Month: August 2024

If you have an iPhone, be careful: these characters could completely block it

From time-to-time, it is normal to encounter some errors on our devices. Most of the time, they are more annoying than anything else. On other occasions, they can cause a device to completely freeze.

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This week, a researcher has discovered a bug that iPhone users should avoid at all costs. Specifically, we are referring to these characters: “«”::“. If you enter them from the Spotlight search or the app library, your iPhone will completely lock up.

In fact, it’s even simpler. You just have to type «»: followed by any character to temporarily turn your iPhone into a brick. Experts in the field reported to TechCrunch that it was not a security issue. In this case, it is only a very annoying problem for iPhone users.

Apple has not said anything about the issue, so we also don’t know if it will have a solution or when. For now, we recommend that you stay away from those characters, unless you want to experience having a very expensive paperweight.

Throughout its history, iOS has not escaped several serious errors. One of the most recent could send your iPhone into a loop of restarts. A vulnerability found in Bluetooth allowed pop-up windows to be opened on the iPhone until it was completely blocked. Small devices like the Flipper Zero and its software, BLE Span, took advantage of this to render any iPhone useless within a 10-meter radius. On this occasion, Apple was able to resolve this error in a subsequent update, iOS 17.2.

As always, the best thing in these cases is to keep your device always up to date. This way, you will save yourself many problems in the future.

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When and where does Longlegs premiere on streaming? The terrifying movie lands earlier than expected

This year, horror movie fans can rejoice. Throughout the season, top-notch films of the genre have been released, from the recent Alien: Romulus to the surprising Late night with the devil. However, almost all critics seem to agree that Longlegs has been the biggest surprise in this regard.

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Directed by Oz Perkins and with a brilliant Nicolas Cage in the cast, Longlegs has undoubtedly become a worldwide success. But when and where does it arrive on streaming? If you want to watch it at home, you won’t have to wait much longer.

Nicolas Cage arrives on your television in his most terrifying version

Longlegs has just premiered on Amazon Prime Video… but only in the United States. It is a staggered release—not launched at the same time in all territories—so we will have to wait to see it internationally. However, everything indicates that Prime Video will be its home everywhere.

The Lord of the Rings is back in a way no one expected: spectacular trailer for The War of the Rohirrim

The Lord of the Rings has been back in fashion for a couple of years. Beyond the Amazon Prime Video series The Rings of Power, which will soon return with its second season, there are two other Tolkien world adaptation projects underway. On the one hand, there is the future The Hunt for Gollum, a live-action film directed by Andy Serkis. And on the other hand, there is The War of the Rohirrim, an animated film produced by Warner Bros.

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With a release date set for December 13th of this year, The War of the Rohirrim promises to be a grand return to Middle Earth. Now, Warner has just released the official trailer for the movie. And, without a doubt, it is as spectacular as its synopsis promised:

200 years before The Lord of the Rings

The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim will be set about 200 years before the events of The Fellowship of the Ring. In it, we will be able to see the story of the ancient ruler of Rohan, Helm Hammerhand, voiced by Brian Cox (Succession) in the English version. We are already counting the days to be able to see this gem on the big screen.

The Google Pixel 9 has destroyed reality: we will never be able to trust a photo again

As the Pixel 9 reviews come to light and the phones reach their buyers (they went on sale yesterday), an uncomfortable truth begins to circulate on the internet: it will be difficult to trust an image again because of AI and Google.

According to The Verge, in just 10 seconds they were able to create each of these images with the Reimagine tool from the Magic Editor of Pixel 9. They are sharp. In full color. They are high fidelity. There is no suspicious background blur, no revealing sixth finger. These photographs are extraordinarily convincing, and they are all fake.

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The power to manipulate reality in seconds and without knowledge

Anyone who buys a Pixel 9 (the latest model of Google’s flagship phone, available now) will have access to the easiest and most casual user interface for creating top-notch fake images, integrated directly into their mobile device.

It is almost certain that this will become the norm, with similar features already available on competing devices and expected to be extended to others in the near future.

Photography has been used in the service of deception since it exists. But it would be false to say that photographs have never been considered reliable evidence. Everyone reading this article in 2024 has grown up in a time when a photograph was, by default, a representation of the truth.

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A scene staged with cinematic effects, digital photo manipulation, or more recently, a deepfake, were potential deceptions to consider, but they were outliers in the realm of possibility.

Specialized knowledge and specialized tools were needed to sabotage intuitive trust in a photograph. Falsification was the exception, not the rule.

All of this is about to change: the default assumption about a photo is that it is fake, because creating realistic and believable fake photos is now trivial. As they say in The Verge, we are not prepared for what will happen next.

