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Tag: zdnet

  • Microsoft Is Killing Off SwiftKey for iOS

    Microsoft Is Killing Off SwiftKey for iOS

    Microsoft is killing off its SwiftKey predictive keyboard for iOS, with plans to remove it from the App Store as of October 5.

    SwiftKey is a predictive keyboard that gained popularity on Android and iOS before being bought by Microsoft. In recent years Apple’s own iOS keyboard has included many of the features SwiftKey became famous for, such as predictive text and swipe gestures.

    It appears Microsoft is now ending support for the iOS version of SwiftKey, according to ZDNet, removing it from the App Store as of October 5. Chris Wolfe, Director Product Management at SwiftKey, gave the following statement to the outlet:

    “As of October 5, support for SwiftKey iOS will end and it will be delisted from the Apple App Store. Microsoft will continue support for SwiftKey Android as well as the underlying technology that powers the Windows touch keyboard. For those customers who have SwiftKey installed on iOS, it will continue to work until it is manually uninstalled or a user gets a new device. Please visit Support.SwiftKey.com for more information.”

    Microsoft refused to provide any comment as to the reason for the change of plans, but ZDNet’s Mary Jo Foley theorizes the decision may be in response to Apple’s walled garden policies. In the name of privacy Apple restricts access to core elements of iOS, making it difficult for a product like SwiftKey to integrate as fully as the built-in keyboard.

    Microsoft may have simply decided it could no longer deliver the product and experience that it can on Android.

  • Cisco Wants to Fix Hybrid Work With Webex

    Cisco Wants to Fix Hybrid Work With Webex

    Despite being a big supporter of hybrid and remote work, Cisco believes its current incarnation could use some work and is tackling the problem with new Webex features.

    While Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Slack often get the lion’s share of the press about remote work tools, Cisco’s Webex is a popular choice in the business and enterprise space. The company wants to tackle what it sees as some of the biggest issues with current solutions in an effort to help remote users feel more a part of company meetings.

    In an interview with ZDNet, Jeetu Patel, EVP & GM, Security and Collaboration Business Units, identified three main issues with the current state of remote and hybrid videoconferencing meetings:

    • Remote workers can’t always see presentations and whiteboards present in the meeting.
    • It can be difficult to pick up on non-verbal cues via a camera.
    • Technical issues can impact the audio and video and impair the overall experience.

    Cisco is working on some novel solutions, including Webex Whiteboard. The solution is a physical whiteboard that automatically integrates with Webex to display its contents to those connected remotely. As an added benefit, both in-person and remote attendees can interact with it.

    The company is also testing People Focus, a feature that can zoom in on a person and make it easier to pick up on non-verbal cues.

    Cisco is working on the audio aspect of meetings, improving noise cancellation, silencing background conversations, and removing echoes. The company’s Meraki routers can be used to seamlessly switch over to an LTE connection if the main internet connection drops.

    Patel made it clear in his interview with ZDNet that these innovations are designed to help make remote and hybrid work as successful as possible, something he and Cisco see as an important factor moving forward.

    “Wouldn’t it be sad if after the pandemic is over, we all said, ‘Let’s revert back and go 100% to the office?’ The beauty about what we learned in the past couple of years is that talent is available anywhere, globally. And they should be able to participate in the global economy.

    “We’ve made a lot of progress over the last couple of years, and we should take that forward,” Patel continued.

  • The UK Has Fined Clearview AI $9.4 Million

    The UK Has Fined Clearview AI $9.4 Million

    The hits keep on coming for Clearview AI, with the UK’s privacy watchdog fining the company $9.4 million and demanding it delete its data on UK residents.

    Clearview AI is the company that took privacy-invading facial recognition to depths previously unheard of, proudly promising to deliver a more comprehensive surveillance system than China. The company scraped images from social media and countless other sites, building a massive database it claimed was only for government and law enforcement use. Those claims proved untrue, with the company being about as irresponsible with its product as one would expect, based on its shady practices.

