News Roundup 6/19: Fare Thee Well, Original iPad Mini

Happy Friday! I hope it’s been a good one for you. It was a good one for some basketball players here in the Bay Area. It hasn’t been such a good one for one iPad model. Enough chat–let’s get to the news.

RIP First-Gen iPad Mini

The First-Generation iPad Mini passed peacefully Friday when Apple decided to discontinue its original 7.9-inch tablet. It is survived by the iPad Air, the iPad Air 2,  the iPad mini 2, and the iPad mini 3. But you can still get your hands on a refurbished original Mini through the Apple Online Store while supplies last. [MacRumors]

Apple’s Got Your Back, Says The EFF

If you’re persnickety about privacy, you’ll like Apple’s offerings. That’s the takeaway from a new privacy scorecard from the EFF. Apple earned a perfect five-star rating, as did Adobe, Creedo, Dropbox, and Sonic, among others. [EFF]

New Emoji Are On The Way In Unicode 8

Do you struggle to clearly express yourself with today’s selection of emoji? The Unicode Consortium has some good news for you. The upcoming Unicode 8 standard will add 41 emoji characters—and that includes “five modifiers for diversity.” Unicode 8 will also include additional glyphs for Chinese, Korean, and Japanese, among other languages. The Unicode Consortium plans to codify the new standard later this year. [Unicode]

Nick spends way too much time in front of a computer, so he figures he may as well write about it. He's previously written for IDG's PCWorld and TechHive.