The proposed age verification system for controlling access to adult entertainment websites (the UK's 'porn block') has reportedly been shelved indefinitely.
With the goal of attempting to protect underage Internet users from adult-oriented content, the UK government has been planning to implement an age verification system. It has already been delayed twice as it faces considerable criticism.
Sky News reports that Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) Secretary Jeremy Wright will inform the Parliament that the system has been shelved for now. It was supposed to go into effect on July 15.
According to Sky sources, the issue was bureacratic, rather than technical.
Ever since it was first proposed in 2015 and has proceeded since, it has faced criticism. Understandably, it raised privacy concerns as the habits of Internet users could be tracked. It also had the potential to open people up to blackmail.
On top of that, some in the adult entertainment industry decried the fact that social media platforms like Tumblr or Twitter were to be exempt, meaning the producers of the content would be behind the block while the content could be easily accessible on those platforms.
Apple and Best Buy have announced a partnership to provide Apple-certified repairs for iPhones, iPads etc. at almost 1,000 stores across the United States.
Apple-certified repairs at an Apple store or an authorized service provider are performed by trained experts who use genuine Apple parts. Every repair is backed by Apple. With its partnership with Best Buy and authorized third party service providers, eight out of ten Apple customers will be within 20 minutes of an authorized service provider.
Best Buy's Geek Squad has nearly 7,600 newly Apple-certified technicians ready to make same-day iPhone repairs or to service other Apple products. Aside from Best Buy, there are over 1,800 third-party Apple authorized service providers in the US.
This will help Apple customers who are located hours away from the closest Apple store.
"At Apple, we're dedicated to providing the best customer service in the world," said Tara Bunch, Apple's vice president of AppleCare.
"If a customer ever needs to repair their products, we want them to feel confident those repairs are done safely and correctly. We're always looking at how we can reliably expand our network of trained technicians and we're excited to partner with every Best Buy store so it's even easier for our customers to find an authorized repair location near them."
YouTube and Universal Music Group are to remaster just under 1,000 music videos with HD picture and improved audio.
YouTube likely houses the largest collection of music videos publicly available. A lot of these music videos are older and were shot and produced for tube televisions. On top of that, some of the audio quality of older music videos lags because a lot were intended for televisions with mono speakers.
From today, over 100 music videos that have been remastered to much higher video and audio quality can be found on YouTube, with the rest of almost 1,000 videos expected to be finished by the end of the year. Every week will see new remastered videos.
They will be available from the same URL as always and will be marked with a "Remastered" label in the description.
Videos that have already been remastered and are available are from artists including titles from Billy Idol, Beastie Boys, Boyz II Men, George Strait, Janet Jackson, Kiss, Lady Antebellum, Lady Gaga, Lionel Richie, Maroon 5, Meat Loaf, No Doubt/Gwen Stefani, Smokey Robinson, The Killers, Tom Petty and more.
The social media giant has partnered with dozens across industries in its ambitious plans to bring about a global cryptocurrency during the first half of 2020.
Along with partners that include MasterCard and PayPal, it has established the Libra Association, based in Geneva. Banks are curiously not among the listed partners for the Libra Association so far. The association will govern the global Libra cryptocurrency, while at the same time a Facebook subsidiary called Calibra will offer digital wallets.
Digital wallets allow consumers to store, receive and send cryptocurrency units.
Facebook and its partners are aiming the Libra system at both established commerce but also aim to offer financial services to some consumers in the world who previously have had no access to such services. It isn't likely to be an easy ride for Facebook and friends however, as scrutiny immediately followed the announcement of Libra.
Digital rights and privacy activists have raised concerns over how much more private data can be amassed by Facebook as it facilitates payments and transactions around the world. The social media giant has a very spotty record when it comes to the use of user data already.
Huawei has been all over the news recently, thanks to Trump administration blacklisting the company.
It is becoming increasingly hard to be competitive for Huawei if the blacklist goes into full effect and U.S. as well as many European ones can't or won't do business with them.
There's still ways for Huawei to avoid this, and even Trump's Treasury Secretary has noted that Huawei might be cleared off the blacklist if negotiations go appropriately.
For Huawei tariffs are the least of their problems. Things like not having an operating system (Android) or processors for their smartphones is far greater problem than losing some of the profitability, and they are preparing for that too.
