Items tagged with ban
Digital wellness apps and products have become increasingly popular in recent years. Parents in particular have started to use “screen time apps” to monitor the amount of time their children are playing games or watching shows on their devices. Unfortunately, according to Apple, not all screen time apps are created equal and the company recently banned several of them due to privacy violations. Phil Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing, reported that Apple has banned apps that have misused mobile device management (MDM) systems. The offending MDM apps tracked information about children’s devices and then shared that information with parents who downloaded...
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One of the greatest things about the Fallout franchise for many fans is that Bethesda has always made it very easy to modify the game. Mods are a huge part of the Fallout franchise, or at least they were before Fallout 76. So far, Fallout 76 has been nearly universally panned in reviews for a myriad of reasons. Some have complained that the game is too similar to prior iterations, while others lament the fact that the game is online only and you are forced to play against other annoying humans. The latest thing to irritate fans of Fallout is Bethesda's use of the banhammer against modders. The publisher has been banning Fallout 76 players from the game for using third-party mods to make the game...
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The hits keep coming for Chinese telecom giant ZTE. Last week, the U.S. Department of Commerce announced that ZTE would be banned from buying components from U.S. companies for a period of 7 years due to its blatant disregard for a plea agreement to atone for previous transgressions. Now, a major Chinese regulator is coming down hard on ZTE, and is blaming the company for making the country look bad. China's State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC), which regulates domestic enterprises, said that ZTE's actions were simply "stupid and passive". SASAC went on to add that not only do the actions (and sometimesinaction) taken by ZTE harm its own business...
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PC gamers are very angry at Rockstar right now after what they claim are unfair bannings that the publisher is handing out left and right. The wide-spanning bans began on March 23 and complaints from a myriad of PC gamers were posted on Reddit, Twitter, Rockstar support forums, and other GTA communities. The gamers are saying that their accounts had been falsely banned for 30 days with no opportunity for an appeal. Rockstar has been very quiet on the subject so far with speculation suggesting that the bans are an issue with the latest tunables update or some sort of issue when participating in the Hotring series races. Rockstar recently updated GTA tunables with code changes for Hotring...
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You will not be seeing Uber’s self-driving vehicles on the roads of San Francisco any longer. The driver-less vehicles are banned since the state of California’s Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) revoked Uber’s registration. Uber had started testing its self-driving cars before receiving an autonomous vehicles driving permit. California requires that self-driving vehicles be tested by the DMV before they go out on the road. Other companies have complied, however, Uber insisted that it did not need a permit, since the vehicles were not “fully” autonomous. Uber refused to apply for a permit, but was “open to having the conversation”. It turns out that the California DMV was not “open” to smoke-filled...
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Is a website responsible for the actions of its users? A recent court case between online marketplace and homestay network Airbnb and New York's Attorney General Eric Schneiderman will settle the question of whether or not a company such as Airbnb is responsible for a user’s illegal activities. The lawsuit alleges that some landlords illegally listed rentals for longer periods than is allowed by the law. In New York City, unless a property is deemed a hotel or hostel, renters become “permanent residents” after thirty days. It is not illegal, however, if the lessor also occupies the same apartment as the renter and if all parts of the apartment are available to the paying guest. These landlords...
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A Reddit thread on growing marijuana plants has caught the attention of the Russian government, which appears to be preparing to block Reddit in its entirety. Russia has a history of taking a heavy-handed approach to U.S.-based Internet companies that fail to comply with its requests, so Reddit is likely taking the threat seriously. So far, though, the U.S. website hasn’t flinched. What started as an unexciting takedown request from the Russian government quickly turned into a public mess after Reddit apparently didn’t (according to Russian officials) respond. Russia then threatened to bring out the country-wide ban-hammer, sending the message with a public post on social networking site Vkontakte....
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Like many MMORPGs, World of Warcraft can be a grind. To sidestep the time commitment required to continually level up a character, gather resources, improve skills, or whatever else is desired, some gamers turn to bots, software that automates the process. The only problem is, Activision Blizzard isn't so keen on this behavior and has dropped the ban hammer hard on gamers who've been using them. Activision Blizzard didn't specify exactly how many people it booted, saying only that it was a "large number of World of Warcraft accounts." However, a screenshot of a conversation between a player, Game Master, and Activision Blizzard employee suggests that over 100,000 World of Warcraft accounts were...