    After a string of legal setbacks, the UK has dealt the company another one, fining it millions and ordering it to stop collecting and using the images and data of UK residents, according to ZDNet. The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) engaged in a two-year investigation of Clearview, in cooperation with the Office of Australian Information Commissioner.

    The investigation concluded that the company illegally obtained residents’ photos without proper disclosure, had no legal basis for collecting the photos, didn’t take the proper precautions with the data it collected, and was ultimately in violation of the GDPR.

    “Clearview AI Inc has collected multiple images of people all over the world, including in the UK, from a variety of websites and social media platforms, creating a database with more than 20 billion images,” said John Edwards, UK Information Commissioner.

    “The company not only enables identification of those people, but effectively monitors their behaviour and offers it as a commercial service. That is unacceptable. That is why we have acted to protect people in the UK by both fining the company and issuing an enforcement notice.

    “People expect that their personal information will be respected, regardless of where in the world their data is being used. That is why global companies need international enforcement.”

    Hopefully the company continues to face these kind of legal setbacks.

  • Russian Sanctions Are Dampening Ransomware Attacks

    Russian Sanctions Are Dampening Ransomware Attacks

    Sanctions imposed on Russia by the international community are having an unforeseen side effect: ransomware has taken a hit.

    Ransomware has become one of the biggest cybersecurity threats, impacting organizations of all sizes. Government agencies and educational institutions have been hit hard as well, with Lincoln College recently closing its doors in large part because of a ransomware attack.

    It’s no secret that Russia is the home base of many ransomware gangs, with the Russian government turning a blind eye to their activities. According to ZDNet, the sanctions Russia is under are making it difficult for ransomware gangs to carry out their operations and receive payment.

    “One interesting trend we see is, in the last month or two ransomware is actually down. There’s probably a lot of different reasons why that is, but I think one impact is the fallout of Russia-Ukraine,” said NSA director of cybersecurity Rob Joyce.

    “As we do sanctions and it’s harder to move money and it’s harder to buy infrastructure on the web, we’re seeing them less effective – and ransomware is a big part of that,” he added.

  • Samsung CEO Bows in Apology Over App Throttling

    Samsung CEO Bows in Apology Over App Throttling

    Samsung Experience Division CEO JH Han literally bowed in apology to shareholders over the company throttling apps on its phones.

    News broke in early March that Samsung was throttling game performance on its phones, including its latest flagship S22. Despite the company’s denials, reports seemed to indicate it was also throttling a slew of non-game apps, including some of the most popular ones on the market. The company quickly promised a fix.

    According to ZDNet, at a recent shareholders meeting, JH Han bowed before shareholders in an effort to apologize for the fiasco. Despite Han’s apology, the CEO still defended the Game Optimization Service (GOS) software responsible for the throttling.

    In addition to claiming GOS optimizes smartphone performance, Han denied claims the software was designed to make up for flaws in the S22’s design. Some had said the software was compensating for Samsung not using hardware that could better dissipate heat, by reducing performance and thereby lowering heat levels.

    In the meantime, and to absolutely no one’s surprise, South Korea’s Fair Trade Commission is investigating the issue. Given the precedent that has already been set by Apple losing legal challenges to its own iPhone throttling, it’s a safe bet Samsung’s GOS legal issues are just beginning.

  • Miguel de Icaza, Xamarin Founder, Leaving Microsoft

    Miguel de Icaza, Xamarin Founder, Leaving Microsoft

    Miguel de Icaza, founder of Xamarin and a developer behind the Mono framework, is leaving Microsoft.

    Miguel de Icaza was one of the original developers that helped create the Mono framework, in an effort to bring .Net to Linux. He went on to co-found Xamarin, a company dedicated to supporting Mono and using such frameworks to make cross-platform mobile development much faster and easier. Microsoft acquired Xamarin in 2016, and de Icaza stayed with the company.

    According to ZDNet’s Mary Jo Foley, de Icaza is now leaving, and will likely pursue various startup opportunities…eventually.