Apple has never really been one to bridge the gap between operating systems, ecosystems, and platforms.
The company's stronghold over things like iMessage are essentially keeping people locked into iOS, although arguments could be made its totally escapable.
However, there might be some light at the end of the tunnel, as Apple seems to be more willing to expand some of its services to competing platforms. After all, for example, Apple Music is available on Android and iTunes (later replaced with Apple TV after iTunes was effectively killed) was released earlier this year for LG and Samsung TVs
Now iCloud is making its way to competing operating systems. Apple and Microsoft have become closer partners, and Apple has released iCloud for Windows 10's Microsoft Store.
While you could've been using iCloud on Windows all along, there hasn't been an iCloud app in the Microsoft Store for it.
With the new iCloud app for Windows you can easily sync your data to the cloud using File Explorer. It supports iCloud Drive, iCloud Photos, as well as Mail, Contacts, Calendars, Tasks, and Bookmarks. For Mail, Contacts, Calendars you'll need Outlook 2016 or later.
According to Wall Street Journal, Nintendo has started producing their next-generation game console, two of them to be exact. This means the dual successor to highly successful Nintendo Switch is just around the corner.
It also means that current trade issues between China and the U.S. might really affect where and how it is manufactured and shipped.
Nintendo is reportedly ready for the effects the trade war might have with their products, and has already moved some of the manufacturing out of China. This will allow them to avoid profit killing tariffs.
While officially Nintendo hasn't commented on this, they do say that majority of Switch manufacturing is located in China.
Not only is Nintendo avoiding China but, according to Bloomberg, Google is moving some of its production out of the country. Google's smart home division Nest is manufacturing more of the devices in Taiwan and Malaysia.
Apple's rise to the top with the iPhone was nothing short of miraculous, but things haven't necessarily been going as great after Steve Jobs passed, although they are again closing in on that $1 trillion.
Market cap was rising until it hit a trillion dollars last year, but since it has hit some big roadblocks.
One of them was the failure with 5G. Apple's sole modem partner was Intel, who completely flopped with their 5G modem development. Not only were they late to the party, but they eventually had to pull out entirely.
However, the partnership with Qualcomm is definitely not what Apple would consider optimal. They would much rather not work with the company that makes most Android modems, and have either an exclusive partner or, better yet, produce their own modem.
Mozilla's Firefox has been in a slow and painful decline ever since Google announced their own web browser, Chrome, approximately 10 years ago.
Not only has Firefox's market share been cut in third but the company has become increasingly dependent on search engine partnerships and the royalties they provide.
That's why the company has just announced a new premium version of Firefox. A massive move from the company that has provided, and keeps providing, a free to use web browser.
While the premium Firefox is only going to hit the testers this fall, the company has already revamped Firefox's image quite a bit.
Mozilla has also determined that in the future Firefox will encompass not only the browser but a larger group of software, including Firefox Send, Firefox Monitor, and Firefox Lockwise. Thus, it is only reasonable that the browser be called Firefox Browser from now on.
Well, whether you'll be calling it that (you won't), that is indeed the official name. It also means that Firefox has gotten a brand new logo that spans over all the apps.
As you can see below, Firefox the brand has a different logo than the browser, but the two are completely different from Send, Monitor, and Lockwise.
Not many of the younger generation of photographers know what developing a photo is like. However, apparently the ones that have learned about it are interested.
There's interest enough for Fujifilm to bring back photographic film to the market. The company has started producing a new version of its iconic black-and-white Acros photo film.
The new product is called Neopan 100 Acros II. They are producing both a 35 mm as well as 120 film variants of this monochrome technology that we thought had been largely forgotten.
This nearly 200 years old method of photography has some new technology inserted in it. According to Fujifilm, a new Super Fine-Σ technique improves the sharpness and produces a more fine graininess compared to the original Neopan 100 Acros.
Fujifilm will start selling the film in Japan this fall and expansion is in store if there is demand.
The best example of the escalation of the trade war between China and the U.S. is of course Trump blacklisting world's number two smartphone manufacturer and top 5G competitor Huawei.
However, there is no trade war where there is no retaliation. China has warned that it is willing to blacklist companies in America, and elsewhere, who abide by what Huawei calls unconstitutional ban.
Furthermore general trade war actions, like tariffs, could damage other companies as well. One of the main ones in the line of fire is of course Apple, who've had troubles in China.
