Growing concern about Zelle scams has seen parent company Early Warning Services (EWS) begin to refund some people duped into sending money to criminals. The U-turn on its previous stance that customers are responsible for their own transactions is believed to have been made in an effort to stave off potential legislation …
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Update: In an earnings call, CEO Mike Sievert told investors and analysts that the idea has now been completely abandoned – statement below.
A reported move regarding some older T-Mobile unlimited plans got the carrier into hot water, and the company’s CEO said that it never intended to proceed with this – rather, it was just carrying out a small-scale test. But even the test has now been abandoned …
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Tens of millions of teens actively want their parents to track their locations using tech like Apple’s Find My and third-party apps like Life360, says a new survey.
More broadly, the survey reports on Gen Z – representing those aged 11 to 26 – being more anxious than previous generations, and having a different mindset to location tracking …
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When Apple chipmaker TSMC was granted federal subsidies for building its first US plant, creating jobs for American workers was one of the key arguments. But with hiring well underway, a new report says that almost half of the TSMC Arizona plant hires are from Taiwan.
Additionally, plans for a six-step expansion program – intended to allow the Arizona plant to rival the production volumes of those in Taiwan – are now said to be unlikely to proceed ….
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Sure, current iPhones can send data via satellites in emergencies, but two new demonstrations show that we might soon be able to routinely make voice phone calls via satellite connectivity. You can watch the call and 5G demo in the video below.
The test phone call – along with a separate 5G data download – was made from Maui, Hawaii, to Madrid using a new low Earth orbit satellite …
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If you’ve ever relied on movie review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes ratings to judge whether or not to go see a new release, you may want to rethink that …
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Update: In a statement to 9to5Mac, Apple said:
“The App Store was designed to be a safe and trusted place for users to download apps, and the goals of the DSA align with Apple’s goals to protect consumers from illegal and harmful content. We are working to implement the requirements of the DSA with user privacy and security as our continued North Star.”
We learned back in April that Apple was one of 19 companies that would be subject to the Digital Services Act. The law comes into force today, and it’s not clear whether or not the iPhone maker is complying.
Indeed, many are saying that this is the big problem with the act: There’s a lot of subjectivity involved in determining whether a company is breaking the law, making enforcement tricky …
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Intel’s planned acquisition of Tower Semiconductor has failed, after the US chipmaker was unable to get the necessary regulatory approval.
The abandonment of the $5.4B deal is a setback to Intel’s hopes of competing with Apple chipmaker TSMC …
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A United Nations report has argued that we should ban smartphones in schools, noting that one in four countries around the world already does so.
UN education and science agency Unesco says that there three strong reasons to implement the policy …
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IBM’s latest report on data breaches reveals attackers are now more interested in stealing personal data for identity theft than they are simply taking credit card details. It also found that big companies would rather just pass on the costs to consumers, than spend more on security …
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The White House has announced a plan intended to improve the security of smart home tech. The government will test everything from smart speakers to Wi-Fi routers, awarding a US Cyber Trust Mark logo to products which pass the tests.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) will set the standards to be met, and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) will manage the program …
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Evernote layoffs are the latest victim of the tech downturn, which has seen significant numbers of jobs lost over the course of the past year.
Other tech companies to have made layoffs include Clubhouse, Meta, Plex, and Sonos, with even 3-trillion-dollar Apple laying off contractors, and CEO Tim Cook not ruling out cuts in permanent workers too …
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A Supreme Court affirmative action ruling that bans race-conscious admissions into higher education will end up hurting US companies, and the economy as a whole – according to Apple and many other US brands.
An amicus brief arguing in favor of continued affirmative action by colleges was filed by Apple, Adobe, Airbnb, Cisco, Dell, Google, Ikea, Intel, Lyft, PayPal, Salesforce, Uber, and many other major corporations …
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Back in 2021, the White House said that internet access was “the new electricity” – something that was fundamental to everyday life today – and promised broadband subsidies to states, to enable them to fund the necessary programs. The sums each state will receive has now been announced …
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A moment’s thought, please, for John B. Goodenough – the professor of engineering who won a Nobel Prize for development of the lithium-ion batteries that power most of our portable devices.
He was also notable for his earlier work on the technology that made possible random access memory (RAM). Goodenough died on Sunday, aged 100 …
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That was sounding so good, right up until the end. Luxury audio company Bang & Olufsen’s new portable speaker, the Beosound A5, ticks a lot of boxes – but also costs more than a grand …
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Mint Mobile data plans are being upgraded, with most subscribers getting an extra 5GB of mobile data per month. The upgrade applies to what are currently 10GB, 15GB, and “Unlimited” plans – while 4GB subscribers get 1GB extra …
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The Federal Trade Commission in the United States has proposed a handful of changes that it says will make it easier for consumers to cancel recurring subscriptions and memberships. The FTC believes that its “Click to Cancel” provisions “would go a long way to rescuing consumers from seemingly never-ending struggles to cancel unwanted subscription payment plans.”
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Geekbench creator John Poole has explained why switching to Mac led to him creating the benchmarking tool – and how it helped diagnose a cracked heatsink in a more recent Mac …
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A web developer has created a Siri GPT-3 mashup that is intended to demonstrate the potential for a truly smart voice assistant.
The AI system was able to make sense of conversational speech – including some in which the required action was implied rather than directly stated …
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Update: TikTok says it is today launching a new tool to provide greater transparency on how videos are added to a user’s feed. For any video, you can tap the Share panel then the question-mark icon called “Why this video?”. So far, it appears only very generic reasons are being offered – like “This video is popular in the United States” – but the company is promising greater granularity later …
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CNN has pointed to upcoming tech earnings reports from Apple, Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, Twitter – and suggested that they aren’t going to be pretty.
The site argues that this may be the quarter in which tech giants reveal that their seeming immunity to the broader economic climate is at an end …
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Maruta Manufacturing – which makes components for a wide range of companies, including Apple – says it expects the current smartphone slump to continue into 2023.
It predicts that consumers will hold onto their existing phones for even longer periods than they do now, though suggests that high-end phones may be the exception …
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Doorbell cameras like Ring offer a number of benefits to consumers, but have also normalized home and neighborhood surveillance, says a new report. In particular, they are effectively turning customers of services like Amazon into pseudo managers of delivery workers …
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