    “I am going to rest while the kids are in school,” he told Foley, saying he plans on enjoying vacation time with them. Ultimately, however, de Icaza believes he’ll be lured back to the startup life.

    “Living in this industry is like the kid at the candy store – too many things are happening and there are too many choices. So I want to spend some time sampling some of the candy, and then deciding which one I want to buy a pound of,” de Icaza said.

    “If I wanted to work for a big company, I would have stayed here (at Microsoft). It is awesome here,” he added. “I learned a lot, it was good, but I do miss the startup world, and building and running a team – which I have not been doing here in this role.”

    Given his track record of innovative development, it’s a safe bet de Icaza will have no shortage of opportunities available to him.

  • Apple Recorded Some Siri Interactions, Even If the Setting Was Disabled

    Apple Recorded Some Siri Interactions, Even If the Setting Was Disabled

    Apple has said it inadvertently recorded some customers’ Siri interactions, even when the setting was disabled.

    Apple gives users the choice to share their Siri interactions in an effort to improve the virtual assistant. If the option is enabled, Apple can store and analyze those recordings.

    Evidently, when iOS 15 was released, a bug activated the feature for some users, despite them previously deactivating it. As soon as Apple realized the issue, it took steps to rectify it.

    “With iOS 15.2, we turned off the Improve Siri & Dictation setting for many Siri users while we fixed a bug introduced with iOS 15,” Apple spokesperson Catherine Franklin told The Verge. “This bug inadvertently enabled the setting for a small portion of devices. Since identifying the bug, we stopped reviewing and are deleting audio received from all affected devices.”

    Apple has not disclosed how many users were impacted, although the company says the bug impacted “a small portion of devices.”

    As ZDNet highlights, it appears the bug fix resets the permission warning as well, with iOS 15.4 asking users for permission to use their recordings.

  • AWS Experiences Another Outage

    AWS Experiences Another Outage

    AWS experienced another outage Wednesday morning, just days after a massive one that impacted major companies.

    As the leading cloud provider, AWS helps power a large portion of the web. Companies large and small rely on the platform for their websites, applications, and services.

    According to ZDNet, AWS started experiencing issues around 10:26 AM US Eastern Time, although the issues appear to have been short-lived.

    Similarly, Downdetector.com shows a spike in reported issues, but it quickly subsided.

  • Larry Ellison Says Oracle’s Cloud ERP Will Be “A Lot Bigger” Than $20 Billion

    Larry Ellison Says Oracle’s Cloud ERP Will Be “A Lot Bigger” Than $20 Billion

    Larry Ellison has predicted his company’s cloud ERP business will grow faster than projected, being “a lot bigger” than $20 billion in five years.

    Oracle’s cloud ERP business has been gaining traction, building on the company’s wide portfolio of products and services. The company recently released its quarterly results Thursday, handily beating analysts’ expectations, thanks in no small part to the performance of its cloud business.

    Speaking to investors following the repot, co-founder Larry Ellison said he believes Oracle’s cloud ERP business will be worth far more than current projections and growth rate would indicate, according to ZDNet.

    “I think it’s going to be a lot bigger than that,” Ellison said. Ellison then went on say that the company’s plans revolved around partnerships with other companies, especially in the financial services and and logistics industries, partnerships that will help it accelerate its growth beyond the $20 billion mark.

    Oracle has increasingly been making waves in the cloud industry, poaching major customers from competitors and, most recently, pointing out the reliability of its platform compared to market leading AWS.

    If Ellison’s predictions are correct, Oracle could be poised to make serious headway against the top three cloud companies.

  • AWS Wants to Launch AWS Australia to Better Serve Australian Market

    AWS Wants to Launch AWS Australia to Better Serve Australian Market

    AWS is planning to launch AWS Australia, in an effort to better serve its Australian customers.

    AWS is the leading cloud provider, with data centers, offices and customers around the world. The company wants to take it a step further in Australia, informing the government of its plans to establish AWS Australia as a local entity.

