Twitter has restored free access to its API for some public institutions. The company says verified government and publicly-owned services that use the tool for critical purposes such as weather alerts, transport updates, and emergency notifications will get free access to it. “One of the most important use cases for the Twitter API has always been public utility,” the social network said in a tweet announcing this policy change. It blocked free API access for all in early April.
Twitter restores free API access for some public institutions
Twitter has undergone numerous changes since Elon Musk took over the company in October last year. Mont notably, the social network removed legacy verified checkmarks and blocked free access to its API. Both of these changes took effect last month, though the firm has been preparing for it for a long time. It abruptly blocked several third-party Twitter clients in mid-January citing API rules. The company said developers would need to pay for API access.
The paid version of Twitter API was supposed to arrive in February but was delayed until late March. The firm eventually launched three tiers, including a Free tier. However, the new free version offers very little. It is limited to “write-only use cases and testing the Twitter API”. It allows a maximum of 1,500 tweets per month and one app ID. The $100 per month “Basic” tier, meanwhile, is ideal for “hobbyists or prototypes,” Twitter said. It also comes with fixed caps on tweets.
Finally, for “businesses and scaled commercial projects,” Twitter offers an “Enterprise” tier of its API with varying monthly subscription plans. Depending on the individual use case, it can cost tens of thousands of dollars. A week or so after launching the paid version, the company blocked access to the existing free version of its API. Unsurprisingly, the cost of the Enterprise tier was too much for some developers, forcing them to shut down their projects. The Free and Basic tiers, meanwhile, didn’t offer enough resources to keep them alive.
While Twitter won’t backtrack on this decision, it has shown leniency for public institutions. Services that use its API for communicating emergency information and other critical purposes would get back free access. But for everyone else, it’s a choice between paying the company or stopping using its full API suite. Microsoft has already refused to pay and removed Twitter from its social media tool for advertisers.
MediaTek is all set to launch a new flagship smartphone chipset next week. The Dimensity 9200+ will debut on May 10 as an overclocked version of last year’s Dimensity 9200, filling in the gap until the company comes up with its next-gen solution Dimensity 9300 later this year. Ahead of its unveiling, an alleged Geekbench score sheet of the new chipset has surfaced online revealing that it will be the most powerful processor for Android. It comfortably outperformed the current leader, Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 launched in November last year.
The Dimensity 9200+ scored 2,121 points in the single-core test and 5,655 points in the multi-core test on Geekbench 6. As GSMArena puts it, these scores are “considerably more” than what the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 has achieved so far. The latter’s highest single-core and multi-core score’s on Geekbench are 1,992 and 5,641, respectively. It achieved those scores with ASUS’ upcoming gaming smartphone ROG Phone 7 Ultimate. The device had the performance X Mode turned on, which pushes the CPU to its limit to ensure smooth gaming performance.
The new MediaTek chipset, on the other hand, managed to beat the latest Qualcomm processor in standard mode with no performance boost at the CPU level. The Geekbench 6 score sheet of the Dimensity 9200+ is from a Vivo smartphone. It is probably the Vivo X90s or the Vivo X90s Pro. There are rumors of the Chinese firm working on a couple of new models in the X90 series with the upcoming MediaTek processor. ASUS may also launch a Dimensity 9200+ variant of the ROG Phone 7 Ultimate.
Dimensity 9200+ rumored specs
As said earlier, the Dimensity 9200+ will be a minor upgrade over last year’s Dimensity 9200. However, unlike in the past, MediaTek appears to be raising the CPU frequency across the board instead of just making the prime CPU core faster. The Cortex-X3 prime core reportedly operates at 3.35GHz on the new chipset, up from 3.05GHz. Likewise, the three Cortex-A715 performance cores get a frequency boost from 2.85GHz to 3.0GHz. The clock speed of the four Cortex-A510 efficiency cores is not known (1.8GHz on the Dimensity 9200).
Based on this Geekbench run, the Dimensity 9200+ is all set to reign the Android processor space for at least a few months as there’s no competition in the market. Rumors are that Qualcomm won’t launch a Snapdragon 8+ Gen 2 this year. It will go straight to the Gen 3 solution, which may arrive in late October 2023 with a clock speed of up to 3.7GHz. MediaTek will also launch the Dimensity 9300 around the same time. It remains to be seen which chip behemoth comes out on top.
