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Apple Pulls Off Third-Party Screen Time Apps from Apple Store Violating its Privacy Policies

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Apple launched its screen time monitoring feature for all its iOS users and following that many other third-party developers also released their screen time monitoring and parental control apps. But it seems that Apple is not happy about it, as it has abruptly removed a few such apps from its iOS stores.

apple screen time feature
Image Source: gadgethacks.com

Noticeably, Apple has built its screen time monitoring feature only for the iOS users, whereas the third-party apps are compatible with both iOS and Android having better features than the Apple’s screen time monitoring features. Reportedly, iOS’s feature has flaws like only a few methods of blocking apps for kids, less-granular scheduling, as well as in many cases the kids were able to modify the filtering tools themselves.

But it is not that the company is insecure about the popularity of its screen time feature, but in a blog post, Apple mentioned the name of some apps including Balance Screen Time by Moment Health and Verizon Smart Family, as the best parental control apps apart from its own, giving the reasons for removing the other third-party apps from Apple store.

“We recently removed several parental control apps from the App Store, and we did it for a simple reason: they put users’ privacy and security at risk. It’s important to understand why and how this happened,” said Apple in the blog post.

According to Apple, the removal of the apps from its Apple Store has been presented as a step out of insecurity. But those third-party apps were using Mobile Device Management (MDM), an invasive technology, which makes the apps to access the users’ some of the very personal information, including location, email address, gallery, browsing history, etc. The company has been investigating this MDM technology since 2017, and by the mid of 2017, it had made some strict guidelines on the usage of MDM in the non-enterprize apps.

On the other hand, the third-party companies which got their apps removed from the Apple store, have claimed that there were no clear indications or notification from Apple on the pulling off their apps from the Apple store. Most of the companies have admitted that 80 per cent of their revenues come from Apple Store.

But Apple is confident that those apps were a bigger threat to its customers’ privacy and data security as those apps had violated its guidelines. Though the company is simply following its rules for the safety of its ‘users’ data’, a few companies including Kidslox and Qustodio as well as Kaspersky Lab filed an antitrust complaint against Apple in the European Union, after Apple pulled off their screen time apps from Apple Store.

Gamers Need to Wait More Than a Year to Get Their Hands on the Next-generation PlayStation

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According to a Wallstreet Journal, Sony through a Q&A session has revealed that the launch of its Next-Generation PlayStation or we simply say PS5 has delayed to more than a year. The launch of PS5 has been the most awaited event, but believing Sony, it won’t occur at least this year, and the delay may extend more than a year.

PlayStation 5
Image Source: t3.com

The company has indicated that it may roll out the Next-Generation PlayStation in summer 2020, most probably in the month of May. This way, the PlayStation fans can expect to get a glimpse of the features of this new gaming console in the upcoming E3 event on June 11 this year.

Noticeably, Sony started talking about PS5 earlier last month, and people also began making guesses on its launch date and the feature it would have. Here, the company gave some hints on the capabilities of the gaming platform, like support for 8K graphics, much-improved 3D audio experience, SSD storage, and compatibility with all the gaming titles of PS4, etc. If we believe on the rumours, the new PS5 will run upon an 8-core, third-gen Ryzen CPU based on AMD’s 7nm Zen 2 architecture.

Also, the console is an improved version of PS4 and has also got the support for Radeon Navi graphics as well as ray tracing. The news of the release of the upcoming PlayStation gaming console had reduced the sales of PS4 to a greater extent. But since the console’s release has been extended, the people who have recently bought their PS4 can take the breath of relief.

Sony announced the news of the delay in the launch while talking about its impressive financial year. Despite the reduced PS4 sales, 2018 was the best financial year for the company, earning some 31.1bn yen from the past year’s console sales, having gained a total of 36.4 million PlayStation Plus subscribers. But still, due to the high manufacturing cost of PS5, the operating profits may fall by 10 per cent for the next quarter.

