List of All Articles with Tag 'tech'

The Supreme Court has sided with Google, Twitter and Facebook in lawsuits seeking to hold them liable for terrorist attacks

In Meta Platforms Inc.’s year of cost cutting and layoffs, there’s one area that’s seeing record spending: an

Apple is set to launch three new accessibility functions to enable greater usability for people with disabilities. The Assistive Access, Personal Voice and Point and Speak functions will be operational later this year, the company announced earlier this week. Other features to help deaf or hard-of-hearing users and those with low vision across Apple products including Macs and iPads are also being introduced. Guide dogs are dedicated to enhancing our service delivery and empowering our service users to embrace the opportunities that technology offers, enabling them to live life on their own terms Tommy Dean, Guide Dogs It comes as the company welcomed several guide dogs from the charity Guide Dogs to its store in Birmingham as part of Global Accessibility Awareness Day on Thursday. The Point and Speak function allows those who are blind or have vision issues to point a camera at text and hear back what can be seen, helping people to navigate their visual environment. Tommy Dean, Guide Dogs technology development lead at Apple, said: “In today’s digitally driven world, Apple devices offer users with vision impairments the freedom to live life on their own terms. Technology is a part of our everyday lives and plays such an important role in making the world a much more accessible place Siobhan Meade, Guide Dogs “With inclusive design and comprehensive training, these devices become essential tools for independence. “Guide dogs are dedicated to enhancing our service delivery and empowering our service users to embrace the opportunities that technology offers, enabling them to live life on their own terms.” As part of the launch, Apple gave 85 vision rehabilitation specialists from Guide Dogs specialised training in iOS accessibility settings and features for individuals with vision loss in March. Siobhan Meade, digital technology content officer at Guide Dogs, said: “Technology is a part of our everyday lives and plays such an important role in making the world a much more accessible place. “I use the Maps app daily to navigate the world through my fingertips along with my guide dog Marty. “It’s great to be able to mark Global Accessibility Awareness Day with the training with Apple that will allow our specialists to continue supporting people with a vision impairment to use technology with confidence to live the life they choose.” The Assistive Access feature helps to distil apps including Camera, Photos, Music, Calls and Messages to their essential features, so as to lighten the cognitive load and help users with cognitive disabilities. Users will be able to use high-contrast buttons and large text labels, or emoji-only keyboards for people who prefer to communicate visually. The Live Speech function will allow users to type what they want to say so that it can be spoken out loud during phone conversations, to help those who are losing or have lost their speech. The Personal Voice feature also allows those who are losing their speech to keep a voice that sounds like them, made by recording 15 minutes of audio on an iPhone or iPad. Read More Charity boss speaks out over ‘traumatic’ encounter with royal aide Ukraine war’s heaviest fight rages in east - follow live Self-driving cars will cause ‘moral panic’ – transport minister Cryptocurrency trading should be regulated as gambling, says treasury committee WhatsApp offers new password protected feature to hide messages

President Joe Biden intends to select veteran government lawyer Anna Gomez to serve on the Federal Communications Commission

The Supreme Court has sidestepped a case against Google that might have allowed more lawsuits against social media companies

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said he welcomed and expected more investment from global chipmakers, after meeting top executives on Thursday before a Group of Seven summit.

Discounted food apps like Too Good To Go and Flashfood can help you reduce food waste and find great deals on grocery staples like eggs, bread, and more.

U.K. telecom company BT Group plans to shed up to 55,000 jobs by the end of the decade and replace some of them with artificial intelligence

By Medha Singh NYSE Arca Equities is looking into likely erroneous trades in the shares of IT solutions