Cristiano Ronaldo just broke a historic record on YouTube

Cristiano Ronaldo is used to breaking records on the football field and on social media. What he wasn’t used to was being on YouTube, the largest streaming platform in the world, where until 48 hours ago he didn’t have his own channel.

The Portuguese forward inaugurated his YouTube channel on Wednesday and in 90 minutes he had become the fastest in history to reach one million subscribers and received a commemorative gold plaque (YouTube always sends a plaque to commemorate these achievements).

1 million in 90 minutes and 30 million in 48 hours

This morning, the number of subscribers had already surpassed 30 million, once again breaking the record for the fastest to reach that figure. For example, a video in which Ronaldo and his wife Georgina talk about themselves and their relationship already has almost 26 million views.

The star has 170 million subscribers on Facebook, 112.6 million on Twitter, and 636 million on Instagram. A true madness, more people follow him than there are inhabitants in Europe. However, we have to be clear that many millions are fake accounts or bots.

As such, he is one of the most recognized and wealthy sports stars in the world, and he continues to play as the captain of the Saudi team Al Nasser and the Portugal national team at the age of 39.

He is the football player with the most international matches (200) and the most international goals (130), and he has won the Ballon d’Or five times, the highest individual achievement for football players. There is no sector or business where Cristiano does not succeed.

Google has made changing smartphones easier than ever on Pixel 9

The Google Pixel 9 has just been released, and the smartphone is already receiving a substantial update that improves the data transfer experience, something that affects all of us when we change phones.

Paul Dunlop, Product Manager of Onboarding and Switching at Android, tweeted a thread about all the important changes. And he even describes it as the biggest version in its history.

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Dunlop first shows a new entry in the device settings menu called Backup or Data Backup. Initial reports claimed that users could copy photos, contacts, messages, and more from an old Pixel to the Pixel 9.

All of that is true, but what we didn’t know is that this process can be done as many times as you want, whether it’s through a USB cable, WiFi connection, or cloud servers. It is no longer necessary to factory reset the devices.

The best data transfer within the Android world

Data transfer can take quite a while, especially if you have many files. So, if you’ve been wishing for a faster method, the Pixel 9 now features the Express tool. Dunlop claims that this “massively reduces the time it takes” to move the data. According to a screenshot, the feature only copies files that are not already present in your Google account.

According to reports, it is “cloud-aware,” which means that Express knows what you have saved and ignores backups to speed up the process. In addition, images sent through the tool will retain their original quality. However, you have the option to select which files to move or not through Customize.

Beyond files, the renewed data transfer of Pixel 9 also transfers more system settings, permissions, and notification preferences. This can help establish your preferred smartphone settings on the new device without having to redo everything from scratch. It will be similar to your old phone.

Improvements in the quality of life of users

Google has worked with top developers around the world to ensure that applications stay connected and running before the data migration begins. There is also the interesting transport multiplexing.

Let’s say you’re transferring files over WiFi, but the process is taking forever. Dunlop claims that you can connect a USB cable halfway through the transfer to assist: the feature uses both methods to send files quickly. The Pixel 9 will even recommend you to do it through an on-screen notification.

Donald Trump is launching some kind of cryptocurrency: this is what we know

Donald Trump is launching a cryptocurrency platform, he announced on Thursday in a post on Truth Social. Trump’s post included a few more details, but he and his children have suggested that it will target unbanked and underserved communities.

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“For too long, the average American has been squeezed by big banks and financial elites,” says the post. “It’s time for us to take a stand: together. #BeDefiant”. The name of the platform, The DeFiant Ones, is a play on words with “decentralized finance.”

Trump’s post on Truth Social links to a Telegram channel for the yet-to-be-launched platform, which has posts dating back to August 15th, calling it the “official Telegram channel for the Trump DeFi project.”

What is this Donald Trump crypto project about?

There are no details about what the project entails or whether it is an autonomous decentralized organization, a currency, an exchange market, a cryptocurrency blog or publication, or something completely different.

In July, a company called AMG Software Solutions filed trademark applications for the terms “Be DeFiant,” “World Liberty,” and “World Liberty Financial,” as reported earlier this month by the cryptocurrency publication The Block.

In recent interviews, Trump’s sons, Donald Jr. and Eric, have suggested that the project could be aimed at disadvantaged communities. “Essentially, more than half of this country right now cannot be banked,” said Eric Trump to the New York Post.

“That means they will be rejected for most loans from most institutions. But with this technology, they could have the ability to be approved or denied almost instantly by a lender based on mathematics, not politics. The money could be in their account in minutes, not months,” he explained.

One of Trump’s previous ostentatiously altruistic projects, Trump University, was accused of defrauding students and reached a settlement for 25 million dollars.

The idea that cryptocurrencies can help the unbanked to have better access to financial services is widely spread in the industry, but some reports suggest otherwise.

