For three weeks, Riviera Beach, a city of 35,000 people in Florida, had its computer systems held hostage. On Monday, the city council voted unanimously to pay $600,000 in bitcoin to the hackers who caused the problem. After a city employee clicked on a malicious link in an email, ransomware quickly spread throughout Riviera Beach’s …
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June, 2019
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20 June
Adobe endorses Apple Mac App Store with Lightroom release
The Mac App Store has received significant criticism, but Apple’s efforts to improve it apparently have paid off, as Adobe started using the store to sell its Lightroom software for the first time on Thursday. The photo-editing and cataloging software, geared for photo enthusiasts and pros who want something richer than Google Photos or Apple Photos, costs the same as …
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20 June
Harry Potter: Wizards Unite developer Niantic acquires AR studio
It’s a big week for Niantic, which expanded its UK studio just before Harry Potter: Wizards Unite lands in the US and UK (here’s how you get started playing Harry Potter: Wizards Unite). The Pokemon Go developer acquired London-based Sensible Object, known for games like the AR-tabletop hybrid Beasts of Balance and Amazon Alexa-powered When in Rome, which basically combine physical …
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20 June
Apple reportedly considers moving 30% of all iPhone production out of China
Apple has asked its suppliers to look into the possibility of shifting final assembly of some products out of China, according to report from The Wall Street Journal on Thursday. The iPhone maker is looking into moving “up to around a third of the production for some devices” to other countries, including locations in Southeast Asia, the Journal reported. This …
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20 June
Harry Potter: Wizards Unite is Pokemon Go with magic wands
Out now in the US, the Harry Potter: Wizards Unite augmented reality game will be familiar to anyone who’s played the wildly successful Pokemon Go and even Niantic’s first game, Ingress. (Here’s how you get started playing Harry Potter: Wizards Unite.) Relying on your phone’s GPS, you move around the physical world and interact with beasts, objects, points of interest …
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20 June
Emergency presidential alert texts could be faked, researchers say
US presidential alerts sent out as nationwide emergency text messages could be vulnerable to hacks, according to researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder. The university has already alerted US government officials to the security problem. Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA) are geographically targeted messages that alert mobile users in the US about missing children (via Amber Alerts), severe weather and presidential …
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20 June
Apple Card nears launch and retail employees are testing it, report says
The Apple Card‘s arrival is inching closer. Apple’s been fairly quiet about the credit card since it was announced in March, but a new report says the company is expanding its beta testing ahead of the planned summer release. According to Bloomberg, Apple has expanded beta testing of the Card to now include its own retail employees. The company has …
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20 June
Amazon Music is streaming on Comcast’s X1, its first cable TV deal
Amazon Music launched Thursday on its first pay TV service. Joining Comcast’s Xfinity X1 high-end pay TV service as well as its Xfinity Flex bundle of streaming apps, Amazon Music can now stream tunes through Comcast customers’ TVs. Subscribers to Amazon Music, the e-commerce giant’s competitor to Spotify, will have access to its full music library on Comcast as the partnership rolls out to set-top boxes over …
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20 June
EA reportedly says controversial in
When Star Wars Battlefront II came out in 2017, people weren’t happy about the loot boxes, or grab bags of surprise items that players buy with in-game currency and that critics say foster compulsive habits like gambling. Now EA, the game’s publisher, has reportedly told a committee of the UK’s Parliament that loot boxes are just plain fun. Testifying before Parliament’s …
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20 June
Facebook unveils its Libra cryptocurrency as politicians raise eyebrows
Facebook changed the way we communicate. Now the social media giant wants to change how its roughly 2.4 billion users think about using a cryptocurrency to make everyday purchases. Earlier this week, the social network and its partners unveiled a global digital coin called Libra, confirming details of a project that had been leaking out in dribs and drabs for months. …
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