May, 2019

• 24 May

  Europe’s GDPR has accomplished a lot in its infancy

  

  Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation, which celebrates its first birthday Saturday, has managed to do a lot as a tyke. The GDPR changed the rules for companies that collect, store or process information on residents of the EU, requiring more openness about what data they have and who they share it with. The law is …

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• 24 May

  Best Buy cancels Galaxy Fold preorders

  

  Best Buy on Thursday said it’ll cancel preorders for the Samsung Galaxy Fold. A post on the Best Buy forums from a member of the company’s social media team said the retailer decided to cancel preorders because of the lack of a new release date.  “Because we put our customers first and want to ensure they are taken care of …

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• 24 May

  Amazon files patent to record before you say ‘Alexa’

  

   Amazon has filed to patent a method for Alexa to start recording before anyone uses the wake word. The patent filing, first spotted by BuzzFeed News, would capture and process incoming audio, detect long pauses, and send the data to a remote server while Alexa waits for the wake word. “When the system detects a wake word within a particular utterance, the …

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• 24 May

  Samsung deepfake AI could fabricate a video of you from a single profile pic

  

  Imagine someone creating a deepfake video of you simply by stealing your Facebook profile pic. The bad guys don’t have their hands on that tech yet, but Samsung has figured out how to make it happen.   Software for creating deepfakes — fabricated clips that make people appear to do or say things they never did — usually requires big data sets …

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• 24 May

  T

  

  The busy week surrounding the T-Mobile-Sprint merger took another twist Friday.  After getting a thumbs-up from the FCC earlier this week, followed by a report that the Department of Justice staff were still against the merger, a new report suggests that the DOJ may still let the merger go through.  According to the New York Post, FCC chairman Ajit Pai …

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• 24 May

  Facebook will launch its own cryptocurrency in 2020, report says

  

  Facebook plans to release its own cryptocurrency in early 2020, according to a report Friday from the BBC. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg reportedly met with Bank of England Governor Mark Carney in April to discuss the cryptocurrency. The social media platform will lay out plans for its coin, internally called GlobalCoin, later this summer and begin tests by the end …

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• 24 May

  MacBook Pro keyboard: iFixit teardown reveals what Apple changed in latest update

  

  When Apple redesigned its controversial MacBook Pro keyboard this week the company was light on details, promising that there was a new material to help alleviate the problem of double-presses but still not providing specifics.  After a new teardown published Friday by iFixit, however, some of those details are now coming to light.  According to the site, Apple appears to …

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• 24 May

  Apple’s 2020 iPhones could have full

  

  Apple iPhone rumors show the 2020 versions will have “significant changes,” according to a report. As well as the addition of 5G, the smartphone could also have 3D sensing via rear cameras, full-screen Touch ID and OLED screens from LG, MacRumors said Friday, citing a Barclays analyst who’d purportedly just met with Apple suppliers in Asia. MacRumors also said the 2020 …

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• 24 May

  How to watch Marlins baseball in 2019 without cable

  

  After trading away Marcell Ozuna, J.T. Realmuto, Giancarlo Stanton and Christian Yelich, the Miami Marlins are destined to lose 100 games this year and finish dead last again in the NL East. The only reason to watch the Marlins play baseball this year (and next year, too) is to watch the prospects they have acquired get called up to the …

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• 24 May

  Trump could use Huawei ban as leverage for US

  

  The US ban on Huawei could be used as a way to negotiate a better trade deal. President Donald Trump told reporters Friday that he could use an offer to reverse the blacklisting of Huawei as leverage in the escalating trade tensions between the two nations, according to CNN. “Huawei is something that’s very dangerous,” Trump reportedly said. “[But] it’s …

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