    The company has emphasized that there will be no change to the services it provides, but billing and documentation would reflect the new entity, rather than AWS, Inc. In addition, for customers based in Australia, AWS Australia would charge the standard 10% Goods and Services Tax (GST).

    “We regularly review our business structure to ensure that we are able to best serve our customers. AWS plans to launch an Australian Seller of Record to support the growing adoption of cloud computing by enabling our customers in Australia to purchase AWS Cloud services from an Australia based company,” an AWS spokesperson told ZDNet.

    The move is subject to approval by the Australian Foreign Investment Review Board.

  • Zoom Settles Class Action Privacy Lawsuit for $85 Million

    Zoom Settles Class Action Privacy Lawsuit for $85 Million

    Zoom has agreed to settle a class action privacy suit for $85 million over missteps the company made early in the pandemic.

    Few companies have benefited as much or become so synonymous with pandemic-fueled remote work and learning as Zoom. Once a company that focused priorly on the enterprise, Zoom has become a household name, used across industries and demographics.

    Unfortunately, its meteoric growth came with some major growing pains. The company overstated the level of encryption it provided; it used an SDK that sent data to Facebook without users’ permission; and it failed to provide the necessary security to prevent Zoom-bombing. The missteps were severe enough to prompt the company to enact a 90-day moratorium on new features until security issues could be addressed.

    The company was the target of a number of lawsuits over the missteps, lawsuits which were consolidated into a single class action suit. Zoom has now agreed to settle and make changes to improve its security even more, according to ZDNet.

    Among the changes the company will make is improved notifications to better inform users when a host uses a third-party application, as well as inform users who can access user information and content.

    The plaintiffs are also requesting their legal fees be paid, which would add an additional $21.25 million to the settlement.

  • Avaddon Ransomware Group Just Sent BleepingComputer All Its Decryption Keys

    Avaddon Ransomware Group Just Sent BleepingComputer All Its Decryption Keys

    Avaddon ransomware group appears to be closing shop and has sent all its decryption keys to BleepingComputer.

    Avaddon had previously announced they were shutting down operations, and it’s not uncommon for a group to release decryption keys when that happens, as there’s no longer any financial incentive to keep victims locked out of their files.

    BleepingComputer made the announcement via Twitter.

    All told, there 2,934 decryption keys, each one associated with a victim. Given that experts previously only had proof of 88 Avaddon victims, the number of keys suggest the group was far more successful than anyone realized. It also highlights how few companies actually disclose an attack.

    Fabian Wosar, an expert that helped BleepingComputer verify the decryption keys, told ZDNet that negotiations with Avaddon had recently taken on a new intensity, likely indicating the shutdown was planned and negotiators were trying to get whatever they could before the shutdown date.

    The shutdown likely resulted from the group making all the money they wanted.

    “This isn’t new and isn’t without precedence. Several ransomware threat actors have released the key database or master keys when they decide to shut down their operations,” Wosar told ZDNet.

    “Ultimately, the key database we obtained suggests that they had at least 2,934 victims. Given the average Avaddon ransom at about $600,000 and average payment rates for ransomware, you can probably come up with a decent estimate of how much Avaddon generated.”

  • Dell CTO: 5G Will Move Beyond the Consumer in 2021

    Dell CTO: 5G Will Move Beyond the Consumer in 2021

    Dell Technologies CTO John Roese says 2021 will be a big year for 5G, as it moves beyond the consumer and begins to reach its full potential.

    When many people think of 5G, their first thought is how fast the service will be on their phone, tablet or computer. More than any previous generation of wireless tech, however, 5G is on the threshold of revolutionizing multiple industries. The speed 5G offers promises to help advance artificial intelligence, edge computing, autonomous driving, Internet of Things (IoT) and much more.

    Roese believes 2021 is the year 5G will finally start delivering on its promises, beyond what it offers to consumers.

    5G “hasn’t really transformed much because the first wave of 5G was really an extension of 4G, it wasn’t the real 5G,” Roese said, speaking with media, via ZDNet. “But in 2021 with what’s called release 16 and release 17 of the 5G standards, we will now have true standalone 5G materialise and it will include advanced features…[that will]…make 5G interesting.”

