Fail

In what will surely go down as one of the biggest fails in tech history, Apple has quietly announced that it has cancelled its Qi-enabled, long overdue, AirPower charging mat. Apple quietly made the dumbfounding announcement in a written statement to TechCrunch.

Sony has announced a “realignment” that involves Sony Mobile, the Imaging Products & Solutions Business, and the Home Entertainment & Sound Business. The merger will create Sony’s Electronics Products & Solutions Business. Some see it as Sony’s attempt to hide the massive failure of Sony Mobile to compete with rivals such as Samsung, Huawei, and Apple.

Despite Apple’s reputation for build quality and design it has been having a few quality issues of late, particularly with regard to its MacBook line. A search on Apple’s website has revealed all of the products in its lineup that are currently eligible for its “Exchange and Repair Extension” programs.

Office Depot, Inc. and Support.com, Inc. have agreed to pay a combined total of US$35 million to the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) after being accused of tricking customers into paying for unnecessary computer repair services. Support.com has been involved in a similar scareware scandal before, in conjunction with AOL’s Computer Checkup service.

Third time’s not the charm for Apple it seems when it comes to its troublesome butterfly mechanism-based MacBook keyboards. The company has admitted that users are still experiencing issues with the redesign that was meant to end the problems customers reported with the first two generations.

In response to the massive media attention around Operation ShadowHammer yesterday, Asus has released a fix for the affected software (Asus Live Update Utility) to patch the security holes used in the attack. The company also released a tool that allows users to check their systems for any traces of the malware. Links to both the online tool and instructions on updating the Live Update Utility are included below.

Kaspersky Labs earlier today wrote about an attack they discovered in January that compromised Asus' Live Update Utility. The attack affected 57,000 Kaspersky customers and may have hit as many as 500,000 computers around the world. Dubbed "Operation ShadowHammer," the attack injected a Trojan into the Live Update Utility and used authentic Asus software certificates to install itself onto targeted systems.

The Sony Xperia XZ3, a few days ago, made the trip over to photography benchmark website DxOMark, where it failed woefully, continuing the trend of Sony flagships being unable to catch up to the competition.

A comprehensive study carried out by Bitwise Asset Management has come to the conclusion that the majority of reported volume in bitcoin trading is faked. Some unethical bitcoin traders are deliberately manipulating the volume to encourage either buying or selling of the cryptocurrency. Bitcoin is currently valued at US$3,965.

Users of AMD X470 chipset-based motherboards who have updated to the latest AGESA 0.0.7.x offered by some OEMs over the past week are reporting that the update cripples the Precision Boost Overdrive (PBO) from working automatically, requiring manual adjustments via Ryzen Master. The issue seems to have affected some Asus and MSI X470 boards and the only recourse is to downgrade the BIOS (if possible) or wait till a fix for the PBO issue is released.

HMD Global has come up with an official response on the issue of its devices sending sensitive user data to Chinese servers. While the company's reasoning appears sound, it's still a tad appalling that something of this sort is associated with the Nokia brand, especially considering the hardware and software issues the company's devices have been accused of having over the past year.

Although it will retail for more than twice its price, the Samsung Galaxy Fold seems to be slower than the Galaxy S10e. According to an alleged Geekbench entry — that has already been removed from the benchmark database — Samsung's foldable is also slower than the Qualcomm Snapdragon 855-powered Royole FlexPai.

Due to a security oversight made by some Facebook employees, certain Facebook apps have been inadvertently logging user passwords as plain text on internal company servers. While still secured against outside intrusion, between 200 and 600 million user passwords were visible and searchable by about 20,000 employees at Facebook.

Today, the European Commission has fined Google €1.49 billion for abusing its market dominance of online search adverts. The company has now been fined over €8.25 billion by the Commission in less than two years for illegal practices.

A hands-on video of a Samsung Galaxy Fold has been uploaded to YouTube. The clip in question is actually focused on unlocking the smartphone; however, the thing that is immediately apparent is how noticeable the crease down the middle of the device is. The Galaxy Fold will be officially launched on April 26.

In an embarrassing admission, Myspace has confirmed that it has lost every piece of music that users uploaded between 2003 and 2015, which equates to over 50 million files. The company reports that there is no way to recover the lost data.

A number of recent Geekbench listings alluded to the existence of two new Pocophone devices: The Poco F1 Lite and Poco F2. We were skeptical in our coverage of both stories and it turns out were right to be, as it was all just a ruse by the enthusiast community to see how the media would handle the false information.

