Month: November 2016

Enlarge (credit: Ron Amadeo)

The saga of the explosive Galaxy Note 7 keeps going. Even though the device has been cancelled and all units have been recalled (twice), getting customers to actually turn in their phones has been a challenge.

In New Zealand, Samsung and The New Zealand Telecommunications Forum (TCF) are dealing with the issue by taking the drastic step of banning the Note 7 from the nation's airwaves. Starting on Nov. 18, the Note 7 will be cut off from New Zealand's networks.

"Numerous attempts by all providers have been made to contact owners and ask them to bring the phones in for replacement or refund," said TCF CEO Geoff Thorn. "This action should further aid the return of the remaining handsets."

Turkey is reportedly blocking access to Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp, and YouTube following the arrests of at least 11 pro-Kurdish politicians.

According to Internet monitoring group Turkey Blocks, access to these sites has been throttled at the ISP level and is apparently affecting "the majority of Internet users." The current Internet user headcount in Turkey is understood to stand at more than 47 million out of a population just shy of 75 million.

Its most recent report, posted on Thursday night, says that almost all major ISPs—starting with national provider TTNet and Turkcell—are affected. Users of UyduNet and some smaller providers were apparently still online, at time of testing.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images/Urich Baumgartgen)

Google has rebutted the European Commission's anti-competitive charges against the ad giant's alleged abuse of dominance in its price comparison, specialised search services, and AdSense businesses.

The company—after a number of deadline extensions from Brussels—came out fighting in a blog post penned by Google's chief counsel Kent Walker that was published on Thursday:

In recent years, we’ve improved the format of our ads to include more informative displays with pictures, prices, and links where you can buy products. Showing more useful ads benefits us, our advertisers, and most of all, you, our users.

That’s why we disagree with the European Commission’s argument that our improved Google Shopping results are harming competition.

It claimed that EC antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager's charge on the company favouring its own price comparison and specialised search—or, as Google prefers to describe it, "shopping services"—over its competitors carried too "narrow" a definition, arguing that it excluded the "competitive significance" of Amazon and other players in that market. Walker said:

Enlarge (credit: Leland Bobbe / Getty Images News)

Two federal judges in two separate cases on opposite sides of the country have denied efforts to legalize ballot selfies, just days before the presidential election.

On Thursday, a federal judge in New York rejected plaintiffs’ attempts to halt an existing state and New York City law that bans the practice. The judge wrestled with balancing First Amendment rights and the public policy interest in keeping a secret ballot so that voting is not unduly influenced.

“The absence of recent evidence of this kind of voter bribery or intimidation does not mean that the motivation to engage in such conduct no longer exists,” US District Judge P. Kevin Castel wrote. “Rather, it is consistent with the continued effectiveness of the New York statute.”