Tech Roundup: OnePlus Data Breach, Xerox-HP Merger Drama & More

[A recurring feature on the latest in Science & Technology.]

• Iran shuts down nearly all internet access in the country in retaliation to escalating protests that were originally ignited by a rise in fuel prices; data connectivity for the largest mobile operators — MCI, Rightel and Irancell — also found offline.
• Russia officially passes law that bans sale of gadgets, including smartphones, computers, and smart TVs, that are not pre-installed with alternative Russian software starting July 2020, raising fears that the government is creating an internet firewall similar to that in China, as new law comes weeks after introduced new controls on the internet through its "sovereign internet" law that gives officials wide-ranging powers to restrict traffic on the Russian web.
• The Supreme Court in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania rules that the state's law enforcement cannot force suspects to turn over their passwords that would unlock their devices; says compelling a password from a suspect is a violation of the Fifth Amendment, a constitutional protection that protects suspects from self-incrimination.
• The Czech government follows France and Italy to approve a 7 percent digital tax proposal aimed at boosting state coffers by taxing advertising by global internet giants like Google and Facebook; proposed tax, which is aimed at services provided to Czech users, covers revenue gained from targeted advertising, providing digital market places, and user data sales.
• China proposes new cybersecurity regulations that would require police and government regulators be notified before any information is made public, prohibits the public sharing of technical information such as malicious source codes or security loopholes, prompting concerns that they may delay the public and businesses from being alerted to critical threats.
• Amnesty International, in a new 60-page "Surveillance Giants" report, comes out strongly against Facebook and Google, criticising that their surveillance-based business model is inherently incompatible with the right to privacy and threatens freedom of opinion and expression, while recommending tech companies to "find ways to transition to a rights-respecting business model."
• Egypt indefinitely postpones launch of its first communication satellite Tiba-1 into orbit for technical reasons; satellite aims to promote development by providing telecommunications infrastructure and broadband internet to remote and isolated areas, support development projects in these areas, as well as bridging the digital gap between urban and rural places.

• Apple could be forced to allow rival payment solutions on iOS to compete with its own Apple Pay service in Germany after the country's parliament proposes new legislations introduces as part of an amendment attached to anti-money laundering bill; the change could result in individual banks offering NFC payments through their own apps, rather than going through Apple's service.
• Furthermore, Apple would be allowed to charge a fee for access to the NFC chip, but it wouldn't get the reported 0.15 percent fee that it currently gets from each Apple Pay transaction.
• Apple's tight integration of software and hardware has always been a differentiator, but its overt control of the platform, including through the App Store, has led to a new kind of monopoly that ultimately favours the company over other sellers who make their digital goods available on its platform.
• Chinese web browser Kuniao, which marketed itself as the first legal tool to allow mainland internet users to bypass the Great Firewall and access Twitter, YouTube and Reddit, goes offline after attracting widespread social media attention.
• The browser, which launched in September, still reportedly blocked Google search results on sensitive topics in China, such as June 4, Falun Gong and Xi Jinping, according to people who used the service and posted their comments on Twitter, meaning it only offered a small peek of the open internet.
• TikTok owner Beijing ByteDance reportedly in talks with big music labels — Universal Music, Sony Music and Warner Music — for global licensing deals to include their songs on its new music subscription service, according to a new report by The Financial Times; looking to launch its music streaming as soon as next month, initially in emerging markets such as India, Indonesia and Brazil, as it distances itself from China to focus on adding users of the popular video app in countries outside its strongest markets. (It's worth noting that short video app Douyin and its overseas version TikTok have been downloaded more than 1.5 billion times on Apple's App Store and Google Play since release.)
• Google becomes the latest company after Snapchat and Twitter to enforce caps on political ads rules; limits microtargeting to age, gender, and general location categories, and says it will start enforcing them in U.K. within a week.
• Co-working space provider WeWork begins laying off 2,400 employees as part of its ongoing attempts to reduce overhead and put the company on surer financial footing after a botched IPO and ouster of its CEO and founder Adam Neumann, who was awarded a sickening US$ 1.7 billion severance package.
• Chinese government data suggests Apple shipped 10 million iPhones in the country during September and October, up 6 percent YoY, as overall smartphone shipments dropped 5 percent to 69.3 million.
• Smartphone maker OnePlus discloses second data breach in as many years; says hackers gained access to past customer orders, including details like customer names, contact numbers, emails, and shipping addresses, but not passwords or financial information. (The company last suffered a similar breach on January 2018, when attackers gained access to the data of around 40,000 users.)