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China's concern over security and U.S. spying habits apparently don't extend over to popular Apple products like the iPad and MacBook Air as previously thought. Responding to a Bloomberg report earlier in the week saying that China removed 10 Apple products from its government procurement lists over security concerns, a move that would essentially ban the delisted devices, China says that's not the case. The Central Government Procurement Center and Finance Ministry in China both said that Apple never applied to be on the list anyway. However, the real cause of confusion is that Bloomberg was citing an energy-saving products list, which is just one of many government procurement lists in China,...
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Yikes! On a day already filled with wild mobile news (AT&T and T-Mobile breaking up, anyone?), here comes another bombshell. The International Trade Commission has just ruled in favor of Apple in a patent dispute with HTC. The result? A ban on select HTC phones imported in the U.S. The decision reportedly stated that "HTC violated two claims tied to Apple patents and that the ban will take effect next April. However, HTC will be allowed to import some products in order to fulfill repair claims on phones that have already been purchased, and can have the ban lifted if the company shows it has been able to work around the patents mentioned in the ITC ruling." In other words, this isn't likely...
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Do you own a PlayStation 3 console? If so, shut up, sit down, and do what you're told! Before you fire off an angry email, understand that directive's not coming from us -- we're just the messenger here, so please don't shoot -- but Sony, who admittedly didn't word things that way. What the company did do, however, was threaten PS3 hackers with a lifetime ban. "Violation of the System Software License Agreement for the PlayStation 3 System invalidates the consumer guarantee for that system. In addition, copying or playing pirated software is a violation of International Copyright Laws. Consumers using circumvention devices or running unauthorized or pirated software will have access to the PlayStation...
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As you probably know, Apple is purging apps that are somewhat racy from the App Store, including those, according to a developer, that include women in bikinis. Yet the Sports Illustrated app is still in the App Store, and we smell favoritism.Phil Schiller, head of worldwide product marketing at Apple, pretty much confirmed that in statements he made to the New York Times. He said:“The difference is this is a well-known company with previously published material available broadly in a well-accepted format."Ah, we see. By the way, the Playboy app is still in the App Store as well.While there is obviously some measure of truth to that statement, some of the apps, such as Wobble (demo below), which...
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Ready for a real shocker? That texting and driving habit you've been trying to kick may not be as bad for you as the insurance companies have led you to believe. Of course, we would still recommend putting the phone down while you're driving (we're speaking for all those cars around you, for the record), but an interesting new survey has unearthed some unexpected results.For years, we've seen state after state ban texting and driving after being told by insurance company-funded surveys that it significantly increases the risk of a crash. And frankly, it makes sense. Doing anything other than driving while attempting to drive is probably not in the best interest of personal safety. At any rate,...
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America’s third largest electronics retailer with 721 stores in the U.S. and 770 in Canada, has petitioned for Chapter 11 protection in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Richmond. After losing money in five of the last six quarters and announcing last week it would close 155 stores, Circuit City is seeking bankruptcy protection amidst fears that it would not be able to pay its vendors. The company presently owes Hewlett-Packard Co.$119 Million and Samsung Electronics Co. $116 million.A deal earlier this year that involved Blockbuster Inc. buying the retailer fell through when a preliminary offer was withdrawn. "On Sept. 29, Circuit City reported a loss of $239.2 million that was more than triple from...
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How many of you are aware of the 5 GB cap that Frontier DSL has imposed? Or of the trials in Beaumont, TX that Time-Warner Cable is running? It's only a matter of time before others impose caps. And here we are, with a big ISP imposing a cap. But really, let's be honest: this ISP already had one, just one that was hidden.Today Comcast detailed its new "network management" policies. Basically, they set a 250 GB cap on users, effective October first. It should be noted that for years people have complained about a "hidden" cap that Comcast had, whereupon it would terminate a user's account without giving him or her exact numbers. Now we have an exact number. ...