T-Mobile recently confirmed another hack, the second this year and ninth since 2018, revealing customer data and account PINs.
While T-Mobile confirmed a recent system detection that revealed a threat actor had accessed a small number of accounts, which compromised limited information.
836 customers were affected by the intrusion, which commenced on February 24 and continued till March 30.
Once T-Mobile discovered the breach on March 27, they reset customers’ account PINs to swap SIM cards and authorize critical account changes.
Types of Data Involve
Here below, we have mentioned the types of data involve:-
Full name
Contact information
Account number
Associated phone numbers
T-Mobile account PIN
Social security number
Government ID
Date of birth
Balance due
Email addresses
Internal codes
Billing addresses
What Happened?
T-Mobile’s security measures worked as intended in March 2023, alerting them to unauthorized activity.
During late February through March 2023, a threat actor gained access to restricted data from a few T-Mobile accounts, as revealed by their security system.
This year’s second T-Mobile hack is the ninth security breach since 2018, and in January, the misuse of T-Mobile’s application programming enabled threat actors to access 37 million customers’ data.
What Is T-Mobile Doing?
Despite having several safeguards to prevent unauthorized access, T-Mobile acknowledges the need to enhance its security measures continually.
They take such incidents seriously, apologize for the breach, and are working towards improving the security of customers’ information.
T-Mobile reset their customers’ T-Mobile Account PIN to safeguard their accounts. Additionally, they provide free identity theft detection services and credit monitoring for two years through Transunion’s myTrueIdentity.
Moreover, T-Mobile conducts a thorough investigation to understand unauthorized activity and improve its safeguards to prevent such incidents from happening again.
Recommendation
Here below, we have mentioned all the recommendations offered by T-Mobile:-
Review your account information as soon as possible to ensure everything is correct.
Make sure to update your PIN with an updated one, and if you need help updating your PIN, call 18009378997 or go to T-Mobile.com or log into T-Mobile.com.
Monitoring the activity on the account is an important part of staying vigilant.
Take advantage of your free credit reports by monitoring them regularly.
Don’t forget to review your security settings for your email, financial account, and other accounts regularly.
Use T-Mobile’s security features like Account Takeover Protection, number transfer PINs, two-step verification, free scam protection with Scam Shield, SIM Protection, a security dashboard, and more.
Twitter has gone through probably one of the most turbulent years since the platform’s conception, and it’s not getting better. There’s a new Twitter bug that’s randomly logging people out of their accounts, according to Downdetector.
Twitter is no stranger to bugs and outages. In fact, no social media platform is immune to these types of things. In Twitter’s case, this sort of calamity is not what the company needs at this point, as Elon’s Crusade continues.
A Twitter bug is logging people out of their accounts
This seems to be a bit random, as most of the people affected are using Twitter for the desktop. So, this might be mostly specific to that platform. An Android headlines user was affected by this bug on the Twitter website; however, their account was accessible from the app.
People are, unfortunately, being logged out of their accounts for no apparent reason. What makes the situation worse is that they’re having trouble logging back in. When trying to access the Twitter log in page, these unfortunate users will keep being redirected to the sign-in page. After a while, they usually will just be sent to the Twitter homepage.
This is an extremely frustrating issue to have. At this point, Twitter has yet to acknowledge this issue, but we hope that the company does soon. In any case, if you are having trouble logging into your Twitter account, then you may be stuck using your phone until it’s over.
Fortunately, issues like these tend to only last a few hours. So some of you may just want to sit tight and wait for the functionality to return. You may want to check back every so often and try logging into your Twitter account.
If Twitter is slow to act on this, it may be understandable seeing as the company is dealing with yet another bug on the platform. This bug seems to arbitrarily reassign the verification check mark to legacy accounts after taking them away not too long ago. This is temporary, so if your check mark was returned, it will very well disappear again.
In today’s digital era, mobile phones have become a vital part of our daily lives. Let’s face it, our mobile phones are our lifelines. We use them to stay entertained, informed, and connected. However, with great power comes great responsibility. Hence, it is important to protect your mobile phone from accidental damages, loss, or theft, with its ever-increasing usage. That’s where mobile phone insurance comes into play – it’s like a superhero cape for your mobile phone!
