EU pledges $53m to help build Palestinian state | Israel News

The European Union has announced a new funding package of 42.5 million euros (nearly $53m) to help the Palestinians build their new state.  The announcement on Wednesday came as Brussels urged the US to not go it alone in any effort to make peace between Israel and the Palestinians. The EU  warned that doing so would end in failure. “Any framework for negotiations must be multilateral and must

Messaging giant Line catches cryptocurrency fever

This isn’t as far-fetched as it sounds. Japan is one the largest cryptocurrency markets, and it still has a huge user base even when you don’t include its other products. Its existing payment service has about 40 million users, and this would be a logical extension. New financial services could give Line a healthy source of revenue and lock people in, whether they want to insure their apartment

Apple Stops Signing Older Versions of iOS 11

Following the release of iOS 11.2.5 on January 23, Apple stopped signing older versions of iOS 11, including iOS 11.2, iOS 11.2.1, and iOS 11.2.2. iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch owners who have upgraded to iOS 11.2.5 will no longer be able to downgrade to earlier versions of iOS. Apple routinely stops signing older versions of software updates after new releases come out in order to encourage

Lexip’s joystick-mouse combo is a strange but promising hybrid

While at CES I try to avoid getting bogged down by dozens of random gadgets, and this time I mostly succeeded — but the mouse reviewer in me was intrigued by Lexip’s new gaming mouse that’s also a sort of floating joystick. It’s a strange but cool idea, and although the learning curve is high, I can see some hardcore gamers and productivity fiends getting a lot of use out of it. Lexip is running

Square Cash now allows anyone to buy and sell bitcoin

Blockchaiiiiinnnnn! You can now buy and sell Bitcoin instantly with the Cash App! Still unsure what Bitcoin is? http://bit.ly/2npCqz4 👀 pic.twitter.com/XvYknaEzBl — Cash App (@CashApp) January 31, 2018 The feature is available to most everyone who uses Cash App, unless they’re in New York, Georgia, Hawaii or Wyoming. The company promises that it’s working on it. This does seem to be a

Developers Demo Augmented Reality Improvements Coming in iOS 11.3

The iOS 11.3 update, seeded to developers and public beta testers last week, introduces ARKit 1.5, an upgraded version of the set of tools developers can use to create augmented reality apps for the iPhone and the iPad. As it turns out, ARKit 1.5 can do a lot of neat things. It can map irregularly shaped surfaces for better detection of your surroundings, and it can also recognize and map

Polymail looks to unify business email tools into a single web app

If you’re more of a Gmail power user (or even semi-power user) and other email services geared toward work, you’ve probably installed plenty of plugins like Rapportive to make your job a little bit easier. And while it’s all fine to try to pull together a suite of plugins to make that a little bit easier, a startup called Polymail is hoping to rope that all into a single hub that will suit the

Apple could let you run iPad apps on your Mac

Apple is working hard on the next major versions of its operating systems — macOS, iOS, tvOS and watchOS. While iOS is the big elephant in the room, the most intriguing new feature could be for macOS. According to reports from Bloomberg and Axios, Apple will let you run iPad apps. Yesterday, Axios first reported that Apple’s senior vice president of Software Engineering Craig Federighi announced

Apple Begins Shipping 18-Core iMac Pro to Customers

Apple today began shipping the 18-core iMac Pro to customers in the United States, just over six weeks after it began accepting orders. The first orders are estimated for delivery starting Tuesday, February 6. MacRumors readers Anthony Berenato and Steve McKinnon both alerted us of the shipped status of their orders, while a few other Apple customers have echoed the same in the iMac Pro order

Google takes steps to combat fake news ‘snippets’

The company is also improving the quality of results by displaying more than one snippet. After all, sometimes there isn’t one correct answer to a question. “There are often legitimate diverse perspectives offered by publishers, and we want to provide users visibility and access into those perspectives from multiple sources,” said Matthew Gray, the lead of the snippets team. Google is also

Critical Oracle Micros POS Flaw Affects Over 300,000 Payment Systems

Oracle has released a security patch update to address a critical remotely exploitable vulnerability that affects its MICROS point-of-sale (POS) business solutions for the hospitality industry. The fix has been released as part of Oracle’s January 2018 update that patches a total of 238 security vulnerabilities in its various products. According to public disclosure by ERPScan, the security

Saving refugees in the Mediterranean Sea |

A fortnight ago, the crew of the Dutch NGO boat Sea Watch 3 saved 165 people onboard a rubber vessel north of Libya. The refugees, who had fled Libya and were trying to reach European shores, included eight children and 28 women, three of whom were pregnant. Libya’s coast is a staging post for tens of thousands of people from Africa and the Middle East trying to make the dangerous journey across

