Fail

Apple Park may look like a futuristic marvel but apparently it has been causing a number of painful incidents for workers due to its abundance of glass features. It seems distracted Apple employees are walking straight into the surrounding glass panels.

An email has been leaked showing the CEO of Insel Games appearing to threaten staff job security if they didn't post fake reviews of one of their games on Steam. After looking into these claims, Valve has decided to remove the developer from the Steam Store, but their games are still playable for those who have already purchased them.

HMD, perhaps only second to Google in terms of software updates, has failed to release kernel sources for any of its devices so far. Users are also stuck with locked bootloaders, which makes any attempts at community support futile.

The Japanese PC-manufacturer Fujitsu has announced a recall for some laptop batteries used in older Lifebook and Celsius laptops. As in many past cases, fire hazard is the reason for this recall.

Friday's Winter Olympics opening ceremony in Pyeongchang came under cyber attack from malware known as "Olympic Destroyer." The virus affected Internet and television services used by media representatives but did not cause any major long-term disruption.

Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) has detained a group of scientists who attempted to use a supercomputer at a top secret nuclear facility to mine Bitcoin. Security was alerted when the would-be miners tried to connect the computer to the Internet.

Not long after they revealed a custom boot screen on a Nintendo Switch, a group of hackers calling themselves fail0verflow apparently managed to run a Linux-based operating system on this game console.

Leaked code for the iBoot section of iOS 9 was uploaded to GitHub this week, leading to concerns that the software may have fallen into the wrong hands. Apple has already made maneuvers to try to limit the damage caused, but the company should be worried about such leaks happening in the first place.

Thanks to the Battery Health settings that appeared in the latest beta, owners of iPhone 6 and iPhone 7 handsets will be able to disable performance throttling and to keep their devices running at full speed. However, iOS 11.3 has no launch date yet.

In a letter to the Senate Commerce Committee chairman, Apple has hinted at possibly offering a rebate to customers who bought replacement batteries at full price because of the "Batterygate" controversy. Apple reduced battery prices from $79 to $29 in an attempt to appease users who saw an iOS update throttle their devices. Users were not notified beforehand that the software would slow down performance.

Although it quickly infected a few thousand devices worldwide, the spread of the cryptocurrency mining malware ADB.Miner seems to be quite limited at this time. However, there is still time for this piece of code to become a serious global threat.

The Chinese PC manufacturer Lenovo has issued a partial recall of its flagship ThinkPad today. The reason for this recall: A potentially loose screw, which might damage the battery.

While the Surface Book had screen flickering issues that were solved with a software update, this time the Surface Pro 4 seems to be facing a classic case of overheating-induced flickering. Although it might not be a good solution in the long run, it looks like adding some ice helps to quickly eliminate the problem.

Are you an Android user wishes your phone had a huge notch in the display, a la the iPhone X? Chinese OEM Oukitel has you covered. Their new U18, available for pre-order today, is a USD $159 Android alternative to Apple's flagship. However, this notch lacks any obvious utility beyond aesthetics.

Qualcomm is facing a EU€997 million (US$1.2 billion) fine from the European Union for anti-competitive practices based around a five year contract (2011 - 2016) with Apple which imposed a financial penalty if Apple sourced 4G LTE modems from any of Qualcomm's competitors. Qualcomm is also being investigated for intentionally selling modems below cost price in order to force a competitor out of the market between 2009 and 2011.

Fitbit, which acquired the Pebble brand in 2016, has announced that they will support the Pebble smartwatch line until June 20th, 2018. In other words, support for Pebble services and devices will end on June 30th of this year, marking the end of an era.

The darling of the mobile phone enthusiast community is in hot water once again. Less than a week after it was discovered that OnePlus was sending user data to servers in China without permission, the Chinese OEM's merchant platform was compromised. OnePlus has just revealed the full scope of the attack: up to 40,000 users may have had their credit card information stolen.

Rosen and Pomerantz law firms representing AMDs investors claim that the processor maker had prior knowledge about the Spectre variant 2 vulnerability. Investors are also claiming that the stock prices have dropped upon the release of BIOS updates for the Spectre variant 2 vulnerability.

Bitcoin has proved that it's not for the faint of heart this week. At one point today, BTC swooped down 10% for the day and hit a 35% loss for the week. Just in today's trading, BTC has seen losses and gains between 10% on each side.

F-Secure's security researchers discovered another flaw in Intel's Active Management Technology (AMT) that a hacker can potentially misuse to gain remote access to a system.

Users of older generation 'Haswell' and 'Broadwell' Intel CPUs are reporting of constant reboots after applying patches to address the Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities. Intel is looking at issuing a revised firmware to address specific issues related to these CPUs.

The Nokia 8 made its way to DxOMark over the week, with the first-gen HMD flagship registering camera scores that wouldn't look out of place on a device straight out of 2015.

Although some ARM-driven Chromebooks do not need patching, there are also a few Chrome OS-powered notebooks that will not get any sort of protection from Meltdown and Spectre, including the Acer C7 and the Samsung Chromebook 5.