Mobile Phone Insurance: What’s it?
Mobile insurance is a policy which provides you with a safety net to fall back on in case your mobile gets lost, damaged, or stolen. It is the ultimate form of protection that you must have as it secures your phone against unforeseen events which could otherwise leave you helpless. With mobile phone insurance, you can rest assured that your phone will be protected against potential risks. This implies that you do not have to worry about the high maintenance or replacement costs. Also, we can’t neglect the fact that accidents happen and are unpredictable. One slip of the hand, one spilled drink, one accident, and your phone could be damaged.
Moreover, mobile phone insurance plans provide hassle-free and convenient ways to have your phone replaced or repaired without having to roll-out any significant out-of-pocket expenses. This will assure you that you do not have to undergo the trouble of looking for a reliable repair service or paying for the replacement costs.
So, if you wish to safeguard your mobile phone against the potential risks, consider purchasing mobile phone insurance today to enjoy uninterrupted and worry-free usage of your device. With easy claim processes, swift repair services or replacements, you can get back to using your phone in no time in case of an unforeseen event. It gets even better since you won’t have to break your savings to pay for costly repairs or replacements.
Key Features of Mobile Insurance Policies
Here are the salient features of mobile phone insurance policies:
They provide coverage for both, new and old phones.
Smartphones and the phones with basic features are covered under this insurance policy,
The insured sum is linked to the cost price of the mobile phone.
Several insurance plans allow cashless repair services.
The tenure of the insurance policy may range from a span of 6 to 12 months.
What’s Covered Under Mobile Insurance
Mobile phone insurance policies typically cover a huge variety of risks and offer several features which can secure your phone to keep you rest assured. Here are some of the features that mobile phone insurance plans offer:
This feature covers any type of accidental damage that may occur to your mobile phone, such as water damage, cracked screen, or any other physical damage.
This feature provides financial coverage against the replacement costs of your phone in case it gets stolen or even lost. It may also ensure coverage against any unauthorised data usage or calls.
If you do not make any insurance claims during your policy tenure, certain mobile phone insurance plans may offer a no claim bonus. This generally lowers your premium for the succeeding policy tenure.
Mobile phone insurance plans often have a hassle-free claim settlement process. This ensures that you get your phone replaced or repaired without any delay.
Mobile insurance policies provide comprehensive security against a wide range of risks that your phone is generally exposed to. These include water damage, accidental damage, theft, loss due to natural calamities such as fire, and more.
Mobile phone insurance policies also provide certain additional protection which you can opt for by paying an extra premium. Some of them are as follows:
Transit Insurance: This provides coverage to the mobile phone when it is in transit. Worldwide Coverage: This offers coverage against damages which your phone may suffer from, even when you are outside the geographical borders of India.
What’s Not Covered Under Mobile Insurance
A mobile phone insurance cover almost every possible risks that may pose to the mobile phones, except the following:
Any kind of mysterious loss of the mobile phone
Damages caused to the mobile phone because of climatic changes
Theft of the mobile phone when it was left unused for a long time
Pre-existing defects on the mobile phone
Deliberate harm or damage caused to the mobile phone
Damages suffered by the mobile phone when it was being used by someone other than the owner
Any kind of an experimental or overloaded mobile phone
Companies Which Offer Mobile Insurance in India
Here are a few companies in India which offer mobile phone insurance policies:
How to Buy Mobile Insurance
If you wish to buy a mobile phone insurance plan, all you have to do is choose the insurance provider, visit their website, fill up a form, and pay the premiums. Alternatively, you can physically visit their offline branch and apply for an insurance policy.
Here are a few documents that you may require to submit to your respective insurer to buy a policy:
Application form seeking insurance policy coverage
Phone’s invoice
Phone’s IMEI number
Your identity proof
How to Make a Claim
Here’s how you can make a claim under the mobile phone insurance cover:
Notify your respective insurance provider about your loss by calling on their helpline number or sending them an email and registering your claim.
Submit your claim form by entering the necessary information.
File an FIR at your local police station in case your phone gets stolen since it will be vital for you to make a theft claim.