The DeFiant Ones is not Trump’s first foray into cryptocurrency. He was the keynote speaker at this year’s Bitcoin Conference in Nashville, Tennessee, during which he promised to fire Gary Gensler, the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, a perpetual enemy of the crypto crowd.

What does Apple Intelligence have to do with ChatGPT?

Apple has jumped on the artificial intelligence wave with Apple Intelligence, its own AI system. Integrated into iPhone, iPad, and Mac, it is designed to help us write and perform tasks quickly.

However, during its presentation, the company mentioned another well-known name: ChatGPT. And one of the key features of Apple Intelligence is its integration with ChatGPT. To develop this technology, Apple decided to join forces with OpenAI and incorporate the capabilities of ChatGPT into various Apple services, such as Siri. But what exactly sets them apart?

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While ChatGPT operates through the cloud, Apple Intelligence performs much of the tasks directly on the device. The AI developed by Apple is autonomous and does not rely on external connections, which is a very important point to consider. However, for more complex requests, Apple uses Private Cloud Compute.

This is a feature of Apple Intelligence that combines local processing done on the device with the additional power of cloud servers. These “added” models run on servers with Apple chips. This way, the company ensures that data is never shared or stored.

Next, we have ChatGPT. Its integration within iOS 18, iPadOS 18, and macOS Sequoia allows us to directly access its capabilities. For example, Siri will use the power of ChatGPT when necessary and when you decide. The user will always be able to choose whether or not to take any action with ChatGPT.

In essence, Apple wants us to be able to harness AI from our device, without relying on third-party servers or at least minimizing our dependence on them. That’s why Apple Intelligence requires us to have at least an iPhone 15 Pro, an iPad, or a Mac with an M1 chip or higher to function. In case the task we request is too demanding, it will use Private Cloud Compute.

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This is what the Apple Watch could bring in the future

September is getting closer and with it, the presentation of the future iPhone 16 and Apple Watch Series 10 (and who knows, maybe the Apple Watch Ultra 3). Its release coincides with the tenth anniversary of its announcement, which took place in 2014, so this Series 10 may be more special than usual.

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Although we are already aware of many of the features that the Apple Watch Series 10 will bring, not everything is set in stone. For now, experts like Mark Gurman predict that the future Series 10 will have a larger screen and will also be thinner.

In addition, both the Series 10 and the Watch Ultra 3 would debut a more powerful chip. However, don’t expect anything from Apple Intelligence. Apple’s proprietary AI technology will not be available on the watches now or in the near future. Will it be in a hypothetical Series 11? For now, we’ll have to wait to find out.

Glucose monitoring and detecting high blood pressure: what’s coming to the Apple Watch

The health sensors are also one of the most important parts of the Apple Watch. Many of us use Apple watches to monitor our physical activity or keep track of our sleep hours, for example. And that’s why the company continues to improve its sensors with each release.

We know that Apple has been working on a technology that would be able to detect if your blood pressure is too high and another one for sleep apnea. However, it is possible that we won’t see any of these this year.

In addition, measuring sleep apnea poses an additional challenge for Apple. In order to function, it needs to measure a person’s blood oxygen level. Currently, Apple Watches cannot perform this measurement due to a legal dispute with Massimo.

One of Apple’s goals is to introduce glucose monitoring. Although this feature has been in development for about a decade, we won’t see it in the Series 10. Whether it will be available next year or not remains to be seen.

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The social network created by Nintendo that helped you beat the latest Zelda (that you didn’t know about)

You may think that, at this point, Tears of the Kingdom is far away from you, but the reality is that it’s been over a year, enough to be a fossil in the video game museum, but not enough to forget how much fun we had playing it. However, no matter how much time passes, it will still be fascinating to know the internal workings that Nintendo had before it was released.

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Zeldagram

And it’s that, so developers could have an easier time reaching the point that they wanted to reach in the game to see if their implementations worked, and to improve communication between them, a social platform was created within Nintendo itself where they could ask questions, give suggestions or report bugs in the best Reddit (or Facebook) style.

The attention to detail was such that it was even called “The bulletin board of the rupees.” And, indeed, it did what it had to do: it allowed real-time feedback from the tests, the whole team could be aware of what was happening and, moreover, have fun in the meantime. The only regret is that the fans didn’t get to try it.

This social network had a gamification system where developers could give “rupees” to others (like a kind of “like”) if they agreed with what they said. In the end, it helped Nintendo prioritize elements and compile data better. However, subjectivity was not allowed, and every opinion had to be based on data. If they had to listen to opinions, we might still be waiting for the game.

And of course, given that it is Nintendo you can count on this, no one could argue in those forums: feedback could only be given in a constructive way or through rupees. Now we just need to be able to see and know dozens of “what ifs.” Please, Nintendo, when have we ever asked you for something?

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