    “Building a smart city, or smart factory, or smart hospital, or a logistics system, or a transportation network needs these advanced features and as they materialise, the 5G ecosystem will shift from being very consumer focused to really being dominated by enterprise use cases,” Roese added. “Revolutionising transportation, or healthcare, or logistics will become more and more of the dominant thread of why we’re doing 5G.”

  • iOS 14 iMessage Has a Major Security Upgrade

    iOS 14 iMessage Has a Major Security Upgrade

    iMessage in iOS 14 has a major upgrade over previous versions, taking security to an all-new level.

    With more than 1 billion iPhones, Apple’s iMessage is one of the most popular messaging platforms on the market. As a result, it’s a popular target for hackers and bad actors looking for an attack vector.

    It appears Apple has taken a significant step toward protecting iMessage users in iOS 14, adding a behind-the-scenes feature called BlastDoor, first noticed by Samuel Groß, a security researcher with Google’s Project Zero, and reported on by ZDNet.

    BlastDoor unpacks a received message and all its contents in a safe, secure silo. This allows the the message to be opened and viewed without it being able to access the underlying system, user data or anything that could allow it to post a threat.

    Groß seems confident the changes will be a net positive for iMessage security and should help reduce iMessage exploits.

    Overall, these changes are probably very close to the best that could’ve been done given the need for backwards compatibility, and they should have a significant impact on the security of iMessage and the platform as a whole. It’s great to see Apple putting aside the resources for these kinds of large refactorings to improve end users’ security. Furthermore, these changes also highlight the value of offensive security work: not just single bugs were fixed, but instead structural improvements were made based on insights gained from exploit development work.

  • Is Microsoft Teams the Next Great Spyware?

    Is Microsoft Teams the Next Great Spyware?

    Microsoft Teams is one of the primary corporate communications platforms, but recent information suggests it collects disturbing amounts of information.

    Since the start of the pandemic, Microsoft Teams has experienced meteoric growth, surpassing rival Slack in the corporate messaging market. The company has continued to add features and abilities, making Teams a full-featured platform. As such, the product is increasingly important to Microsoft.

    In March 2020, CEO Satya Nadella said Teams had “become critical infrastructure for people who are doing remote work.” Similarly, Nadella told The Financial Times that he sees Teams being as big and important as the web browser.

    ZDNet’s Chris Matyszczyk decided to take a look at the information Teams collects and reported his “head is spinning” after what he found. Per Microsoft’s own documentation, the company collects the following information:

    Microsoft Teams Data Collection
    Microsoft Teams Data Collection

    As Matyszczyk points out, employees have little say in the data collection, a point confirmed by Microsoft. When he reached out to the company, a spokesperson told Matyszczyk:

    At Microsoft, we believe that data-driven insights are crucial to empowering people and organizations to achieve more.

    The spokesperson reiterated the company’s commitment to privacy, but made it clear the Teams administrator is the one that has all the control:

    We also believe that privacy is a human right, and we’re deeply committed to the privacy of every person who uses our products. Only the global administrator has rights to the analytics and reporting experience, which provides insights into the ways in which the organization is using Microsoft Teams, not the message content itself.

    In many ways, it’s easy to see why Microsoft has built such extensive data collection into Teams. The company is battling Slack for dominance of the corporate messaging market, and is facing further competition from up-and-coming rivals. Given Nadella’s prediction about the important of the platform, Microsoft clearly wants to provide every advantage it can to companies who use its product over competitors. One big advantage is a treasure trove of data that can give insight into how a company’s workers, especially remote workers, are doing their job.

    At the same time, there’s no denying that many companies have gone to extreme measures to monitor their remote employees, measures that have even been labeled “spying.” If Microsoft isn’t careful, it could find itself facing backlash for making it that much easier to spy on workers.

  • Sophos Suffers Data Exposure Incident

    Sophos Suffers Data Exposure Incident

    Security firm Sophos has informed customers it suffered a data breach as a result of a misconfigured database.