Click the images of the damages suffered by your phone as a proof to provide to your respective insurer to facilitate their investigation procedure.
Depending on their investigation and other necessary information provided, the executives will approve of your claim.
In case your mobile phone requires repair, your insurer will pay the expenses directly to your respective mobile service centre. However, the service provider must be listed in the authorised service centre by your insurance provider. If that is not the case, you will have to make the payment of the repair costs directly and get it reimbursed by your insurer.
If your phone gets lost or stolen, your insurer will pay you the insured sum as a claim.
Here are a few documents that you may require to submit to your respective insurer to make your claim:
Policy bond
Signed and filled claim form
Copy of the police FIR in case of your phone’s loss or theft
Phone’s invoice
Phone’s IMEI number
Your identity proof
Extended Warranty vs Mobile Insurance
Sometimes we feel that it is a waste to invest in a mobile phone insurance policy when you can purchase an extended warranty. Well, these two are totally different from each other and here’s how:
Conclusion
Mobile phone insurance policy is a must-have in your pocket. Whether you are swimming with the sharks, climbing mountains, or just fulfilling your everyday business, accidents may happen. It is not a hidden fact that when they do, the repair or replacement process can get exhausting – physically and financially. That’s when mobile insurance policies provide you with the safety net you deserve. With a plethora of options available, catering to every lifestyle and budget, you can secure your precious phone against the unforeseen events. Don’t let water damage or a cracked screen ruin your day. Embrace the power of phone insurance and continue living your best life. Don’t let a second pass by, sign up, and become a phone insurance hero today!
Samsung‘s April update is widely available for the Galaxy Note 20 series in the US. Both carrier-locked and unlocked units of the 2020 Note phones are receiving the latest security patch on all networks across the country. The new update also brings the Image Clipper feature.
The Galaxy Note 20 and Galaxy Note 20 Ultra were among the first Samsung devices to pick up the April SMR (Security Maintenance Release) in the US. The Korean firm began the rollout in the first week of April, but initially only covered factory-unlocked units. The update came with the firmware build number N98*U1UES4HWC9 and didn’t bring any additional goodies.
Later in the month, Samsung released the April SMR for the carrier-locked variants of the Galaxy Note 20 and Galaxy Note 20 Ultra in the US. Along with the latest security patch, users with a carrier-locked unit also received the Image Clipper feature. The updated firmware version for those devices was N98*USQU4HWD1. Over the past few days, the company has pushed this update widely across all networks.
At the same time, Samsung also rolled out a second April update to unlocked variants of the Galaxy Note 20 and Galaxy Note 20 Ultra in the US, finally introducing Image Clipper to them. The latest update came with the firmware build number N98*U1UEU4HWD1. This update is also now available widely. If you haven’t received it yet, go to Settings > Software update and tap on Download and install to check for updates manually. If you still don’t see any updates, wait a couple more days and check again.
Galaxy Note 20 series gets Samsung’s Image Clipper feature in the US
Image Clipper is a relatively new Gallery feature for Galaxy devices. Samsung introduced this feature with the Galaxy S23 series earlier this year. It lets you crop out subjects from photos directly from the image viewer. Simply press and hold onto a subject to crop it out. You can then save it as a separate image or paste it elsewhere.
Samsung recently started pushing Image Clipper to older models. It has already seeded the feature to several devices, including a few mid-range models. It’s now available for users with a Galaxy Note 20 or Galaxy Note 20 Ultra in the US. Note that Samsung recently released the May security patch as well. The latest SMR is available for the Galaxy S23 series in some markets. The Galaxy Note 20 series will also receive the new patch. We will let you know when the rollout begins.
Over the past few years, the robot vacuum cleaner industry has become a highly competitive market, with many new players entering the field. However, not every company has been able to keep up with the competition, as Neato Robotics, one of the major competitors to iRobot’s Roomba series, recently announced its closure due to declining sales and an inability to meet its economic goals.
Founded in 2005 by a group of Stanford graduates, Neato Robotics quickly made a name in the robot vacuum industry by pushing the envelope and introducing new features like Wi-Fi in 2011 and LiDAR mapping in 2020. However, despite the initial success and Vorwerk’s purchase of the company in 2017, Neato continued to struggle due to a lack of focus on independent sales in e-commerce and brick-and-mortar retail.