Due to new customer complaints, HP is expanding its battery recall program with a 78,500 battery batch, and the affected models now include 2018 models such as ProBook 400 G4 and Pavilion x360 (11-inch), ZBook Studio G4, ProBook 430/440/450/455/470 G5, Envy 15 and Mobile Thin Client mt21/22/31.

Xiaomi had planned a sales event for the Mi 9 Transparent Edition, as well as the Mi 9 SE, for today (March 14, 2019) in China. However, reports that it has been abruptly cancelled have come in from that country. The OEM cited unit supply issues while apologizing for this move.

It may have taken over 7 months, but HTC has finally confirmed in which quarter it plans to release Android 9 Pie for the U11, U11+ and the U12+. The three devices should receive the update in Q2 this year, which could by the end of June at the latest. Do not hold your breath though, because HTC has thrown in some caveats too.

Microsoft has recommended that Windows 10 users suffering from problems with graphics or mouse performance degradation in certain games should uninstall the latest update for the ubiquitous operating system. KB4482887 was rolled out for “quality improvements” but has ironically affected quality in a number of crucial areas.

After the March security update, users of the Pixel 3 phones are reporting stability issues with their camera apps. The app apparently lags heavily and tends to completely glitch out during use. This, of course, begs the question of what exactly the Pixels are good for if their cameras are unreliable.

Anthem, the new action RPG game from BioWare, is apparently causing hard crashes on PlayStation 4 consoles. A growing number of gamers are taking to both Reddit and Electronic Arts’ Answers HQ to complain about issues with PS4 shutdowns while playing the game. Apparently, the critical bug is also affecting PC users and Xbox owners, too.

Some renders of a game controller based on a patent application made by Google have been met with considerable derision by the online community. Although the renders themselves have been expertly created, the majority of the negative comments have been aimed at Google’s actual design. The tiny analog sticks, the wide handles, and the ergonomics have all been singled out for criticism.

The popular tech YouTuber Lewis Hilsenteger has posted a video to his channel claiming that the new Samsung Galaxy S10 series' Face Unlock security can be hacked. Hilsenteger demonstrated this by holding his Galaxy S10+ up to a 2nd phone playing a video of his face, which appeared to successfully unlock the former's screen.

Eve-Tech has just had another flash sale for its Eve V device, with potential customers likely enticed by discounts ranging from US$300 all the way to US$600 for the i7-7Y75 variant. However, there seems to be a growing number of disgruntled buyers venting their frustration online over the company’s extreme tardiness in regard to shipping the crowdfunded convertible.

The US Department of Justice, in conjunction with the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, has announced the arrest of Konstantin Ignatov, the so-called “leader” of the supposedly fraudulent OneCoin cryptocurrency. Ignatov has been detained on a charge of wire fraud, and he is accused of cheating investors out of billions of dollars.

The end may be in sight for those who have been experiencing DPC latency-related audio issues with their XPS 15 9570 laptops. Dell has been providing steady updates on Twitter about its progress in resolving the issues, and now an update is on the cards.

During an American Workforce Policy Advisory Board Meeting held on March 6, President Donald Trump made a faux pas by calling the CEO of one of the world’s most famous technology companies “Tim Apple.” To his credit, Apple boss Tim Cook seemed to react to the error with nothing but a stoic countenance while the US President went on to talk about border control.

The Meizu Zero was a novel prospect for the smartphone world: a device with no ports or buttons whatsoever. Its maker had been assessing the demand for this idea via a campaign on Indiegogo. However, it has failed to achieve its goal of US$100,000, securing only about 45% of this figure.

A map for Apex Legends was leaked on Reddit 11 months ago but was quickly dismissed by the community. A redditor called hiticonic uploaded the map image along with the caption “alleged minimap for rumored Titanfall battle royale game.” Another redditor has now created a new subreddit about the leak, allowing hiticonic to receive some belated upvotes.

Zack Nelson of JerryRigEverything fame has been putting a brand-new Samsung Galaxy S10 flagship smartphone through his brutal durability tests. The S10 had to face blades, flames, picks, and bends as it was verbally critiqued by the surprisingly mellifluous tones of the famous YouTuber. The ultrasonic fingerprint scanner was eventually put out of action.

When buying a new laptop, it's undeniably important that the model both performs well and looks great. Nevertheless, these lesser-known aspects are just as important to the user experience even though they are almost never mentioned by most publications and YouTubers.

For those parents desperate to find a new catchy song to entertain children bored of watching “Baby Shark”, look no further. Not only is “Huawei Beauty” sung by a bunch of cute kids, the video also features a nifty dance routine and gives some handy advice about what brand smartphone you should own. Just try to ignore the unsubtle propaganda and occasional iffy imagery.

