Tech Talk

If you’re holding out for an iPhone SE 4 then we have some bad news for you, as a reputable source suggests this phone might either get delayed or canceled. Ming-Chi Kuo – an analyst with a good track record for Apple information – claims in a tweet thread (via Apple Insider ) that Apple will likely either cancel or delay the iPhone SE 4. The phone apparently won't land until after 2024 in the latter case, despite an earlier leak saying we could see it as soon as 2023. (1/5)My latest survey indicates that Apple will likely cancel or postpone the mass production plan for the 2024 iPhone SE 4. I think this is due to the consistently lower-than-expected shipments of mid-to-low-end iPhones (e.g., SE 3, 13 mini, and 14 Plus), December 21, 2022 See more This is apparently because mid-range iPhones simply aren’t selling as well as Apple would like, with Kuo pointing to the iPhone SE (2022) , the iPhone 13 mini , and the iPhone 14 Plus , as examples of that. On top of which,

Games publisher Epic Games has settled a dispute with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to pay $520m / £428.4m/ AU$778m in fines and relief following violations of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). Epic Games, creators of online battle royale Fortnite , will be paying one cash penalty of $275m /£225.8m /AU$411.9m for going against COPPA practices and another sum of $245m/ £201.3m / AU$366.9m to be distributed in refunds. This is the “largest penalty ever obtained for violating an FTC rule,” the US watchdog says in its official statement . In addition to the fines, the FTC says Epic Games needs to “adopt strong privacy default settings for children and teens, ensuring that voice and text communications are turned off by default.” “We accepted this agreement because we want Epic to be at the forefront of consumer protection and provide the best experience for our players,” Epic said in a statement . “Over the past few years, we’ve been making changes to ensure our

Your Microsoft Teams calls could be about to get a whole lot more entertaining thanks to the addition of a new feature heavily influenced by Zoom . The video conferencing platform has revealed it is working on video filters for users to add a bit more customization to their feeds. These additions look likely to go further than the existing tools that allow for blurred Microsoft Teams backgrounds , or a collection of basic images, to allow users to show a bit more personality on a call or meeting. Microsoft Teams video filters In its post on the official Microsoft 365 roadmap , the company describes the new addition as allowing those in Teams Meetings to "augment their video stream with visual effects".  It adds that the effects will be provided by app developers on Teams Platform, meaning there should be a wide range of options available at launch, along with significant expansions soon after as more and more users embrace the tool. The update is still listed as bein

AMD’s new RDNA 3 graphics cards have run into some controversy post-release, and the company has directly addressed a point of criticism raised by the rumor mill. Namely that Team Red released Navi 31 with non-functional shader pre-fetch hardware (on A0 silicon – we’ll come back to what that means), a theory put forward by hardware leaker Kepler_L2 on Twitter (among others). AMD told Tom’s Hardware : “Like previous hardware generations, shader pre-fetching is supported on RDNA 3 as per [ gitlab link ]. The code in question [highlighted by Kepler_L2] controls an experimental function that was not targeted for inclusion in these products and will not be enabled in this generation of the product. “This is a common industry practice to include experimental features to enable exploration and tuning for deployment in a future product generation.” In other words, there’s nothing broken here as the hardware leaker suggested, but the relevant code is for an experimental feature that isn’

Threat actors building Python malware are getting better, and their payloads harder to detect, researchers have claimed. Analyzing a recently-detected malicious payload, JFrog reported how the attackers used a new technique - anti-debugging code - to make it harder for researchers to analyze the payloads and understand the logic behind the code.  In addition to “regular” obfuscation tools and techniques, the hackers behind the “cookiezlog” package used anti-debugging code as a way to thwart dynamic analysis tools. First time According to JFrog, this is the first time such a method was spotted in any PyPI malware. “Most PyPI malware today tries to avoid static detection using various techniques: starting from primitive variable mangling to sophisticated code flattening and steganography techniques,” the researchers explain in a blog post . “Use of these techniques makes the package extremely suspicious, but it does prevent novice researchers from understanding the exact operatio

The ongoing fiasco that has been Elon Musk taking charge of Twitter continues, with his latest jaunt being the creation of a poll to let users decide if he should step down from being CEO of the company. It began over the weekend, where according to The Verge a new policy was immediately put into effect which threatened users with account suspension if they were found to be sharing links to other social networks on Twitter , such as Mastodon and Instagram. A few hours later this was reversed, with the posts and tweets deleted and Musk apologizing. However, this led to a bizarre plot twist where he created a poll as to whether he should stay or step down as Twitter CEO, alongside Twitter Support creating its own poll regarding whether users should be able to share links to other social platforms. I've been following this saga since Musk first decided to buy the platform in April, followed by putting it on hold in May , and it's akin to a bad movie from the 90s. His surve

Google has become the latest company to roll out an encryption upgrade, revealing it Gmail email service is set to get full end-to-end encryption (E2EE) support, but not all users will be able to get it. In an update on Google Workspace blog , the company explained it plans to roll out client-side encryption (CSE) to Gmail, just as it already has done for Google Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Meet. Google Calendar is also testing out the functionality in beta. This follows news that Apple plans to roll out a similar “Advanced Data Protection” for US iCloud users by the end of 2023, and globally in the coming year, though it’s not set to cover Mail, Contacts, or Calendar. Gmail encryption Google’s client-side encryption help article details that the tech giant’s “servers can't access your encryption keys and decrypt your data.” Using CSE in Gmail will render sensitive data, including email attachments, “indecipherable to Google servers”, however as with any CSE, users will