“The Vorwerk Group has therefore decided to further expand its investments in the area of vacuum cleaner robotics and to strengthen the robotics competence within the group by bundling development capacities centrally at the R+D location in Laaken,” reads the company’s blog post announcing the decision.
Vorwerk’s plans and impact on the industry
In an effort to give its existing customers the support they need, Neato says it has established a team of 14 professionals based in Milan, which will be responsible for maintaining the company’s cloud services for at least five years and will also help provide spare parts to users.
Although Vorwerk’s efforts in providing support to existing users are commendable, this closure will have a significant impact on the industry. As it stands, iRobot currently holds over 46% of the market, with Ecovacs and Roborock claiming 17% and 9% of the market, respectively. However, iRobot’s market domination and Amazon’s bid to purchase the company have caught the attention of American and European regulators, who have expressed concerns about potential harm to the competitive landscape.
A tool that’s harvesting pictures to train image-generating AIs has caused some measure of chaos among webmasters who’d rather their sites were not scraped.
Website owners are once again at war with tools designed to scrape content from their sites. An AI scraper called img2dataset is scouring the Internet for pictures that can be used to train image-generating AI tools.
These generators are increasingly popular text-to-image services, where you enter a suggestion (“A superhero in the ocean, in the style of Van Gogh”) and it produces a visual to match. Since the system’s “understanding” of images is a direct result of what it was trained on, there is an argument that what it produces consists of bits and pieces of all that training data, There’s a good chance there may be legal issues to consider, too. This is a major point of contention for artists and creators of online content generally. Visual artists don’t want their work being sucked up by AI tools (that make someone else money) without permission.
Unfortunately for the French creator of img2datset, website owners are very much dissatisfied with his approach to harvesting images.
The free program “turns large sets of image URLs into an image dataset”. Its claimed the tool can “download, resize, and package 100 million URLs in 20 hours on one machine”. That’s a lot of URLs.
What’s aggravating site owners is that the tool is ignoring assumed good netiquette rules. Way back in 1994, “robots.txt” was created as a polite way to let crawlers know which bits of a website they were allowed to pay a visit to. Search engines could be told “Yes please”. Other kinds of crawlers could be told “No thank you”. Many rogues would simply ignore a site’s robots.txt file, and end up with a bad reputation as a result.
This is one of the main complaints where img2dataset is concerned. Website owners contend that it’s not physically possible to have to tell every tool in existence that they wish to opt-out. Rather, the tool should be opt-in. This is a reasonable concern, especially as site owners would essentially be responsible for adding ever more entries to their code on a daily basis.
One site owner had this to say, in a mail sent to Motherboard:
I had to pay to scale up my server, pay extra for export traffic, and spent part of my weekend blocking the abuse caused by this specific bot.
Elsewhere, you can see a deluge of complaints from site owners on the tool’s “Issues” discussion page. Issues of consent, custom headers, even talk of the creator being sued: It’s chaos over there.
If you’re a site owner who isn’t keen on img2dataser paying a visit, there are a number of ways you can tell it to keep a respectful distance. From the opt-out directives section:
Websites can use these http headers:” X-Robots-Tag: noai”, “X-Robots-Tag: noindex” , “X-Robots-Tag: noimageai”, and “X-Robots-Tag: noimageindex”. By default, img2dataset will ignore images with such headers.
However, the FAQ also says this for users of the img2dataset tool:
To disable this behaviour and download all images, you may pass “–disallowed_header_directives ‘[]’”
This does exactly what it suggests, ignoring the “please leave me alone” warning and grabbing all available images. It’s no wonder, then, that website owners are currently so hot and bothered by this latest slice of website scraping action. With little apparent interest in robots.txt from the creator, and workarounds to ensure users can grab whatever they like, this is sure to rumble on.
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Samsung is rolling out a new update for the Galaxy A23 5G in the US. The device is picking up the April 2023 Android security patch. The new SMR (Security Maintenance Release) is also available for the 4G version of the phone in some markets.