South Korea will regulate, not ban, cryptocurrency trading

South Korea’s finance minister Kim Dong-yeon said, “Customs service has been closely looking at illegal foreign exchange trading using cryptocurrency as part of the government’s task force,” and noted that it has detected around 637.5 billion won ($596.02 million) worth of foreign exchange crimes, with cryptocurrency forming the bulk of that figure. In one instance, an illegal exchange agency

Apple Supplier Wistron to Explore iPhone 6s Assembly in India Following Plant Expansion

Apple’s main iPhone manufacturer in India is closing in on a land deal in the tech hub of Bengaluru that will see the firm invest around $157 million to assemble iPhone SE and potentially iPhone 6s models on the site, according to Reuters. Unnamed Indian government officials on Wednesday reportedly confirmed the Taiwanese contractor’s intentions, which could result in its iPhone SE assembly unit

Samsung confirms it is making ASIC chips for cryptocurrency mining

Fresh from toppling Intel as the planet’s biggest seller of chipsets, Samsung has confirmed that it has begun manufacturing ASIC chips which are used to mine bitcoin, ether and other cryptocurrencies. “Samsung’s foundry business is currently engaged in the manufacturing of cryptocurrency mining chips. However we are unable to disclose further details regarding our customers,” a company

SoftBank buys into Line’s mobile service in Japan

SoftBank is partnering up with messaging app Line to help develop its Line Mobile telecom service. Line announced that it has agreed to allow SoftBank to take a 51 percent in the business via an issuance of new shares. The deal is expected to close by March. From the documents, its mobile business is valued at around $15 million (1.7 billion JPY) but a company spokesperson told TechCrunch that

Nintendo Switch sales have surpassed the Wii U

Nintendo’s latest earnings, which cover the nine months leading up to December 31st, 2017, reveal some software triumphs too. The award-winning Super Mario Odyssey has reached 9.07 million sales, while Mario Kart 8 Deluxe — a re-release of the Wii U version with a reworked battle mode – has sold 7.33 million units to date. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild sits at 6.7 million sales, while

Samsung topples Intel to become the world’s largest chipmaker

Samsung has ended Intel’s 25-year run as the world’s biggest seller of chipsets after it posted its 2017 end of year financials. The Korean tech giant’s chipset division — which has long been its biggest hitter — grossed total revenue of $69 billion in 2017, eclipsing the $62.8 billion Intel reported for last year. That was a record year for Intel — and an annual increase of six percent — but it

Appeals court rules that Tinder’s pricing violates age discrimination laws

A California appeals court has sided with Allan Candelore, a man suing Tinder over the pricing for its premium service, Tinder Plus. Specifically, Candelore and his lawyers argued that by charging $9.99 per month if a user is under 30, versus $19.99 per month if you’re 30 or older, Tinder is discriminating based on age, in violation of the Unruh Civil Rights Act and the Unfair Competition Law (

Canada’s BC submits new rules to restrict oil shipments | News

The government of British Columbia has proposed new regulations restricting the transportation of oil through the Western Canadian province in what is expected to be a major setback for a planned pipeline expansion project. The province announced on Tuesday it would seek the public’s feedback on the newly proposed regulations, which include “restrictions on the increase of diluted bitumen

CNN Blames Apple for Apple News Bug That Caused Repeat Notifications

Earlier this afternoon, a bug with the Apple News app caused notifications for a single CNN news story to be sent out to iPhone and iPad users over and over again. The issue, which lasted for approximately 15 minutes, appears to have impacted all Apple News subscribers who had alerts turned on for CNN based on a slew of complaints that popped up on reddit, Twitter, and the MacRumors forums. It

DroneGun Tactical is a portable (but still illegal) drone scrambler

The only thing growing faster than the global drone population is the population of people thinking “how can I knock these annoying things out of the sky?” DroneShield offers a way to do just that, and now in a much more portable package, with the DroneGun Tactical — that is, if you’re an authorized government agent, which I doubt. Over the last few years, the Australian company DroneShield has

A state-run 5G network is impossible in the US

This kind of state-run network is completely antithetical to the administration’s public stance on deregulation and privatization. It even prompted FCC Chairman Ajit Pai to come down strongly in opposition. It turns out, however, that the document was outdated, and the Trump administration strongly denies it ever seriously considered such a proposal. Which is great news for fans of deregulation

Pinterest hires a new head of computer vision

As Pinterest increasingly tries to sell itself as a startup specialized in computer vision that it plugs into visual discovery, it’s continuing to pick up additional pieces to help continue to build that out. Today, the company said it is hiring former Google computer vision research lead Chuck Rosenberg, who was at Google for 14 years. Pinterest sees more than 300 million visual searches every

Apple reportedly under investigation by SEC and DOJ for phone slowdown

The U.S. Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission are jointly investigating Apple’s communications about the software update that slowed down older models of the iPhone, Bloomberg is reporting. Citing sources familiar with the matter, the government has reportedly requested details on the company’s communications about the software update. The Bloomberg report indicates