Less than six years after launching in the US, TikTok is now facing a reckoning. After amassing more than 150 million users in the country, lawmakers are now making moves to roll out a complete ban. The biggest ever Chinese tech success in the US is accused of mishandling user data and holding too much influence over Americans, with Montana becoming the first state to sign a bill into law to make it illegal for TikTok to operate there from January 2024. Fears around national security have been countered with questions about censorship, with the Electronic Frontier Foundation describing the prospect of a ban as a “seed of genuine security concern wrapped in a thick layer of censorship”. The US digital liberties group has called on people to “resist a governmental power to ban a popular means of communication and expression”, while the FBI claims Chinese state ties to parent company ByteDance could allow the app to “manipulate content” in order to spread harmful propaganda. The US is not the first major market to consider a total ban of the social media platform, with India issuing a complete TikTok ban in 2020. Other countries and areas, including the EU, have put partial bans in place. Various federal and state TikTok bans are already in place in the US, banning government workers and military personnel from using the app on official devices. This has done little to stem its growth in the US, with TikTok proving to be the most popular app both in America and globally last year with 672 million total downloads. This has helped bring the total number of TikTok users around the world to above 1.5 billion, with only India’s ban nearly three years ago slightly slowing its growth – but only temporarily. Despite the warnings surrounding TikTok, the app is viewed positively by the majority of young users, which may cause the Biden administration to hesitate on ordering an outright ban given younger demographics typically skew towards voting Democrat. TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew defended the app and its intentions when he appeared before Congress earlier this year. The former Facebook intern downplayed ties to the Chinese government while trying to convince members of Congress that the app is safe for US users and poses no threat to national security. After Montana signed a TikTok ban into law on 17 May, 2023, a TikTok spokesperson said that the company would “work to defend the rights of our users” in all regions. Read More TikTok gains 50 million users in US as ban looms Schoolboy almost dies from swallowing magnets for TikTok challenge Woman shares honest review of New York City apartment TikTok mom slammed after making 5-year-old son run in 104 degree heat

Alaska Native villages have long been caught on the wrong side of the digital divide with no internet connections or a sluggish link at best

Montana has become the first US state to announce an outright ban of TikTok, however questions have been raised about both the legality and the practicality of the new law. State legislators signed the bill into law on Wednesday, making it illegal for TikTok to operate in the state from January 2024. Some claim such a ban is unconstitutional, as it challenges the First Amendment right to freedom of speech and the press, while others note that it would be “impossible” to enforce. “Montanans are indisputably exercising their First Amendment rights when they post and consume content on TikTok,” Jameel Jaffer, executive director at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, told The Independent. “Because Montana can’t establish that the ban is necessary or tailored to any legitimate interest, the law is almost certain to be struck down as unconstitutional.” Montana’s 200,000 TikTok users will not face any repercussions for using the app, however TikTok and other companies face a $10,000 daily fine for each time someone accesses the app or is “offered the ability” to download it. Apple and Google have not spoken out against the law, but a representative for TechNet, the trade group that counts the two tech giants as its members, has said app stores don’t have the ability to “geofence” apps in different states and it would be impossible to prevent TikTok from being downloaded in Montana. The group has also said the responsibility should be on an app to determine where it can operate, not an app store. Telecoms analyst Roger Entner, of Recon Analytics, said he believes the app stores could have the capability to enforce the law, but it would be cumbersome to implement and full of loopholes. Apple and Google’s address-linked billing could be bypassed with prepaid cards and IP geolocation easily masked by using a VPN service, which can alter IP addresses and allows users to evade content restrictions, said mobile security expert Will Strafach, the founder of Guardian, which makes a privacy protection app for Apple devices. Oded Vanunu, head of products vulnerability research at the cyber security firm Check Point, agreed it would be difficult for app stores to isolate a single state from downloading an app. He suggested it would be more feasible for TikTok to comply since it controls the software and can “adjust the settings based on the geographical location or IP addresses” of users. TikTok could technically block any people from Montana using the app by tracking their location, and disable the app if they are within a certain area, however this type of restriction can be easily bypassed with VPN technology. A legal battle is likely to follow, with TikTok hinting that a legal challenge will be launched in the coming weeks and months. A spokesperson said: “We want to reassure Montanans that they can continue using TikTok to express themselves, earn a living, and find community as we continue working to defend the rights of our users inside and outside of Montana.” Additional reporting from agencies Read More TikTok ban in numbers: Charting the controversial rise of the world’s most popular app Shou Chew: How a Facebook intern became the boss of TikTok