Mark Di Stefano, reporting for The Information (paywalled): A few years back, two Brussels-based lobbyists from midsize tech companies were out for drinks, and in the course of the conversation they realized they had a common problem. Google, Amazon, Apple and Facebook were sucking all of the oxygen out of European debates about regulating the…

Amazon says its voice assistant will infer the “latent goals” of its users. …read more Source:: CNet

The episode schedule for The Mandalorian’s second season is live, and the first two episodes are available now. …read more Source:: CNet

[Will Cogley] is slowly but surely crafting a beautiful bionic hand. (Video, embedded below.) The sheer amount of engineering and thought that went into the design is incredible. Those who take their hands for granted often don’t consider the different ways that their digits can move. There is lateral movement, rotation, flexion, and extension. Generally,…

ESET researchers have discovered ModPipe, a modular backdoor that gives its operators access to sensitive information stored in devices running ORACLE MICROS Restaurant Enterprise Series (RES) 3700 POS (point-of-sale) – a management software suite used by hundreds of thousands of bars, restaurants, hotels and other hospitality establishments worldwide. The majority of the identified targets were…

Electric car batteries require rare earth materials, and the mining process can be harmful to the environment and human rights. …read more Source:: CNet

Bought ‘estimated onomastic data’ that was amended to millions of Brit voters The UK’s ruling Conservative has been using personal data in a way that spots an individual’s likely county of origin, ethnic origin and religion based on their first and last name.… …read more Source:: Register

We dropped and scraped the iPhone 12 to find out how much the new “ceramic shield” screen can handle. Spoiler: It’s a lot more than a six-foot drop. …read more Source:: CNet

5G support, a new striking design, improved cameras and four different models all add up to make the iPhone 12 an absolute unit. …read more Source:: CNet

Native wit… but let’s see what the 13-inch brings Benchmarks highlighting the performance of Apple’s homegrown M1 chip have surfaced, showing Cupertino’s latest (unreleased) MacBook Air handily trouncing the previous generation 16-inch MacBook Pro in both single-core and dual-core tasks.… …read more Source:: TheRegister