Google says it removed 700K apps from the Play Store in 2017, up 70% from 2016

The relatively open nature of Android has made it a target for malware authors and other bad actors of all stripes who often try to get their wares onto your phone through both the official Google Play Store, third-party app stores and any other way they can think of. For most users, though, the main Android app store is Google’s own Play Store and as the company announced today, the company

Elon Musk has now sold 15K flamethrowers, earning $7.5M for boring

The Boring Company is getting decently well-capitalized on the back of sales of its flamethrower (yes, flamethrower). The no-doubt overpriced piece of knack, which can be make yourself at home using likely around $30 in parts, is selling for $500 and has already netted Elon Musk’s digging venture $7.5 million. That’s after just over a day of being on sale, and not counting the revenue from fire

U.S. Government Investigating Apple’s Power Management Features That Slow Older iPhones

Apple is continuing to face scrutiny over the power management features it introduced in older iPhones last year, with the U.S Department of Justice and the U.S Securities and Exchange Commission launching an investigation into the company, reports Bloomberg. The DoJ and the SEC are aiming to determine whether Apple violated security laws “concerning its disclosures” when it launched an iOS

Mammoth Media, the startup behind chat fiction app Yarn, raises $13M

Mammoth Media has raised a $13 million Series A funding to create what it calls “entertainment experiences for the mobile-first generation.” Mammoth is not the first startup to pitch itself as reinventing entertainment for smartphones, but for the most part, that message has come from gaming companies. Co-founder and CEO Benoit Vatere said he wanted to take the mobile-centric approach beyond

TrackR lays off staff, sources say 42 in total, in ongoing market contraction

It’s crunch time for TrackR, that startup that lets you use an app to find items like keys, wallets and bags that have been tagged with its small Bluetooth-based tracking devices. TechCrunch has learned and confirmed that the company has laid off a substantial proportion of its staff, as it seeks to sharpen its focus amid a wider market contraction for item-tracking businesses. The company did

Indian iPhone Users Discuss Apple’s Poor Services Performance: ‘Apple Maps is a Joke’

Apple’s ongoing struggles in India have been highlighted this week in a report by CNBC, which interviewed locals to ask about their experiences with the cost of Apple devices and the company’s services. Indian users were favorable of Apple Music over rival services — thanks to an improved catalog and affordable subscription price — but Apple Maps and Siri received much lower marks. Echoing some

UAE jet enables separatists to seize army base in Aden | UAE News

A senior Yemeni official has told Al Jazeera that southern separatists, backed by the United Arab Emirates (UAE), seized control of a key military base in the coastal city of Aden, after a UAE fighter jet bombed the facility. The official told Al Jazeera that fighters from the Southern Resistance Forces (SRF), the armed wing of the Southern Transitional Council (STC) – a political movement

UK plans to let drivers report road accidents online

Drivers are required by law to report a serious accident by calling 999 or by attending a police station for more minor incidents. This needs to be done within 24 hours. By moving things online, it’s believed that the new process would make it easier for road users to file their report within that time, but also reduce the need for people to take time off work. Police forces wouldn’t need to

OneDrive for iOS Updated With Redesigned Interface, Drag and Drop, and Files App Support

Microsoft released an update to its OneDrive app on Tuesday that adds support for the Files app in iOS 11 and brings a host of other new features many of which are responses to user feedback. To begin with, the interface has been overhauled to make better use of screen space and make filenames easier to read, while an ellipsis button next to each item brings up a new contextual options menu, so

FEC reviews stricter rules for political ads on social media

The Congress, the Senate, Google and other entities urged the FEC to conjure up tighter regulations for political ads on social networks and the internet as a whole after what happened during the 2016 Presidential Elections. Facebook first revealed in September that Russian troll farms purchased $100,000 worth of ads on its platform, which pointed to fake news Pages meant to sow discord among

Google completes its $1.1B deal to buy a chunk of HTC’s smartphone division

Google has announced the completion of its $1.1 billion deal to buy a large slice of HTC’s hardware business. The acquisition was announced back in September 2017 but now it has passed the requisite approvals and is finalized. Beyond the transfer of over 2,000 engineers from HTC — that’s around one-fifth of HTC’s engineering team — Google will also receive a non-exclusive license for HTC’s

There’s no way the government is building its own 5G network

A report this weekend by Axios cited documents from within the National Security Council describing the possibility — nay, inevitability — of a 5G network built and operated by the U.S. government. Officials have since poured cold water on this idea, and really, it was never feasible. In brief, the report cited by Axios suggested that the only way to truly secure the next generation of wireless

