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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Long-range wireless power has been a long-term dream, where a single charger in a single location in our home, can beam power to all of our portable devices. That simply isn’t possible given existing technologies, but smart lock company Alfred has now turned one small part of the dream into reality.
However, rather than use RF energy – which has been the main approach to date – the company has instead turned to infrared …
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While we knew that around $50B was being made available to promote US chip fabrication, it’s only today that we’re learning the actual CHIPS Act details. The bill itself did not specify how the money would be split.
Specifically, we now know that a little over half the total will be made available to help produce advanced chips in the US, while the rest of the money is being divided between two further initiatives …
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A Californian bill colloquially known as the Kids’ Code has been unanimously passed by the State Senate, following earlier approval by the State Assembly. It now requires the signature of Gov. Gavin Newsom to take effect.
The California Age-Appropriate Design Code Act addresses a key loophole in the equivalent federal law, the much weaker Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 …
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There have been conflicting reports in the chip industry on when we might expect an end to the global chip shortage, but Apple chipmaker TSMC says that isn’t going to happen any time soon.
The growing number of low-end chips used in everything from smartphones and cars means that production can be held up by a lack of mundane chips costing as little as 50 cents …
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A report today says that Apple is ahead of most large companies in tackling a form of discrimination which originates in India but has affected employee recruitment in Silicon Valley: the caste system.
Although the caste system is in part reflected in attitudes to skin color, discrimination on the basis of caste is not made explicitly illegal by current US law …
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President Joe Biden signed the $52B CHIPS and Science Act yesterday, authorizing subsidies for chipmaking within the US.
The White House claims the act has spurred $44B worth of new chip fabrication plans, but many doubts have been expressed about the likely effectiveness of the measure …
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A former cellphone store owner made an estimated $25M by unlocking T-Mobile phones using stolen credentials. He now faces a possible prison sentence of up to 165 years …
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The scale of subsidies for the TSMC Arizona plant are in doubt as it becomes clear that the $52B CHIPS Act grants won’t go far, and Intel is angling to take the largest slice of the pie.
TSMC has previously said that the subsidy for American chip manufacturing was “vital” to its Arizona plant, which has been expected to begin US production of Apple’s A-series and M-series chips from 2024 …
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The CHIPS Act, originally designed to provide $52B in incentives for chipmakers to open US plants, has now passed a Senate vote, with bipartisan support. It is expected to pass a House vote as early as next week, but has gained weight in its journey through Congress.
Apple lobbied in favor of the original plan, stating that it was vital to the construction of a TSMC plant in Arizona, which is expected to make chips for the Cupertino company …
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One piece of tech which has proven slow to, uh, take off is an electronic baggage tag to replace the usual paper label applied to hold baggage at check-in. Alaska Airlines is hoping to boost adoption by offering it free of charge to frequent fliers.
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A $52B US chip subsidy bill has convincingly passed a new Senate vote, with 64 in favor and just 34 opposed. Apple has said that the subsidy is ‘vital’ to the construction of a TSMC chip-making plant in Arizona, which is expected to make chips for the Cupertino company.
The latest vote had been described as a test of whether there was sufficient backing to include additional funding for science and defense research …
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Banks need to take more responsibility for protecting the victims of cash app scams, says a US finance watchdog. There have been a growing number of scams involving instant cash transfer apps, like Zelle and Venmo …
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The Nothing Phone launched this week, and the most distinctive thing about the design is a transparent rear cover to reveal the internals of the device – along with some funky lights. You can now give your iPhone 13 Pro Max the same look with a new Dbrand skin …
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I know, the idea that iPhones will replace DSLRs seems pretty crazy today. But already a little less crazy than yesterday, and that’s because Nikon has joined Canon in abandoning work on future DSLRs (digital single-lens reflex cameras).
Canon announced in December that the 1DX Mk III would be its last pro body. (It says that it is, for now, continuing to develop consumer DSLRs, but nobody expects that to last for long.) And today, Nikon is reportedly ceasing development work on DSLRs altogether …
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For anyone who was born this century, the idea that life before iPhone even existed would probably be hard to imagine. Fifteen years after the first iPhone went on sale, we’ve all grown used to having the ubiquitous device in our lives.
The iPhone wasn’t the first smartphone – but it was the first smartphone to appeal to ordinary people. Of course, I’m not ordinary people: I’m a geek who owned a whole bunch of the digital devices which preceded the iPhone …
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