• Apple discloses it is losing money on its device repair services — interesting, when, as it turns out, it's been caught charging US$ 1,200 for a repair that a third-party store fixed for just US$ 75, but faces criticism for deliberately trying to censor information about repair alternatives and its decision not to make spare parts or service information available; says it does not allow third-party repairs in order to ensure the quality and safety of repairs, as the right to repair movement gains momentum and lawmakers question its anticompetitive practices by taking actions to block consumers from seeking repairs outside of its ecosystem.
• Amazon rolls out free, ad-supported music streaming tier for the web with access to top playlists and "thousands" of music streaming stations.
• The company already offers a variety of music subscription options: Amazon Music HD (lossless hi-fi), Amazon Music Unlimited (standard), Amazon Music Unlimited for Echo speakers and Fire TVs, Amazon Prime Music (bundled free with Amazon Prime).
• Google introduces prepaid plans for YouTube Music and Premium in India; allows users to prepay for the services one or three months at a time, with no subscription required.
• Twitter updates its security settings to allow users enroll for two-factor authentication (2FA) without a phone number and disable SMS-based 2FA; decoupling comes in the wake of revelations that the social blogging platform "accidentally" targeted ads at some users by way of their email addresses and phone numbers, which they provided only for account security purposes.
• Bitcoin, the world's biggest cryptocurrency, slumps to a six-month low of US$ 6,929, its lowest since May, after China's central bank launches a fresh crackdown on cryptocurrencies, warning of the risks entailed in issuing or trading them.
• Popular on-demand movie streaming and rental service Mubi arrives in India to take on seasoned rivals such as Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV+ and Disney’s Hotstar; offers a three-month subscription for Rs 199 (US$ 2.8), after which it would charge US$ 7 a month or $67 a year (US$ 5.5 per month).
• Tech giant HP rejects Xerox's proposal to buy the company for US$ 22 per share, arguing that the current offer "undervalues" HP and isn't in shareholders' "best interests"; Xerox threatens to take its US$ 33.5 billion buyout bid for HP hostile, if the PC maker did not agree to a "friendly" discussion and open its books before November 25.
• Privacy-focussed search engine Startpage attracts concerns after System1, an advertising firm that operates the subsidiary Privacy One Group (which oversees investments in new privacy and security products), acquires a stake in the company; rival DuckDuckGo rolls out Smarter Encryption, an effort to restrict users to HTTPS connections that uses a whitelist of encrypted sites (HTTPS) in order to route users to the encrypted versions of those URLs.
• Google brings its popular Smart Compose feature in Gmail to Google Docs for G Suite users, using machine learning models to make suggestions how to finish the next sentence by analysing a user's past writing.
• Tesla reveals Cybertruck, a 6-passenger pickup featuring 3 motors, heavy-duty stainless steel and armoured glass, and travel up to 500 miles on a single charge for US$ 39,990; to begin production in late 2021.
• Japan's SoftBank confirms plans to merge internet subsidiary Yahoo Japan with messaging app Line to create a new US$ 30 billion tech group, as it strives to compete more effectively with local rival Rakuten and U.S. tech powerhouses.
• Facebook reportedly built a now discontinued internal app, between 2015 and 2016, that let employees identify colleagues and friends by scanning the faces of people identifiable through the social network's facial recognition system.
• Smart home products from Amazon, Facebook and Google top Mozilla's third annual Privacy Not Included report of safe, secure connected products.
• Antivirus vendors and non-profits including Avira, the EFF, and Kaspersky form the Coalition Against Stalkerware to fight secretly installed snooping apps.
• Retail giant Amazon admits that it uses "aggregated data" from individual third-party sellers to come up with its own products and private label brands, as lawmakers probe the company's competitive practices and seek evidence that would point to the company using its dominance to compete against third-party sellers that also rely on Amazon's platform for their livelihood.
• Google to discontinue its cloud-based printing service Cloud Print (which has been in beta since 2010) by the end of next year on December 31, 2020; adds support for dynamic email — an AMP-based tech that allows users to take action directly within a message, whether that’s responding to a comment, RSVPing to an event, purchasing a product, or managing subscription preferences — to its Android and iOS Gmail app for G Suite users.

• Anonymous users on Reddit, Patreon, and standalone websites are making and selling 3D likenesses of celebrities and real people to fulfill their sexual fantasies, according to a new report by Vice.
• Microsoft's workplace messaging app, Teams, hits more than 20 million daily active users, up from 13 million in July, officially beating rival Slack by handsome margin, which reported more than 10 million daily active users in the second quarter ended July 31 (Teams and Slack compete with Facebook’s Workplace, Cisco's Webex Teams, and Google Hangouts Chat and Meet in the market); tests Gmail integration in outlook.com with options to let users switch between Outlook and Gmail inboxes (though this causes the entire browser tab to refresh) and browse Google Drive files.
• Facebook quietly releases a new meme-making app for iOS called Whale targeting Canadian users, continuing its experiments with new apps to take on rival TikTok; lets users edit their own photos or images from a library of stock photos and share the creations on social media platforms such as Instagram and Messenger.
• Amazon reportedly prepping to launch its own cloud game streaming service as early as next year with native Twitch integration, as it readies to take on Google's newly launched Stadia and Microsoft's forthcoming xCloud.
• Payments service provider PayPal to acquire Honey, a comparison shopping and rewards platform that has 17M monthly active users, for US$ 4 billion, making it the company's biggest purchase yet so far.
• Google's sister company Loon signs deal with Telefonica-owned Internet para Todos to provide internet to remote parts of the Amazon rainforest.
• DoorDash captures 35 percent of the U.S. meal delivery market, as the company fights it out with rivals GrubHub (30 percent), UberEats (20 percent), Postmates and Caviar.
• Smartphone sales online grows 55 percent YoY in India to 22.5 million units for the quarter ending September, with Flipkart (57 percent) and Amazon (33 percent) taking the lion's share of the total 49 million handsets sold.
• California-based smart speaker company Sonos acquires privacy-focussed voice assistant startup Snips for US$ 37 million, as it sells 6.1 million speakers in 2019, up 8 percent YoY.
• South Korean electronics conglomerate Samsung releases new foldable smartphone W20 5G exclusive to China; comes with sharper edges and flatter side bezels than its predecessor, the Galaxy Fold.