Walmart Launches its First AI Store, Isn’t Trying to Replace Humans with Machines

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Last year, Amazon launched a chain of its AI-powered convenience stores, i.e. Amazon Go. The stores are cashier-less and have cameras all around in the stores to charge the customers automatically. Yesterday, Walmart, the biggest retail store franchise, also launched an AI-powered store, i.e. Intelligent Retail Lab (IRL), in Levittown, New York, which is a bit different from its contemporary Amazon’s cashier-less stores.

Walmart has launched a store similar to its other stores, except it will be operated by intelligent technology. The new Walmart store, like Amazon Go, has got cameras over the ceiling, but these cameras have not been installed to automatically charge the customers but will keep the track of the inventory of the store.

walmart IRL store
Image Source: Tech Crunch

Yes! The company has confirmed that now the store will be able to manage the inventory through AI. Reportedly, if any of the items get out of stock, even from a single shelf, the cameras will inform the sales persons around, to restock the shelves. Also, if a fresh fruit has been on the shelf for a longer time, the cameras will indicate the sales persons to replace that fruit with a fresh one. E.g. if bananas on a shelf have got bruises, the cameras will ask the salesperson to replace them. This way, the salespersons will not have to roam around the store all the time to keep a check on the inventory and will only go to the back-inventory when the cameras will notify them for replacement or to re-stock the shelves.

Since operating so many cameras all the time will require a lot of data and data storage, the company has built a data centre in the inventory itself. Though the data will be stored only for a week, the sensors and the cameras will pump out 1.6 TB of data per second.

Since it is not a cashier-less store, like Amazon Go, the store is having over 100 employees and is selling over 30,000 items. Also, the store is a 50,000 square foot store, having giant servers bathed in the blue light situated inside the store, which can be easily seen by the public. Also, the retailer has built an AI-powered informational store and a Welcome store for its customers, where they can know about its technical specifications.

For the people who are with the shoppers, can spend their time in front of the AI-powered interactive wall, built inside the store. The wall is able to imitate the body gestures and postures by estimating body positions and is quite a good pass time.

By far, the new Walmart store is quite interesting, and it seems that the company is trying to take full advantage of AI by making its use in most practical ways. And, the company has ensured that it is not up to replacing the human jobs at all, but is trying to reduce the workload for its staff.

Facebook Keeps Billions from its Q1 2019 Profits to Finally Pay Fine Over the Privacy Violations

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Despite the various privacy scandals and penalties have been credited to the name of Facebook, the company has reported a beneficial Q1 for 2019. The company released the Q1 2019 report on Wednesday, and reportedly, Facebook has earned 2.5 per cent more monthly users compared to the last year’s Q4 monthly users. That means Facebook has reached over 2.38 billion monthly users as well as 1.56 billion daily active users, whereas it had recorded a 2.32 billion monthly users and 1.52 billion daily users in Q4 2018.

Facebook
Image Source: thenewsminute.com

Revenue-wise too, the company has reported an increase of 26 per cent in year-over-year sales, i.e., up to $15.1 billion raise on the yearly income. The earnings are ahead of what the company had expected itself, in fact, it was expecting the revenues to be in loss to an extent. But having earned that much of money is great for Facebook, as it still has to settle the record-setting fine which Federal Trade Commission had imposed on it.

In the past years, Facebook has been found guilty of the data breach, despite the company claiming that some of the information of the Facebook users remains private. The biggest fine FTC has imposed was of $22.5 billion, that too, on the tech giant Google. And this time, it was expected that Facebook will be paying even bigger of a penalty, after series of cases of a privacy violation, including the matter in which Facebook allowed Cambridge Analytica to collect data from millions of users without their knowledge.

For the past few months, Facebook is trying to reduce the amount of the fine, setting up meetings with FTC, and according to both the companies, they haven’t come to any conclusions. But with the high earned revenues, Facebook has decided to keep $3 to $5 billion separately to pay the fine and will not include this amount in the reported revenues.

“In the first quarter of 2019, we reasonably estimated a probable loss and recorded an accrual of $3.0 billion in connection with the inquiry of the FTC into our platform and user data practices, which accrual is included in accrued expenses and other current liabilities on our condensed consolidated balance sheet. We estimate that the range of loss in this matter is $3.0 billion to $5.0 billion. The matter remains unresolved, and there can be no assurance as to the timing or the terms of any final outcome.” wrote Facebook in regard to the FTC fine.