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The U.K.'s Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has banned an ad for the iPhone after complaints that it was misleading. No, it's not about "twice as fast, half the price." Instead it's about the browsing prowess of the iPhone. The ASA received two (yes, only 2) complaints about the ad, which said the following: "You never know which part of the Internet you'll need. The 'do you need sun cream' part? The 'what's the quickest way to the airport' part? The 'what about an ocean view room' part? Or the 'can you really afford this' part? Which is why all the parts of the Internet are on the iPhone." The complaints were definitely from techies and not regular consumers: the complaints were that the...
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It's not the first time something like this has happened, and it won't be the last. What's worrisome is that it probably happens more often than we know, and we just don't hear about it. No, someone didn't explicitly sell personal info on eBay. What they did was sell a hard drive with the bank account numbers, phone numbers, mothers' maiden names and signatures of 1 million customers of American Express, NatWest and the Royal Bank of Scotland on it. Big oops, right? Fortunately, the buyer was Andrew Chapman, an IT manager from Oxford, and not some scammer. Obviously, the odds are in favor of the buyer either being someone honest, or else just not noticing the extraneous data. The drive originally...
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The high-speed Internet advocacy Web site, Speed Matters, has just released a report on the average Internet connection speeds by U.S. state. If you live in Rhode Island (6,769 Kbps), Delaware (6,685 Kbps), New Jersey (5,825 Kbps), Virginia (5,033 Kbps), or Massachusetts (4,564 Kbps), you can take pride that your state has one of the fastest average Internet downstream connection speeds in the U.S. But before you get too smug, compare your speed against the average 63 Mbps downstream speed that the Communications Workers of America (CWA) claims Japan has... Or South Korea (49 Mbps), Finland (21 Mbps), France (17 Mbps), or even Canada (7.6 Mbps) for that matter. Credit: Speed MattersThe report...
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A study just released by the Leichtman Research Group, indicates that the "twenty largest cable and telephone providers in the US" now total approximately 65.1 million, high-speed Internet subscribers. Those 20 providers make up roughly 94 percent of the U.S. broadband market. Assuming that Leichtman's results are correct (and assuming that Neilson's latest numbers are as well, which show 164 million U.S. users went online in May 2007), this would mean that about only 42 percent of U.S. Internet users connect via a broadband connection. This is significantly lower than the 55 percent of adult Americans that the July 2008, Pew Internet & American Life Project reports have a home broadband...
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A new study (.PDF) released Wednesday by the Pew Internet and American Life Project reveals that not everyone wants broadband. Seriously. According to the study, 55% of adult Americans now have broadband internet connections at home, up from 47% in 2007. Also according to the study, with the increase in broadband adoption, only 10% of Americans have dial-up. Whoa: that means 35% have no Internet access at all, if we did the math correctly. For those without broadband, the study gave the following reasons for not having broadband: Non-broadband users cite a number of reasons for not using the service - including availability, price, and lack of interest. 62% of dial-up users say they are not interested...
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Those looking forward to the July 1st introduction of a teenage cell phone ban in California should start looking elsewhere for comfort. An Insurance Institute for Highway Safety study released on Monday, which took a look at the results of a 2006 North Carolina ban for drivers younger than age 18, showed that teenagers were just as likely to chat on the phone after the ban went into effect as before.Targeting inexperienced motorists, several states have passed laws during the past five years restricting cell phone use by teenage drivers.But an insurance industry study being released Monday that looked at whether teens are ignoring such restrictions contends enforcement and parental influence...
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Om Malik at Gigaom has made an interesting analysis of the effects of widespread broadband penetration into the US market. As the demand for broadband tapers off because the pool of persons that don't yet have it slowly dries up, there's really only one thing the providers have left to sell: faster speeds.It should come as no surprise that the carriers have let go of incremental speed upgrades and have gone ahead and doubled or tripled the speeds of their offerings. Why? Because bumping speed to 2 Mbps from 1 Mbps doesn’t really feel like a big boost. A 6X speed bump, on the other hand, makes the Internet much faster — and worth paying for. Suddenly, Hulu and YouTube become much more fun to watch....
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