone 6S Plus to compare. They did not pass.

A few weeks after Elon Musk revealed the updates coming to the brand's Autopilot semi-autonomous driving feature, Tesla officially detailed the software 8.0 update Thursday morning.

Along with Autopilot changes, Tesla has reworked the media player, voice commands, and maps and navigation. It also added a trip planner as well as a 'cabin overheat protection' feature.

In total, the software 8.0 update represents "the biggest UI revamp since the launch of Model S," according to Tesla.

The latter is perhaps the most intriguing. Here's how Tesla describes its function: "[cabin overheat protection] keeps the car at a safe temperature for hours, even when the car is off."

The upstart electric vehicle maker points out that the system is an 'industry first' and designed for the safety of both children and pets (presumably, those accidentally left in a Tesla).

The company press release didn't specify how the system keeps the cabin cool. It simply stipulated it's only possible due to Tesla's "uniquely large battery packs." It likely keeps energy flowing to the climate control system even after the car is off.

Certainly, this will drain the battery. However, a dead EV battery is better than a dead child or pet.

The other updates simply enhance the user interface. Voice commands, for example, are initiated with a single tap. And a transcript of the driver's voice commands is displayed on the instrument panel to ensure command accuracy.

As for maps and navigation, destination search and initiating navigating to the driver's home are now activated with a single touch.

Over all, simply based on reading the press release, 8.0 seems to be a robust update. However, I will save final judgement until I am able to get my hands on it.

Old speakers are thrown out every day, laid to rest in favor of shiny new portable speaker systems from Jawbone, Beats and Bose.  

Why waste? Take a look at the Vamp stereo + speaker. It's a Kickstarter audio device with the that claims it will transform any speaker into a portable Bluetooth one. Any speaker would become wireless, in other words.

The company ran a successful Kickstarter campaign in 2013 for the Vamp, selling over 10,000 units, which prompted this follow-up design. The Vamp Stereo is designed to bring old speakers back from the dead, and the Vamp Speaker is a standalone unit made out of recycled and sustainable materials.

The Vamp Stereo is designed to repurpose up to two speakers—old or new, and of any size—into a portable Bluetooth stereo system. Supposedly, you can connect the provided speaker cables between the Vamp Stereo plug-in and the speaker of choice.  Once connected, link to any Bluetooth device — a smartphone, laptop or tablet — or use the provided AUX cord to connect directly.

The stereo comes in green and gray and has up to 10 hours of battery life. It's rechargeable via a Micro-USB cable. 

With 23 days to go in the Kickstarter, the company hopes to reach their $129,861 goal in order to make deliveries by May 2017. Pledging $52 gets you the Vamp Stereo and $131 gets you the whole system (stereo + speaker + vintage speaker).