Fortunately Apple's key supplier Hon Hai, better known here as Foxconn, is assuring investors that drastic trade war acts are not going to leave Apple without iPhones, Bloomberg reports.
According to Foxconn, they have all the necessary facilities to keep on producing iPhones for American consuming needs. Thus, even if the trade war would escalate further and make it necessary to build iPhones outside China, that is possible according to the Taiwanese contract manufacturer.
Mozilla CEO Chris Beard has revealed a rather strange development for the web browser developers. The company responsible for the popular Firefox browser is going to be releasing a premium version of the browser.
At this point he doesn't reveal what kind of price people are required to pay to access this new piece of Mozilla software, but needless to say it will include some improvements over the free version.
In an interview with Germal publication t3n, Beard says that the new version might include things like integrated VPN service as well as free and safe cloud storage, although not all features have yet been decided.
He ensures that in no universe is Mozilla going to get rid of the free version, however. This also won't affect the new features that have already been promised to the free version in upcoming updates.
Firefox has lost much of its traction to Google's Chrome over the years, and it currently hold the second place in market share with measly 10%, when it topped 30% around ten years ago before Chrome.
According to the company this is one of the ways it is seeking new revenue streams.
AMD had their E3 press event yesterday where they revealed finally the upcoming GPUs based on the new Navi architecture.
They company had already initially revealed the new generation of GPUs at Computex, but this time around we got some dearly needed details.
AMD's newly announced Radeon RX 5700 XT and Radeon RX 5700 are the new champs that challenge Nvidia's midrange RTX series cards. RX 5700 is aiming to challenge the RTX 2060 with a compelling $379 price tag.
The XT version is going to perhaps challenge the RTX 2070 with a bit pricier $449.
Both will be available from July 7 onwards.
AMD told us that RX 5700 XT features 40 compute units and 2560 stream processors that produce up to 9.75 teraflops, and 8 gigabytes of GDDR6 memory that can reach up to 1905 MHz boost clock speed (and 1605 MHz base clock).
The cheaper RX 5700 has 36 compute units, 2304 stream processors with up to 7.95 teraflops, and same 8 gigs of GGDR6 with a lower 1725 MHz boost clock (and 1465 MHz base clock).
If you are wondering whether the new Navi cards support ray tracing like their Nvidia counterparts, that is a definite no, and it's likely that they'll wait until the next generation to properly implement it. Even then the full scene ray tracing is going to be a cloud solution.
Microsoft launched the new Xbox Game Pass PC at their E3 press event very much as expected. The $5 a month service offers free games to PC gamers, and you can try it out now for an introductory monthly fee of $1.
In addition Microsoft introduced a new Game Pass tier for all to subscribe to. Previously only available for testers, the Game Pass Ultimate offers Xbox Live Gold, Xbox Game Pass as well as the newest addition Game Pass PC.
All three services bundled in one costs you $14.99 a month, which is a bargain if you intend to get them all. Separately they would cost around $25.
Microsoft has said that Game Pass PC will include over 100 games from 75 different developers, similarly to the Xbox version. In addition to free games, subscribers get a 20 percent discount towards other games on Microsoft Store and 10 percent discount from DLC.
The U.S. government's blacklisting of Huawei could have disastrous consequences to the world's second largest smartphone manufacturer, but the worst hasn't still gone into effect, and we might even see some backtracking from the Trump administration.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has revealed that the president might ease the restrictions if upcoming trade negotiations with China go well, Reuters reports.
This makes it even more clear that with the blacklist trade war is a large part of it, not only a national security aspect that Mnuchin also highlights. China has also suggested that it might be ready to respond in kind to what it considers an act of trade war.
While Huawei has been targeted by the U.S. government for years national security grounds, and this has meant that Huawei hasn't had an opening to enter the very closed U.S. smartphone market, Trump escalated it by requiring U.S. companies to halt business with the Chinese company altogether.
The proposed age verification system for controlling access to adult entertainment websites (the UK's 'porn block') has reportedly been shelved indefinitely.
Apple and Best Buy have announced a partnership to provide Apple-certified repairs for iPhones, iPads etc. at almost 1,000 stores across the United States.
YouTube and Universal Music Group are to remaster just under 1,000 music videos with HD picture and improved audio.
