Your daily tech news digest – 10 biggest stories (July 25, 2018)

This is our daily digest series, wherein we bring to you a curated list of top 10 technology news from around the world.

In today’s edition, you’ll read about WhatsApp’s refusal to India’s suggestion on countering fake news, the new iPhone X temptation, Apple’s apology over MacBook Pro issue, and lots of other useful and impactful news stories.

So without any further ado, here’s the list:

The iPhone X Temptation

Apple’s iPhone X has been given a make over. No, not by Apple, but by Russian jewelry company Caviar. The series – dubbed iPhone X Temptation – consists of a total of four models.

Pricing – for the 64GB variant – starts at $3,850, and goes all the up to $4,810. For the 256GB variant, you’ll have to shell out $240 more.

More info here.

Apple apologizes for MacBook Pro thermal throttling

Users of new Apple MacBook Pro has been reporting that the device runs very hot during usage. It came to light that this problem even results the device’s processor to operate below their minimum speed.

Now, Apple has officially acknowledged the problem, apologizing for the inconvenience this may have caused to users. Here’s what the company has exactly said:

Following extensive performance testing under numerous workloads, we’ve identified that there is a missing digital key in the firmware that impacts the thermal management system and could drive clock speeds down under heavy thermal loads on the new MacBook Pro. A bug fix is included in today’s macOS High Sierra 10.13.6 Supplemental Update and is recommended. We apologize to any customer who has experienced less than optimal performance on their new systems. Customers can expect the new 15-inch MacBook Pro to be up to 70% faster, and the 13-inch MacBook Pro with Touch Bar to be up to 2X faster, as shown in the performance results on our website.

More info here.

eBay to soon accept payments through Apple Pay

eBay has announced that users will soon be able to make payments on its platform using the Apple Pay mobile payments service. The company said the compatibility will go live this fall.

Using Apple Pay on Apple iOS and Safari, consumers will be able to check out on eBay via the app and mobile web

In a related news, eBay has also partnered with Square to offer financing options to its users. For more info, head here and here.

WhatsApp gets new feature on iOS

WhatsApp’s iOS client has got a new feature: Siri support for group chats. Yes, now you can ask Siri to send a message to a WhatsApp group chat.

Earlier, Siri could only send WhatsApp messages to individual contacts. This new feature has been added to WhatsApp as part of version 2.18.80 of the app.

More info here and here.

Advertisers on Facebook will no longer be able to discriminate on basis of race or religion

Facebook has entered into a legal agreement with the state of Washington in the US that requires the company to do away with options that let advertisers to reach their target audience by filtering on the basis of race, religion, sexual orientations, and other categories that are otherwise protected in ad-targeting.

Here’s what a Facebook executive told The Verge:

We appreciate Attorney General Ferguson’s attention to this important matter and are pleased to have reached an agreement with his office. We’ve worked closely with them to address the issues they’ve raised. Discriminatory advertising has no place on our platform, and we’ll continue to improve our ad products so they’re relevant, effective, and safe for everyone

More info here.

Google Docs gets ability to check grammar

Good news for Google Docs users, the service now lets you test your text for grammatical errors as well.

To solve grammar corrections, we use a unique machine translation-based approach to recognize errors and suggest corrections on the fly. Our AI can catch several different types of corrections, from simple grammatical rules like how to use articles in a sentence (like “a” versus “an”), to more complicated grammatical concepts such as how to use subordinate clauses correctly

The company has announced several other changes as well. More info here.

An app that offers rewards based on their mode of transportation

Here’s an interesting app for you. It’s dubbed Miles, and it offers you reward points based on the modes of transportation you use in your day-to-day life (the greener the transport, the more reward points you get).

The app is currently only available on iOS, with the Android version coming soon. More info here.

Segway’s new e-skates

Check out the $399 Drift W1 e-skates from Segway that will start shipping next month:

WhatsApp to not comply with Indian government’s proposal to counter fake news

In wake of recent mob lynching in India (fueled primarily through messages on WhatsApp), the Indian government suggested the Facebook-owned service to bring content traceability, which effectively meant punching a hole in the platform’s end-to-end encryption.

However, looks like WhatsApp isn’t interested in accepting the suggestion. Here’s what the company told a publication (which is being seen as in indirect reply to India’s suggestion):

We remain deeply committed to people’s privacy and security, which is why we will continue to maintain end-to-end encryption for all of our users

More info here.

Upcoming Samsung Galaxy Note9 leaks again

Leaks and rumors related to the upcoming Samsung Galaxy Note9 are coming thick and fast. Tipster Evan Blass has shared a set of new images for the device, showing the phone in different colors.

Note9 in (from L to R) black, blue, and brown. pic.twitter.com/Akr1tnrxiS

— Evan Blass (@evleaks) July 24, 2018

The handset is set to be unveiled on August 9.

PiunikaWeb is a unique initiative that mainly focuses on investigative journalism. This means we do a lot of hard work to come up with news stories that are either ‘exclusive,’ ‘breaking,’ or ‘curated’ in nature. Perhaps that’s the reason our work has been picked by the likes of Forbes, Engadget, The Verge, Macrumors, and more. Do take a tour of our website to get a feel of our work. And if you like what we do, stay connected with us on Twitter (@PiunikaWeb) and other social media channels to receive timely updates on stories we publish.