The Redmi Note 7 is a phone that is sold at US$150, yet has a 48MP camera to sweeten its budget deal. It arrived in the JerryRigEverything YouTube studio to undergo the by-now famous durability test. Unfortunately, the Redmi device fell at the final hurdle.

Skybound Games has announced that it has terminated its contract with Starbreeze Studios for Overkill’s The Walking Dead, effectively cancelling further progress on the first-person shooter. Skybound Games is part of Skybound Entertainment, which was cofounded by the creator of The Walking Dead, Robert Kirkman.

According to a report, people are taking to social media to share their concerns about the Nokia 9 PureView and its potential to trigger symptoms in those who suffer from trypophobia. In simple terms, trypophobia is a fear (or disgust) of groups of holes or bumps. The Nokia 9 PureView’s rear penta-lens setup has a pattern that could have trypophobic effects.

Almost four months on since Dell announced that it would soon fix the DPC latency issues that have caused audio problems for some XPS 15 9570 laptops, Frank Azor has conceded that there is no end in sight for beleaguered owners. While he claims that Dell is making progress, he still cannot give a timeline for when the company hopes to release a fix.

The Samsung Galaxy S10 line introduces the Infinity-O display to the international market. Unfortunately, it seems that some app elements are being occluded or otherwise disrupted by the 'punch-hole' found in the upper right corner of this screen type. This highlights the increasing need to account for and adapt to this new display tech in the future.

Razer has had to cut around 2% of its workforce due to “realignment.” It’s believed many of the staff that have been let go were involved with the company’s smartphone products. The cuts could mean that any progress on the Razer Phone 3 device has been halted while the manufacturer streamlines its operations.

The Galaxy S10 and S10+ are here one day early, sort of. Norwegian TV channel TV 2 has aired the launch advert for the Galaxy S10 and S10+ before tomorrow's Galaxy UNPACKED event in San Francisco. The advert confirms many of the S10 and S10+'s features including its Infinity-O display, its in-screen fingerprint sensor and the now rare headphone jack.

Polish e-retailer X-Kom ran a promotion this past weekend that offered a free copy of Fallout 76 with four sets of PlayStation 4 thumbstick covers, all for POL 19 zl (~US $5). This discount is not out of the norm for retailers selling Fallout 76, a title that has had trouble selling copies and satisfying gamers.

Razer is shutting down the Razer Game Store, its own online retail space for PC games. The store will close in the early morning of February 28th. Any games purchased through the Razer Game Store will continue to work, though keys purchased via the store will need to be redeemed before the end of February. Additionally, Razer will honor any pre-orders made through the Game Store and will continue its Razer Gold and Razer Silver rewards programs.

Vox Media, the parent company of tech news outlet The Verge, has issued multiple copyright claims on videos criticizing its widely maligned PC building tutorial video. Using YouTube's copyright claim system, Vox lodged copyright strikes against several different channels that made criticism or parody videos of the tutorial. YouTube issued a copyright strike against some of the channels in question before reversing the decision, citing fair use under the DMCA.

Amazon has been the focus of considerable political opposition in the state of New York due to its plans to build one of its two new headquarters (HQ) in Long Island. New Yorkers have voiced their discontent with the proposals over the amount it would reportedly cost the state, among other issues. Amazon may now continue its HQ plans with other US locationa in mind.

A press release from Dell published in early January stated that the Dell XPS 15, Alienware m15, and Dell G7 15 laptops would be offered with OLED panel options starting in March. Unfortunately for those waiting to snap up a Dell laptop with this type of display, company executive Frank Azor has now stated that April is the current target.

Working with all major internet providers in the country, Russian authorities are planning an interesting - and quite disturbing - experiment that involves disconnecting all local users from the internet. The purpose of this experiment is to get feedback and maybe provide modifications to a law proposed back in December 2018.

Dell has had to recall certain versions of its portable charging device, the Hybrid Adapter + Power Bank, because of the risk of electric shock. Apparently, the casing of the black adapter part of the accessory can break, which in turn exposes metal components that could pose a hazard. Dell has already received 11 reports of this occurring.

Apple was supposed to completely fix the eavesdropping vulnerability triggered via the Group feature in the FaceTime app last week, but it looks like the company found a few more bugs and fixed them as well. One bug is related to the Live Photos feature in FaceTime, while the other two are related to memory corruption flaws occurring in the IOKit and Foundation.