Five Essential Apps for Your Mac

Apps designed for the Mac often don’t get as much attention as apps for iOS, even though there are dozens of super useful, must-have Mac apps out there. In our latest YouTube video, we took a look at five of the most useful Mac apps that may have gone under your radar. If you don’t already own these apps for organizing and sharing files, they’re well-worth checking out. Subscribe to the

Top court asked to oust Yameen, investigate corruption | Maldives News

Opposition leaders in the Maldives have petitioned the island nation’s Supreme Court to temporarily remove President Abdulla Yameen and investigate allegations of corruption against him. Yameen, 58, dismissed the petition on Monday, telling his supporters in the capital, Male, the opposition alliance was “seeking to overthrow a legitimate government”.  The leaders of four opposition parties said

Study says e-cigarettes may lead to cancer and heart disease

The study isn’t completely shocking when researchers have identified other harmful chemicals. And it’s not conclusive, either. While the testing shows that e-cigarettes are harmful, the highly compressed smoking exposure is far from what you’d see in real life — tumors don’t grow that quickly. You may not see more definitive results until additional animal testing in a year, and much longer than

SuperPhone is building a Salesforce for texting

The address book is the last, worst default app you rely on. It’s time it got as smart as the rest of our phones. That’s the idea behind SuperPhone. Email isn’t how you build relationships anymore. Yet most business software sanctifies the spammy inbox when it’s the immediacy of text messaging that keeps people in touch today. Musician Ryan Leslie learned that when he earned $2 million by

Apple Maps Transit Directions Now Available in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and Omaha, Nebraska

Apple recently updated its Maps app to add transit directions and data for Milwaukee, Wisconsin and Omaha, Nebraska, two places where transit information was not previously available outside of Amtrak routes. Apple Maps users in Milwaukee and Omaha can now select public transportation routes when getting directions between two locations, with bus lines available in both areas. Apple has not yet

DJI Mavic Air review | TechCrunch

The Mavic Air is a minor engineering marvel. The first time you set up DJI’s new drone it’s like trying to solve a puzzle box. You flip, you twist, you unfold. The metal joysticks are safely nestled inside the flip-out arms of the controller, the landing gear safely nestled in the propeller arms. Not a millimeter is wasted, not even in the packaging. It’s the culmination of a dozen years of

‘Dragster’ record holder stripped of his title after 35 years

As noted by Polygon, Rogers never provided recorded proof of his time, and his personal blog gives only a cursory explanation of how he achieved the record, recognized as the longest standing gaming record in April of last year. Twin Galaxies cites “numerous credible sources confirming the veracity” of the software model and analysis that invalidated Rogers’ score, as well as “a significant

iMac Pro Again Available for $3,999 From Micro Center Stores

Micro Center retail stores are once again offering the entry-level iMac Pro for $3,999, an impressive discount of $1,000 off of the regular $4,999 price tag for the newly released machine. The same deal was offered earlier in the month, and iMac Pro models available at Micro Center stores were snapped up quickly. Based on the online stock checking tool, most Micro Center locations have at least

Heat Map Released by Fitness Tracker Reveals Location of Secret Military Bases

Every one of us now has at least one internet-connected smart device, which makes this question even more prominent —how much does your smart device know about you? Over the weekend, the popular fitness tracking app Strava proudly published a “2017 heat map” showing activities from its users around the world, but unfortunately, the map revealed what it shouldn’t—locations of the United States

Apple could use ARM coprocessors for three updated Mac models

According to a Bloomberg article, Apple could be working on three new Mac models for this year. All three of them could feature an ARM coprocessor to improve security. Apple isn’t switching to ARM chipsets altogether. There will still be an Intel CPU in every Mac, but with a second ARM processor. Currently, the MacBook Pro features a T1 chip while the iMac Pro features a T2 chip. On the MacBook

T-Mobile details plan for 100 percent renewable energy by 2021

The mobile carrier will support this goal through a new wind power farm in Kansas, together with the farm it already has in Oklahoma. Together, the two renewable energy sources will provide about 60 percent of T-Mobile’s power. “To reach 100%, T-Mobile will buy enough wind power annually to account for every unit of electricity the company consumes,” the press release states. T-Mobile is the

Apple Working on Trio of New Macs With Custom Co-Processors That Could Launch This Year

Apple is developing at at least three new Mac models integrated with custom co-processors, including updated notebooks and a new desktop, according to Mark Gurman, reporting for Bloomberg News. The report claims the new models could be released as early as this year, but it doesn’t specify which ones they’ll be. Of course, Apple’s notebook lineup includes the MacBook, MacBook Air, and MacBook Pro

What is going on in southern Yemen? | Houthis

The devastating war raging in Yemen for the past three years is on the verge of entering another, even deadlier, stage. On Sunday, forces loyal to the government of President Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi, backed by Saudi Arabia, exchanged fire in the southern Yemeni city of Aden with an armed group aligned with the Southern Transitional Council (STC), a secession movement supported by the United Arab