OnePlus has been caught manhandling user data again, with a OnePlus 3T user on the OnePlus forums showing proof of his clipboard app sending data to an Alibaba-controlled server.

Do you have $300 burning a hole in your pocket and really like the manga Fist of the North Star? The eOneBook by Progress Technologies may be the device for you. Featuring two E ink displays that fold out like a book, the device can only be used to read 18 volumes of Fist of the North Star.

Although February is not here yet and the situation might change until then, unconfirmed rumors claim that Huawei and AT&T's deal is off and the two brands will no longer team up as expected.

Microsoft has halted some security updates for AMD-powered computers due to said updates apparently bricking people's machines. Microsoft blames inaccurate documentation provided by AMD.

HP has issued a battery recall that covers 15 models using a specific battery supplier. A utility has been provided to verify if yours is at risk and HP is providing free battery replacements at authorised repair centers.

AMD's latest graphics driver software has introduced fatal conflicts with a number of classic DX9 titles. The games have been deemed "too old" for AMD to address.

WhatsApp went down in many parts of the world on the occasion of New Year much to the dismay of users. The outage, however, was quickly resolved and the service is now back online.

After a short time spent as a beta release, Android Oreo is now rolling out to Xiaomi Mi A1 handsets across the globe. Unfortunately, it also carries a minor bug that makes the Phone app shortcut disappear from the home screen, but fixing it takes less than a minute.

In emails to The Verge, HTC and Motorola have clarified that they do not slow down phones as the batteries start wearing out. This comes in the wake of Apple's now controversial policy of slowing down phones with ageing batteries.

According to multiple Galaxy Note 8 users, their high-end phablets simply died after the battery ran out, refusing to charge and boot up. For now, Samsung is investigating the problem and advises all those affected to contact its customer support service.

The latest Ubuntu release has a bug in the Intel SPI driver in the Linux kernel that seems to be corrupting UEFI firmware on certain Lenovo and Acer laptops leaving users with no options to change UEFI settings or select an alternative boot method.

More users of older iPhones are now claiming an improvement in performance after a battery replacement. One posted a couple of screenshots on Twitter showing the CPU being underclocked to less than half of its stock speed before returning to normal after a new battery was swapped in. Updated with response from Apple.

Some Firefox users recently found an unwarranted add-on installed in their browsers. The add-on, which is a page tool tied to the popular online show "Mr. Robot," was installed for some users that are a part of Mozilla's Studies program. While not malicious, the add-on was installed without the users' knowledge and raised some alarm from fervent Mozilla fans.

A user on Reddit has posted potential evidence that Apple could be throttling older iPhones relative to the output battery voltage to prevent them from drawing too much power. Although this is not the first instance of throttling on iPhones, it surely has been a subject of much debate.

Although this is not the first time it happens this year, HP has been caught red-handed once again. This time, the keylogger has been found in the Synaptics touchpad driver that ships with more than 460 HP notebook models.

Due to the high volatility and growing transaction fees associated with Bitcoin, Valve is no longer accepting the cryptocurrency as a payment method for purchases made on Steam. This decision sheds some light on the economic ramifications of the rapid growth of a currency.

BLU has released a fix for the phone-bricking OTA update they issued last week. While many users are reporting success, some customers will be left out to dry. Affected users are understandably upset at the latest misstep by BLU.

The teardown of the Huawei 10 Pro by iFixIt revealed that replacing the display involves the removal of almost every component, and fixing the front camera requires switching the whole display, including its frame.

While many users with bricked phones are still waiting for an official solution to their problem, BLU Products forgets about the mayhem caused by its latest OTA update and silently intros the Life One X3 mid-ranger.

Although the so-called "Microsoft Edition" Galaxy S8 has been available in the Microsoft Store for a few months, Samsung finally decided to let the world know that these flagships sold by the Redmond giant's store are not special at all.

A few years after removing apps that showed ads as push notifications, Google takes one more step in the right direction and forbids apps that display ads in the device's lock screen from being distributed via Google Play.

While Intel is working with the big brands to patch the major security holes recently discovered in its Management Engine firmware, System76 plans to take it all to the next level by disabling IME entirely via a firmware update.

After five years in development, Skyforge entered the open beta stage in early 2015. This free-to-play MMORPG was released for PlayStation 4 in April, and now the time has finally arrived for the Xbox One console to get it as well.

As strange as it may seem, Samsung recommends a "gentle tap to the back" or "a small shake" of their Galaxy S8 to those who complain that their phone's main camera is taking blurry photos and has problems focusing.

The latest OTA update for the phones of the popular US-based BLU Products apparently managed to brick a lot of phones and a lot of people are (very) angry about it. Sadly, there is no official solution for this problem that does not involve a factory reset.

The US Federal Communications Commission is set to cast a vote that will repeal the Net Neutrality laws that keep the Internet fun for everyone. American or not, it's time you had a say in this matter. Let your voice be heard today.