The latest update for the Galaxy A23 5G in the US is currently limited to carrier-locked variants. Rolling out with the firmware build number A236USQS2CWD8, it brings nothing more than last month’s security patch. This isn’t surprising considering that the mid-range device recently picked up One UI 5.1 with tons of goodies.
Samsung should soon expand the latest release to factory-unlocked units as well. The new update may also reach more markets over the next few weeks. Outside the US, the Galaxy A23 5G was launched in Europe. The device has already received One UI 5.1 there as well.
The 4G-only Galaxy A23, on the other hand, didn’t arrive in the US but was sold in most global markets. It has also picked up One UI 5.1 widely. However, users in Latin America have been waiting for the new One UI version all this while. They are finally getting it. The big update comes with the firmware build number A235MUBU2CWD1 and brings the April SMR too. The latest security patch isn’t available for this phone elsewhere.
Since the Galaxy A23 and Galaxy A23 5G are only eligible for quarterly security updates, Samsung may not push the latest release to these phones everywhere. It may skip the April SMR in some markets and push May or June releases. As usual, you can always check for updates manually. Go to the Settings app, tap on Software update, and then on Download and install. If an update is available, you will be prompted to download it. If not, check back at a later date.
Galaxy M23 5G is also getting the April update
Along with the Galaxy A23 duo, Samsung is also pushing the April SMR to the Galaxy M23 5G. This phone didn’t arrive in the US but the company sold it pretty much everywhere else. The latest update for the device bears the firmware build number M236BXXU3CWD1 in Europe (via). It appears the update brings more than just some vulnerability fixes but the official changelog doesn’t mention anything. The device has already picked up One UI 5.1 widely. The new security release for the Galaxy M23 5G hasn’t reached other markets yet.
Google is pushing Fuchsia OS to yet another Nest product. The Nest Hub 2nd Gen is the latest device to get a switch from Cast OS to Fuchsia. The company has already updated the first-gen Nest Hub (originally Google Home Hub) and Nest Hub Max to the new operating system.
The Fuchsia rollout for the Nest Hub 2nd Gen began earlier today, 9to5Google reports. The company told the publication that the OS switch for the 2021 smart display, which comes with a Soli radar sensor for sleep tracking, will take place slowly. Like in the past, it will begin with a small percentage of users enrolled in the Preview Program in the Google Home app. Google will likely use those devices for public testing. Once it confirms that everything’s fine, the update should reach everyone around the world.
For users, it will all go relatively unnoticed. The Fuchsia OS update will not change anything on the Nest Hub 2nd Gen. It will only switch the operating system of the device, which shipped with Cast OS out of the box. The feature set will mostly remain the same, and so will the UI and everything else. If you want to check whether your smart display has been updated to Fuchsia, you can go to the Technical information page in Settings. If you see a “Fuchsia version” here, your device has received the update.
Google has a long-term vision for Fuchsia
Fuchsia is an open source non-Linux operating system that has been in development since at least 2016. After years of work, Google publicly released the new OS for the first-gen Nest Hub in August 2021. The Nest Hub Max started picking up the OS change in June 2022. The company took several months to complete the rollout for both devices. It is now taking a similar approach with the Fuchsia rollout for the Nest Hub 2nd Gen.
With this rollout, Google has updated all three of its recent smart displays to Fuchsia. However, as noted by 9to5Google, the timing of this update is curious. The company is gearing up to release the Pixel Tablet as an Android-powered alternative to the Nest Hub series. It’s also in the process of dropping support for several Assistant-powered apps and games on the Nest Hub devices, while third-party smart displays have already lost update support.
By the looks of it, Google wants to use Fuchsia-powered Nest devices as the stepping stone for the platform’s next major milestone. Fittingly, there are also hints of Next speakers getting a switch from Cast OS to Fuchsia. But the long-term plan is to develop Fuchsia into a “general-purpose” operating system, like Windows, Linux, and macOS. The company is working on a way to natively run Linux and Android apps on the new OS to ensure a strong app ecosystem.
“Fuchsia is a long-term project to create a general-purpose, open source operating system, which we have been developing in the open for years,” a Google spokesperson told 9to5Google in a statement following the release of the Fuchsia update for the Nest Hub 2nd Gen. “This is part of those continued efforts and fuchsia.dev will have the latest information on the team’s work.”
