Sofia Elizabella Wyciślik-Wilson

Apple gets a new London home in Battersea Power Station

Apple is setting up its new London headquarters in one of the most iconic buildings of the capital's skyline. Battersea Power Station will soon be home to 1,400 Apple staff, who will occupy 40 percent of the building.

Sitting next to the River Thames, the former power station has been unused for a number of years, but is set to enjoy a new lease of life as part of a redevelopment project in the area.

Continue reading

Cellebrite cagily claims it can hack into just about any phone including iPhone 7 and Nougat handsets

Israeli security firm Cellebrite -- the company said to have helped the FBI access the San Bernadino iPhone -- says that it has the power to break into, and extract data from, just about any phone out there. Speaking with the BBC, the company demonstrated how it can crack the password on a smartphone to access its data.

It said that it was able to extract data from the very latest handsets including Android 7 devices and the iPhone 7. Cellebrite says it works with law enforcement agencies around the world too, and stopped short of saying it refused to work with oppressive regimes. The interview raises some interesting questions.

Continue reading

Android users can help map mobile coverage in the UK: iPhone owners need not apply

Looking to paint a more accurate picture of what mobile coverage is like across the country, UK communications regulator Ofcom has released an app that can pull in data from millions of Android users.

The app, called Ofcom Mobile Research, is only available for Android and has been designed to measure not only mobile broadband performance, but also voice call quality. While building up a mass of data from participating Android users, iPhone owners are locked out of contributing because of the way iOS works.

Continue reading

EFF slams HP's printer DRM that forces the use of official ink cartridges

A few days ago, HP upset printer owners by issuing a software update to block the use of third-party cartridges. The beauty of third-party ink cartridges is, of course, that they cost a fraction of official ones, but HP didn’t like the idea of missing out on income and decided to implement DRM to block them.

The company has described the move as a way "to protect HP's innovations and intellectual property" but printer owners see it as little more than a money grab. Digital rights group EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) is similarly irked and has written to HP president and CEO Dion Weisler to express its alarm. There is particular concern that "HP abused its security update mechanism to trick its customers".

Continue reading

New law requires IMDB to respect actors' privacy and remove ages on request

If you've ever got into an argument about the age of an actor, or you've just been curious about how old someone is, you may well have hit IMDB to find out. But starting next year, the Internet Movie Database will have to comply with requests to remove age details from profiles after the state of California passed a new anti-discrimination law.

The bill, AB-1687, requires that all sites that have paid subscriptions that allow people to post resumes and other information respect requests to remove information relating to age -- or just not post this information in the first place. Welcomed by some, the new legislation has also been criticised for being a violation of free speech.

Continue reading

Pippa Middleton is the latest celebrity to suffer an iCloud account hack

There have been numerous cases of iCloud accounts being hacked over the years, but it's the celebrity ones that hit the headlines. Well, that and things like the Fappening. The latest celebrity account to fall victim to hackers is Pippa Middleton, sister of British royal Kate Middleton, the Duchess of Cambridge.

A reported 3,000 images have been stolen from Pippa's account, and these are said to include photographs of Kate and her children. Leaked images also show photos from private parties, and shots of wedding dresses.

Continue reading

Don't fall for the secret hack to add a headphone jack to the iPhone 7

As you're probably well aware, with the launch of the iPhone 7 Apple ditched the familiar headphone jack in favour of a wireless audio option. Many people have questioned the sense in this 'courageous' decision which has led some owners to take drastic steps to allow them to use their favorite set of wired headphones.

Some have been spurred on by a YouTube video that reveals a 'secret hack' for returning the headphone jack to the iPhone 7. YouTuber TechRax has created a tutorial for uncovering the hidden jack that Apple left inside the new phone. Except, of course, it is complete nonsense.

Continue reading

Snapchat rebrands as Snap Inc and announces Google Glass competitor called Spectacles

Snapchat today makes two big announcements, the first of which is that it is no longer called Snapchat. The company is starting to branch out into products and services beyond the Snapchat app and therefore decided it is time to drop 'chat' from the name. Snap Inc is the new company name.

The second announcement is a new product called Spectacles. These are sunglasses with an integrated video camera offering a 115-degree field of view. There's no word on exactly when it will be released, but the marketing machine is already in motion, building up momentum and drumming up interest.