    According to ZDNet, customers’ personal information was exposed, including names, emails and phone numbers. The company informed impacted customers via email, which ZDNet got a copy of.

    On November 24, 2020, Sophos was advised of an access permission issue in a tool used to store information on customers who have contacted Sophos Support.

    The company confirmed the breach to ZDNet, saying that only a “small subset” of its customers were impacted. Nonetheless, this is the second major security issue this year for Sophos, a major source of embarrassment for a company in the business of providing computer security to its customers.

    The company tried to assure customers it was doing everything it could to address the issue.

    At Sophos, customer privacy and security are always our top priority. We are contacting all affected customers,” the company said. “Additionally, we are implementing additional measures to ensure access permission settings are continuously secure.

  • Microsoft Extends Remote Work Till July 2021

    Microsoft Extends Remote Work Till July 2021

    Microsoft has once again pushed back its timetable for returning to the office, saying remote work will continue till July 2021 at the earliest.

    Like most companies, and especially those in the tech industry, Microsoft sent its employees home as the coronavirus swept the globe. As many other companies did, Microsoft has been moving its return-to-office date back as the situation has developed.

    Most recently, Microsoft planned on re-opening offices in January of 2021 but, according to ZDNet, the company has now pushed that back to July. Leadership informed employees in an October 21 email:

    “Returning to the worksite remains optional until we get to Stage 6. This stage represents a time when COVID-19 is no longer a significant burden on a country/region and most health and safety restrictions at our worksites are removed,” according to Microsoft’s Kurt Delbene, Executive Vice President, Corporate Strategy, Core Services Engineering and Operations, the author of the latest email.

    While some employees are already working onsite to some extent, Microsoft “strongly encouraged” all employees whose job permits to continue working remotely.

  • Windows 10X Single-Screen In 2021, Dual-Screen In 2022

    Windows 10X Single-Screen In 2021, Dual-Screen In 2022

    Windows users excited about the upcoming Windows 10X will have to wait until the sprint of 2021 for a single-screen rollout, with dual-screen support debuting a year later.

    Windows 10X is the latest update to Windows that ditches legacy code, focuses on a simpler interface, modular design and is built to support multi-screen devices. As the pandemic has taken its toll, however, Microsoft diverted resources to more pressing issues, delaying the Windows 10X release.

    According to ZDNet’s Mary Jo Foley, Microsoft’s plans are beginning to take shape.

    “I’m hearing Microsoft’s latest plan calls for 10X to debut on single-screen devices designed primarily for businesses (especially firstline workers) and education in the spring of 2021,” writes Foley. “And in the spring of 2022, Microsoft is aiming to roll out 10X for additional single screen and dual-screen devices, my contacts say.”

    Another significant change is that the initial release will likely not support running Win32 apps in containers, as was originally planned. Instead, this feature will be pushed back to the 2022 release at the earliest.

  • Microsoft Delaying Windows 10X and Surface Neo

    Microsoft Delaying Windows 10X and Surface Neo

    Users excited about Microsoft’s upcoming Windows 10X and Surface Neo phone will have to wait till next year, according to reports.

    Microsoft unveiled the Surface Neo in October, with plans to ship the dual-screen device in 2020. Along with it, the company was also planning on releasing Windows 10X, a version of the operating system designed specifically for foldable devices. With the effects of the pandemic in full swing, it appears Microsoft may be putting both releases on hold to address more pressing issues.

    According to Mary Jo Foley, ZDNet’s All About Microsoft writer, sources inside Microsoft said “that Chief Product Officer Panos Panay informed some of his team internally today, April 8, that Microsoft wouldn’t be delivering its own Surface Neo dual-screen 10X devices this calendar year. In addition, Microsoft also won’t be enabling third-party dual-screen Windows devices to ship with 10X in calendar 2020.”

    Notably, Foley’s sources do not indicate Microsoft is delaying the Surface Duo, the Android-driven sibling to the Neo. If true, this would seem to indicate the bottleneck lies with fine-tuning Windows 10X, rather than a hardware issue.

