Fail

A teardown of Facebook's user data archive has revealed the fact that the company collects private user data including well-detailed call logs and text metadata. The company has been involved in a number of cases pertaining to privacy issues, and this is just another icing on the cake.

The Samsung Galaxy J7 Prime 2 smartphone has shown up on the South Korean company’s Indian website. The specifications listed by Samsung for the 5.5-inch device include an octa-core 1.6 GHz CPU from the Exynos 7 Series, 3 GB RAM, 32 GB ROM, and 13 MP rear and front-facing cameras. It is believed the listing may have been posted by mistake.

HTC has announced the release of its two new budget devices, the Desire 12 and Desire 12+. Considering how much of a part the Desire series played in the journey of Android, it's a tad surprising to see the latest devices in the series fall so flat on their faces.

Holding the Surface Pro with one hand while drawing with a Surface Pen on the other is apparently enough to "break" the tablet. A small but annoying bug reduces the accuracy of the Surface Pen if the user is touching the screen at two or more spots simultaneously. Microsoft is offering no time table for when users can expect a fix.

The French multimedia conglomerate Vivendi has given up with its attempt at a hostile takeover of Ubisoft. Vivendi has been buying shares in the latter company for several years now, giving the impression that the mass media giant intended to buy out the famous independent video-game publisher. However, it has now been reported that Vivendi has decided to sell all the firm's shares in Ubisoft.

Researchers at a cyber-security consulting company in Israel have claimed that they have found 13 serious vulnerabilities in AMD processors. CTS-Labs has published details about the flaws after only giving AMD 24 hours to comply. More oddities regarding the previously unhead-of company are elaborated below and in the attached video.

Venezuela’s Petro cryptocurrency has been called “illegal” and “unconstitutional” by the country’s National Assembly. Bitcoin has suffered another fall in its current exchange value, with the virtual currency's latest closing price standing at US$9434. In Japan, the Financial Services Agency has been throwing its weight around and has issued business suspension orders to two cryptocurrency exchanges.

A report published by the highly respected journal Science has estimated that fake news is 70% more likely to be retweeted than true news. The study found that false information which was rapidly shared online through social media reached more people than the truth did. The research also pointed out that fake news travels much faster than real news.

Apparently, some Alexa-enabled devices have started laughing in a disturbing manner at their owners. There have been reports made of unrequested creepy chortles issuing from smart speakers and Amazon devices by a number of users, who cannot understand why their personal assistant has suddenly become so sinister. Amazon is currently working on a fix for this disquieting issue.

Oculus Rift virtual reality headset owners have been struggling to operate their devices today due to an issue with the Oculus Runtime Service. Users who have tried to open the app have faced an error message stating “Can’t Reach Oculus Runtime Service.” Technicians at the tech company are currently investigating the problem, which is possibly down to an expired security certificate.

Could central regulation for cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin, be coming sooner rather than later? Canadian economist and current Governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, brought up a number of issues about cryptocurrency during a speech at the Scottish Economics Conference held at Edinburgh University. These concerns included the current volatility of cryptocurrency values, the relation crypto-assets have with illicit activities, and the need for some form of regulation.

It appears the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has issued dozens of subpoenas to cryptocurrency companies in regard to the number of token sales and Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) that have been made recently. The SEC is looking for these cryptocurrency issuers to provide more information about their business practices and to dig out fraudulent activity.

A detailed report by Onphones has shown proof of Honor India running a subtle, clandestine social media campaign against Xiaomi's new Redmi Note 5 devices on Twitter.

Apparently the 911 emergency services communication center in Elk Grove, California has been receiving hundreds of calls coming from an Apple repair and refurbishing site in the vicinity. Since October, 2017 the total of 911 calls traced to the facility has reached over 1,600. The calls are believed to be accidental and possibly being caused by the SOS mode that the iPhone and Apple Watch feature.

At the end of last week, the Huawei Mate SE was listed on both Amazon and B&H Photo Video. Even more, it also got an official page on Huawei's website. However, all these listings of the rebranded Huawei Honor 7X were removed since then. The US$249.99 Mate SE apparently will come in grey and gold, but now it looks like we have to wait for it to get a proper release.

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.