Month: August 2024
The Pixel 9 Pro XL’s New Design Is One of My Favorite Things About It
I’ve had my hands all over Google’s new phone. Take a look.
I’ve had my hands all over Google’s new phone. Take a look.
Body of British tech billionaire Mike Lynch recovered off the coast of Sicily
Photo: Antonio Cascio / Bloomberg via Getty Images
The body of billionaire tech mogul Mike Lynch was recovered off the coast of Sicily, the Italian Coast Guard announced on Thursday. Lynch’s 184-foot superyacht, the Bayesian, sunk on August 19th, reportedly after being hit by a tornado over the water, called a waterspout. The yacht sank quickly, according to reports, even though its manufacturer claimed it was unsinkable.
Lynch was on the yacht with family and friends celebrating his acquittal on fraud charges in June. HP, which bought Lynch’s company, Autonomy, for $11 billion in 2011, had alleged “accounting improprieties” that misrepresented Autonomy’s value. In an interview with the BBC — the only broadcast interview before the yacht sank — Lynch said his wealth helped him deal with the decade-long legal battle.
The yacht was hit by a waterspout around 4AM local time, according to news reports. Fifteen people — including a baby — managed to escape on a life raft and were rescued by the crew of the Sir Robert Baden Powell, a Dutch ship that was anchored nearby. “They were all under shock,” Karsten Börner, the captain of the Sir Robert, told The New York Times.
Five other bodies were recovered, including that of Christopher Morvillo, one of the attorneys who defended Lynch in the HP trial. Lynch’s 18-year-old daughter, Hannah, is still unaccounted for.
Investigators are looking into why the Bayesian sank when other boats, including a nearby sailboat, were largely unaffected, The Associated Press reports. Börner, the Sir Robert’s captain, told AP that his ship also sustained minimal damage.
Giovanni Costantino, the CEO of the Italian Sea Group — the company that owns the Bayesian’s manufacturer — described Lynch’s yacht as “one of the safest boats in the world” and said the accident likely occurred because the crew didn’t follow basic safety procedures.
Photo: Antonio Cascio / Bloomberg via Getty Images
The body of billionaire tech mogul Mike Lynch was recovered off the coast of Sicily, the Italian Coast Guard announced on Thursday. Lynch’s 184-foot superyacht, the Bayesian, sunk on August 19th, reportedly after being hit by a tornado over the water, called a waterspout. The yacht sank quickly, according to reports, even though its manufacturer claimed it was unsinkable.
Lynch was on the yacht with family and friends celebrating his acquittal on fraud charges in June. HP, which bought Lynch’s company, Autonomy, for $11 billion in 2011, had alleged “accounting improprieties” that misrepresented Autonomy’s value. In an interview with the BBC — the only broadcast interview before the yacht sank — Lynch said his wealth helped him deal with the decade-long legal battle.
The yacht was hit by a waterspout around 4AM local time, according to news reports. Fifteen people — including a baby — managed to escape on a life raft and were rescued by the crew of the Sir Robert Baden Powell, a Dutch ship that was anchored nearby. “They were all under shock,” Karsten Börner, the captain of the Sir Robert, told The New York Times.
Five other bodies were recovered, including that of Christopher Morvillo, one of the attorneys who defended Lynch in the HP trial. Lynch’s 18-year-old daughter, Hannah, is still unaccounted for.
Investigators are looking into why the Bayesian sank when other boats, including a nearby sailboat, were largely unaffected, The Associated Press reports. Börner, the Sir Robert’s captain, told AP that his ship also sustained minimal damage.
Giovanni Costantino, the CEO of the Italian Sea Group — the company that owns the Bayesian’s manufacturer — described Lynch’s yacht as “one of the safest boats in the world” and said the accident likely occurred because the crew didn’t follow basic safety procedures.
Microsoft Will Try the Data-Scraping Windows Recall Feature Again in October
Microsoft will begin sending a revised version of its controversial Recall feature to Windows Insider PCs beginning in October, according to an update published to the company’s original blog post about the Recall controversy. From a report: The company didn’t elaborate further on specific changes it’s making to Recall beyond what it already announced in June.