  • Google and Microsoft Reigniting Browser Wars

    Google and Microsoft Reigniting Browser Wars

    Some things are too good to last, and it appears Google and Microsoft’s BFF cooperation on the browser front is one of them, as both companies are taking swipes at the other.

    Microsoft’s current browser, Edge, uses Google’s Chromium rendering engine. Chromium is an open-source rendering engine that a number of browsers, including Chrome, are powered by. Microsoft retired its own HTML rendering engine in favor of the move to Chromium in an effort to improve compatibility and reliability. Basing Edge on Chromium also lets Microsoft focus more resources on the browser’s front-end and user experience. Microsoft has even added a number of significant features to Edge that have made, or are making, their way into Chrome.

    The cracks started to show up when Google began using user agents to warn Microsoft Edge users they should “upgrade” to Google’s Chrome. User agent strings are the method by which web browsers identify themselves. In the early days of the web, when Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator were vying for dominance, webmasters would routinely code their websites to primarily work with one or the other browser. Webmasters would check a visiting browser’s user agent, or identity, and warn users they needed to “upgrade” if they weren’t running the browser their website was designed to support. Eventually, as the web started becoming more standards-compliant, the practice largely fell out of favor, with webmasters focusing on creating websites that adhered to standards and worked for everyone.

    Now Google seems intent on going back to those dark days of the early web. According to Windows Latest, “Google services are still targeting Edge with scary warnings. In the past, Google has displayed a warning when users opened services such as Google Teams, Gmail, Google Docs and YouTube Music in Edge.”

    Interestingly, if Edge users change their user agent to Chrome, the warning goes away. Google is also not targeting other Chromium-based browsers, such as Opera.

    Microsoft, in turn, has been warning individuals who try to download extensions from the Chrome Web Store that downloaded extensions from “unverified” sources may not be safe.

    Chris Matyszczyk, with ZDNet, reached out to both companies, as well as did a bit of his own investigating.

    “My sniffings around Google suggest the company may have been taken aback by the positive public reaction to Edge,” writes Matyszczyk. “Oddly, Google doesn’t seem to be offering these scary messages to users of, say, the Opera browser.

    “My nasal probings around Redmond offer the reasoning that, well, Microsoft hasn’t tested or verified extensions that arrive from places other than they Microsoft Edge add-ons website. Why, they’re far too busy to do that. And, well, it’s the Chrome web store. Who knows what you’ll find over there? Oh, and Edge gives you more control over your data, so there.”

    Whatever the motivations of both companies, the back-and-forth, tit-for-tat needs to stop. Dragging users back to the ‘90s-style browser wars that emphasized protecting turf over supporting standards is a losing recipe for everyone involved—especially the end user.

  • EU May Enorce Smartphone Replaceable Batteries

    EU May Enorce Smartphone Replaceable Batteries

    The European Commission is considering a proposal that would force smartphone manufacturers to use easily replaceable batteries.

    One of the primary goals of the proposed legislation is to help reduce e-waste by giving users the ability to replace an aging battery and continue using the phone. As ZDNet highlights, how the EU would go about enforcing it is unknown. Evidently, despite the EU trying to enforce a uniform charging port standard, there are no plans to take a similar approach with batteries. Different manufacturers, shapes, sizes and more all play into how batteries are designed.

    Although replaceable batteries used to be quite common in cell phones, the industry has changed dramatically since then. Phones have become larger, while at the same time slimmer. Smartphones are used hours more per day, and for a wider variety of tasks, than old-style flip phones.

    Companies often are accused of sealing up their phone cases and using non-replaceable batteries to improve profits by making it difficult to replace the battery and extend the life of the device. In at least some cases, however, there are practical issues. Having a sealed case helps keep dust out and makes it easier to waterproof the phone. It can also be easier to put a larger battery in a sealed phone.

    These factors will likely cause manufacturers to push back against the EU’s proposal. Whether they will be successful or not, remains to be seen.