Facebook and the other tech giants are now becoming more careful about how and where to use users’ data. Facebook has also agreed to build some strict guidelines over the users’ privacy on the platform in the 2011 deal with the FTC to avoid any privacy breach cases in future.

Intel’s Ninth Generation Processor will Now Speed up the Laptops with a Max Speed of 5GHz

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Last fall, Intel introduced its ninth generation Core processors, among which the i9-9900K chip for the CPU was the first to achieve the 5GHz. In the same line-up, Intel has just announced another series of the core processors, now for the high-end laptops. These are the new 9th generation H-series processors available in three different Core versions, i.e. i5, i7 and i9.

intel 9th generation core processors
Image source: bhphotovideo.com

The main attraction of this new series is the Core i9-9980HK processor, which will now be achieving the 5GHz speed for the notebooks and laptops, the highest speed to be achieved by a laptop processor. It features the base speed of 2.4 GHz and has got 16 MB of cache. The processors are having an eight-core/16-thread configuration, similar to its previous versions of the processors from the same series. It is shipped unlocked so that the enthusiasts who want to power up the process can easily overclock it.

All the six chips share a 45W TDP and are featuring the wifi 6, enabling it to provide as fast as 2.4 Gbps wifi speed for the laptops. These chips are based on the “Coffee Lake Refresh” (Coffee Lake-R) architecture and render the Intel’s Thermal Velocity Boost.

The chips also offer 28 per cent faster 4K video editing and deliver 2.1x faster framerates for gaming, streaming, and recording. The chips are also shipped with larger SSD storage, supporting the Intel‘s Optane Memory H10 module. Those chips are all about speed and likewise, open the large files 1.63x faster as well as load the games 2.29x than the older systems. The new chipset also has got support for up to 128GB of DDR4 RAM.

Compared to a three years old laptop processor, the Intel’s new 300 series laptop chipset has got more power and is obviously faster. So the ones who are looking forward to changing their, older than two or three years, laptops must go for the laptops with any of those new variations of Intel processors. The new chipset now will be available with the Acer, Asus, Dell, HP, Razer, Lenovo, and MSI laptops.

Binance Launches DEX Earlier to the Decided Launch Date

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Recently, the world’s largest crypto exchange, Binance, had launched the native DLT platform of Binance- the Binance Chain, and today, the company rolled out the Binance Decentralized Exchange, i.e. DEX, ahead of its decided launch date.

Binance Dex
Image Source: bitcoinexchangeguide.com

Binance DEX is a decentralised P2P exchange platform that allows the user to have all the control over their assets while trading on the exchange. The exchange is powered by the Binance Chain blockchain protocol.

Though the exchange is not supporting any transactions, as of now, the exchange is open for the user to create their wallets. The platform will let the users create both the trusted as well as the third party wallets, including CoolWallet, Coinomi Wallet, Atomic Wallet, Guarda Wallet, Exodus, ZelCore Wallet, Enjin, Magnum Wallet, Infinito Wallet, Ledger, Math Wallet, Ellipal Wallet, over it.

Currently, the platform also permits the users to access tools, including the Binance Chain Explorer, wallet, public data nodes, and even the APIs.

In recent years, many of the companies have already brought those decentralised exchanges in the market, such that to promote more user control over their assets. Now Binance has also taken the initiative for the same. The company has also asked the other developers to step-in to create new tokens for its Binance mainnet.

“We believe decentralized exchanges bring new hope and new possibilities, offering a trustless and transparent financial system. With no central custody of funds, Binance DEX offers far more control over your own assets. We hope this brings a new level of freedom to our community. We will work closely with projects and teams to grow the entire ecosystem.” said Changpeng Zhao, the CEO of Binance.

Though the launch of the exchange is early, the company had been testing the exchange over a simulated trading environment, where the exchange did over 8.5 million transactions over two months of its testnet period.

The company has also migrated its Binance coin from Ethereum network blockchain-compatible ERC-20 to BEP-2 Binance Chain to be used as the blockchain’s native asset to assist network transactions.