For those unfamiliar, Recall is a Windows service that runs in the background on compatible PCs, continuously taking screenshots of user activity, scanning those screenshots with optical character recognition (OCR), and saving the OCR text and the screenshots to a giant searchable database on your PC. The goal, according to Microsoft, is to help users retrace their steps and dig up information about things they had used their PCs to find or do in the past.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Microsoft will begin sending a revised version of its controversial Recall feature to Windows Insider PCs beginning in October, according to an update published to the company’s original blog post about the Recall controversy. From a report: The company didn’t elaborate further on specific changes it’s making to Recall beyond what it already announced in June.
For those unfamiliar, Recall is a Windows service that runs in the background on compatible PCs, continuously taking screenshots of user activity, scanning those screenshots with optical character recognition (OCR), and saving the OCR text and the screenshots to a giant searchable database on your PC. The goal, according to Microsoft, is to help users retrace their steps and dig up information about things they had used their PCs to find or do in the past.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
EU iPhones will be able to change the default phone and messaging apps soon
Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge
Apple will soon let iPhone and iPad users in the European Union choose default apps for phone calls, messaging, keyboards, password managers, and more. These options will be available later this year in a new “Default Apps” section in Settings, according to an update on Thursday.
In the spring of next year, Apple says it will also let users set default navigation, translation apps, and call spam filter apps. Along with these new options, iPhone users in the EU will add the ability to delete the App Store, Messages, Camera, Photos, and Safari apps. The only apps Apple won’t let users delete are Settings and Phone.
Image: Apple
Apple is adding more detail to its browser choice screen.
Some small changes are coming to Apple’s browser choice screen in the EU that pops up when a user first opens Safari on their iPhone, allowing users to install alternate browsers like Firefox, Chrome, or DuckDuckGo.
After the update arrives, Apple will require any EU users with Safari set as their default to scroll through the entire list of default browsers before selecting an option and will also display the browser’s App Store caption on the choice screen. Additionally, developers of the browsers listed will get access to more data about the performance of the choice screen.
Apple already lets users in the EU change their default browser and email app. It has also started opening up the iPhone to third-party app marketplaces, with the Epic Games Store opening on the platform last week.
Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge
Apple will soon let iPhone and iPad users in the European Union choose default apps for phone calls, messaging, keyboards, password managers, and more. These options will be available later this year in a new “Default Apps” section in Settings, according to an update on Thursday.
In the spring of next year, Apple says it will also let users set default navigation, translation apps, and call spam filter apps. Along with these new options, iPhone users in the EU will add the ability to delete the App Store, Messages, Camera, Photos, and Safari apps. The only apps Apple won’t let users delete are Settings and Phone.
Image: Apple
Apple is adding more detail to its browser choice screen.
Some small changes are coming to Apple’s browser choice screen in the EU that pops up when a user first opens Safari on their iPhone, allowing users to install alternate browsers like Firefox, Chrome, or DuckDuckGo.
After the update arrives, Apple will require any EU users with Safari set as their default to scroll through the entire list of default browsers before selecting an option and will also display the browser’s App Store caption on the choice screen. Additionally, developers of the browsers listed will get access to more data about the performance of the choice screen.
Apple already lets users in the EU change their default browser and email app. It has also started opening up the iPhone to third-party app marketplaces, with the Epic Games Store opening on the platform last week.
Apple splits App Store team in two, introduces new leadership
This is the latest in a series of changes resulting from EU regulation.
Enlarge / The Apple Park campus in Cupertino, California. (credit: Anadolu Agency | Getty)
Apple is comprehensively restructuring its long-standing App Store team, splitting the team into two separate divisions as the executive who has run it for more than a decade says goodbye to the company.
There will now be one team for the familiar, Apple-run App Store, and another one to handle alternative app stores in the European Union. Apple recently partially opened the platform to third-party app stores in response to the Digital Markets Act, a set of European regulations meant to break up what legislators and regulators deemed to be app store monopolies.
As noted, the restructuring comes with some notable personnel changes, too. App Store Vice President Matt Fischer, who has been at the helm of the platform since 2010, will leave the company.