Continue reading

Facebook massively miscalculated video viewing figures for two years

The social networking giant has managed to attract the ire of advertisers after it revealed that it overestimated video viewing figures for two years. A flaw in the tool used to measure the number of views meant that figures relating to video viewing times were inflated by between 60 and 80 percent.

Just how long people spend watching videos is important information for advertisers, but Facebook managed to miscalculate average viewing times by ignoring views lasting under three seconds. With so much of Facebook's incoming revenue derived from advertising, and the importance the company places on video, the snafu is an embarrassing one that advertisers will take some time to forget.

Continue reading

YouTube Heroes program rewards people who report videos

Google has launched a new reward scheme that offers incentives for users to report videos that violate the site's guidelines. YouTube Heroes program also enables YouTubers to earn points for doing things like adding subtitles to a video and responding to questions in the help forums.

While the promise of rewards for helping to "create the best possible YouTube experience for everyone" is appealing, critics are not happy with the fact that users will now have an added incentive to report videos.

Continue reading

Yahoo confirms 'state-sponsored' attack and theft of 500 million account details

Yahoo sign logo building

Yahoo users who have not changed their passwords for a while are being advised to do so. The company has confirmed that it suffered a major security breach back in 2014 and information relating to 500 million accounts was stolen.

Yahoo says that the attack was carried out by a "state-sponsored actor" but does not elaborate on who it might be. The data accessed includes "names, email addresses, telephone numbers, dates of birth, hashed passwords (the vast majority with bcrypt) and, in some cases, encrypted or unencrypted security questions and answers".

Continue reading

Security commentator Brian Krebs hit with the biggest DDoS attack ever

Attacks on websites are a daily occurrence so to get any real attention an attack needs to be something special. Starting on Tuesday, Brian Krebs' security blog, KrebsOnSecurity.com, was hit with what is being described as "the largest DDoS the internet has ever seen".

Despite being clobbered with a colossal 665 Gbps of traffic, Krebs' site remained online thanks to the anti-DDoS efforts of security firm Akamai. It is thought that Krebs was targeted for his exposés of hackers, and the attack was delivered via a huge number of hacked IoT devices.

Continue reading

The new HTC Desire 10 Lifestyle and Pro are impressive mid-range smartphones

HTC, while not exactly a name to have the likes of Apple and Samsung quaking in their boots, has always been a brand to get rather excited about. Choosing a smartphone is clearly a highly personal affair, but in terms of build quality, features and value for money, HTC never fails to impress.

The newly announced HTC Desire 10 Lifestyle and HTC Desire 10 Pro both sit firmly in the mid-range for the company, and unashamedly ape the look of iPhones of yore. Despite the naming convention, both of the phones seem to be targeted at the millennial market, with a great deal of attention placed on selfies and music. Clearly the Pro model packs the most into the case, but do the handsets continue the HTC tradition of delivering more than you would expect?

Continue reading

Google and Apple show that tech companies' blase attitude to tax cannot continue

Technology firms, like bankers, are starting to earn a bad name for themselves. The practice of funneling profits from different branches of a company through countries that have favorable rates of tax is nothing new -- far from it -- but it's becoming far more prevalent. Apple was recently asked to pay back $14.5 billion in unpaid tax in Europe, and this is not an isolated incident.

Small businesses understandably feel that they are getting a raw deal when the big players have the clout and resources to play the system to their advantage. But it doesn't always work out. In addition to the $14.5 billion in Ireland, Apple has just paid back $118 million in Japan for 'under-reporting income' and Google is also facing investigation in Indonesia over possible unpaid taxes.

Continue reading

Google redesigns Gmail for Android and the web

Gmail was designed to be a cross-platform email tool, but even Google recognizes the fact that it is far from perfect. With this in mind, Gmail -- and Inbox by Google -- are undergoing a redesign to improve things.

With the redesign, Google says that it is focusing on adjusting the formatting and general look so that it better suits the device emails are being viewed on. You may well have thought that this should have been the case from the beginning, but it seems that an update is in order.

Continue reading

© 1998-2025 BetaNews, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Privacy Policy - Cookie Policy.