Charlotte Henry

For many of us, being paid to play video games is the ultimate dream job. However, a new piece in Wired showed its not all it is cracked up to be. Professional gamers on Twitch play and stream for hours without a break to try and keep fans happy and the money coming in. And it has caused health issues, including serious back pain.

Professional streamers (and gamers more generally) tend to get the same health issues as office workers, who are also desk-bound for eight hours at a time. But they also share some problems with rock climbers and musicians, who put plenty of strain on their hands and wrists through repetitive motion.

The iPad Pro has a lot to recommend it. However, it is missing one key feature, according to Jon Gruber on Daring Fireball – split keyboard mode. Mr. Gruber said that the larger the iPad, the more helpful split keyboard mode is and he does not understand why the biggest iPad in the range does not have this feature.

I want to type with my thumbs, iPhone-style, and can’t, because my iPad is too big. And I have relatively large hands and I’m using the 11-inch iPad Pro, not the 13-inch one. I’m not even sure Craig “Fleshy Palms” Hockenberry could thumb-type on a 13-inch iPad Pro.The bottom line is that because I want to thumb-type, I type better on-screen with my iPhone than I do my iPad, and I can type better on an old iPad than my new one that cost $1,000. This is just baffling to me.

During the last few weeks, Apple sent a number of push notifications to iOS users. The latest, sent yesterday, told users that Apple Music is now available on the Amazon Echo. 9to5Mac had a look at the purpose of the messages, and whether Apple is violating its own guidelines.

What’s interesting about Apple’s choice of push notifications is whether or not they are “targeted” in anyway. For instance, it’s clear why almost everyone received the Kendall Jenner Carpool Karaoke alert, even if they had expressed no interest in the Carpool Karaoke series. In the case of the Apple Music + Amazon Echo notification, it’s unclear how Apple would target users.

Apple’s flagship 5th Avenue store in New York closed nearly two years ago. There is no confirmed date for when it will reopen. 9to5Mac looked through various public statements to try and work out how long it may be until the famous cube reopens its doors.

The glass cube did return this past spring, but as October and November passed without an announcement, it became clear that the project had likely fallen behind schedule. At this point, it’s essentially impossible for Apple to reopen the store before the end of the year. Construction delays are not unprecedented, but for eager Apple fans, the reason for the delay is likely much less interesting than the actual reopening date. As of December 14th, New York City residents passing by the construction site report that much work remains to be done on the plaza surrounding the store. The cube’s Apple logo has not yet been reinstalled and Apple’s temporary store is still in service.

LONDON – UK telecoms regulator Ofcom announced on Tuesday that it will auction two new spectrum bands towards the end of 2019 or in early 2020. It vowed to tackle the “patchy” cellular reception suffered by those living in rural areas of Britain. The Telegraph reported that that the winners of the spectrum auction will have to improve cellular coverage for 140,000 homes and offices.

The communication regulator’s Connected Nations report found that only 66pc of the UK has complete 4G coverage from four operators, up from 49pc last year. While 83pc of urban homes and offices have complete 4G coverage, the figure for rural premises is less than half that (41pc). In some remote parts of the country, there is no coverage at all. To tackle this, Ofcom announced on Tuesday that it will auction two spectrum bands in later 2019 or early 2020.

The U.S. Department of Defense Inspector General (DOD IG) released a rather terrifying report on Friday. It outlined some major cybersecurity flaws in U.S. ballistic missile systems. An article from ZDNet explained that the DOD IG found “no data encryption, no antivirus programs, no multifactor authentication mechanisms, and 28-year-old unpatched vulnerabilities,” amongst other issues.

DOD IG inspectors found that IT administrators at three of the five locations they visited had failed to apply security patches, leaving computers and adjacent network systems vulnerable to remote or local attacks. Investigators found that systems were not patched for vulnerabilities discovered and fixed in 2016, 2013, and even going as far as back as 1990. The DOD IG report is heavily redacted in this particular section, suggesting that MDA administrators are still patching these flaws.

In May, Apple recognized that some iPhone 7 and 7 Plus devices running iOS 11.3 or later had a problem with their microphones. For a time, Apple Stores and Apple Authorized Service Providers would fix the problem for free. However, since July, MacRumors has been contacted by a number of people complaining that they are now being charged for the repair. The repair costs $300 on out-of-warranty devices.

The exemptions abruptly ended in July of 2018, though, when Apple deleted its internal document related to the microphone issue and prevented free repairs from being processed through its service portal. Since then, many Apple retail and support employees have refused to acknowledge the policy ever existed. MacRumors has received several emails from affected customers since we published our article in July, but there has been little we can do to help. Apple did not respond to our original request for comment, so we’ve followed up today.

Steve Jobs was fascinated by the automobile manufacturing process masterminded by Henry Ford in Detroit. He was similarly taken with the Japan-based system implemented by Sony. Jobs tried to build a similarly successful domestic manufacturing system at both Apple and Next, but it turned into one of his rare failures. On Saturday, the New York Times explained what went wrong.

So, the story of Silicon Valley’s success turned out to be the ability of a company like Apple to devise manufacturing supply chains that stretch all the way around the globe, taking advantage of both low-cost labor and lax environmental regulations. “We don’t have a manufacturing culture,” [former Apple executive Jean-Louis] Gassée said of the nation’s high-technology heartland, “meaning the substrate, the schooling, the apprentices, the subcontractors.” It took Mr. Jobs a bit longer to grasp that idea, however.

Colin Kroll, the co-founder and CEO of HQ Trivia and Vine was found dead on Sunday, aged 34. He founded the daily quiz app with Rus Yusupov. Kroll also founded the video app Vine, which Twitter bought in 2012. He was found dead in his home in New York by police.

Police discovered Kroll in his apartment in New York City early Sunday morning. Kroll, 34, had recently been named the CEO of HQ Trivia, a company he co-founded alongside Rus Yusupov that runs a daily live trivia show with cash prizes. The duo also created the once-popular video app Vine, which Twitter acquired in 2012.

A Russian state-owned TV news channel proudly showed off a “state-of-the-art” robot at a technology forum for children this week.  Boris appeared to walk, talk, and dance. Except, as the Telegraph explained, everything was not quite as it seemed. Boris was, in fact, a man in a very expensive costume…

‘Boris’ the Robot was apparently able to walk, talk and dance – and was passed off as state-of-the-art robotics by the TV channel at a technology forum for school pupils. But its authenticity started being questioned when photos appeared online that clearly showed a human inside a robot suit.