Month: November 2020

Google today announced a major relaunch of Google Pay—which formerly was a relatively simple tap-to-pay app but will now be a complete financial service competing with the likes of Venmo, Mint, Apple Pay, and even some banks. The new Pay is available as an Early Access app in the Google Play store as of this afternoon, alongside the original and much less ambitious Google Pay—which is now tagged as "old version."

In addition to the simple tap-to-pay features offered in the previous app, users of the new Google Pay can directly link bank accounts and credit cards to the app. This allows for AI-driven insights into spending and saving, replacing much of the functionality of your own bank's online banking app with Google Pay, and more.

Privacy

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  The important bit here: your personal information from Pay will not be sold to anyone and will not be shared with any other Google services for ad targeting, either. [credit: Jim Salter ]

We can already hear readers screaming about the privacy implications of allowing Google directly into your banking, credit card, and payment histories—and we don't really blame you. Google clearly heard those cries coming as well and seems to be doing what it can to allay those concerns.

Enlarge / An iPhone 6. (credit: Getty Images | NurPhoto)

The attorneys general for 33 states and the District of Columbia have reached a $113 million settlement with Apple over allegations that the iPhone maker throttled performance in several generations of the device to conceal a design defect in the battery.

The states alleged that Apple throttled performance in aging iPhones without telling consumers it was doing it or why. That concealment violated states' consumer protection laws, the attorneys general argued.

"Apple withheld information about their batteries that slowed down iPhone performance, all while passing it off as an update," California Attorney General Xavier Becerra said when announcing the settlement. "Today's settlement ensures consumers will have access to the information they need to make a well-informed decision when purchasing and using Apple products."

Enlarge / The Blue Ring Nebula was discovered by the Galaxy Evolution Explorer, or GALEX, in 2004, but it took 16 years of observations with other telescopes, both on the ground and in space, to finally pin down its cause (credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/M. Seibert (Carnegie Institution for Science)/K. Hoadley (Caltech)/GALEX)

It took 16 long years, but astronomers have finally solved the puzzle of the mysterious Blue Ring Nebula, according to a new paper published in Nature. First spotted in 2004, the star with an unusual ultraviolet ring appears to be the result of two stars merging, spewing out debris in opposite directions and forming two glowing cones. It appears to us as a blue ring because one of those cones points directly at Earth. That makes this the first observation of a rare stage of stellar evolution, just a few thousand years into the process—akin to capturing a baby's first steps.

The story begins with the so-called GALEX (Galaxy Evolution Explorer) mission, an all-sky survey in the ultraviolet band of the electromagnetic spectrum that was in operation from 2003 to 2013. Caltech physicist Chris Martin was the PI for GALEX when his team spotted an unusual object: a large, faint blob of glowing gas with a star at its center. GALEX makes measurements in both the far UV and near UV bands, but while most objects GALEX observed showed up in both bands, the stunning blue ring around the star dubbed TYC 2597-735-1 only showed up in the far UV.

Intrigued, Martin decided to investigate further, confident that he and his team could come up with a viable explanation by the end of the year. He thought the Blue Ring Nebula was most likely a supernova remnant or perhaps a planetary nebula formed from the remains of a star roughly the size of our Sun, even though these typically emit light in multiple wavelengths outside the UV range. But it turned out to be a far knottier problem.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | Kittichai Boonpong | EyeEm)

The Federal Communications Commission today voted to add 45MHz of spectrum to Wi-Fi in a slightly controversial decision that takes the spectrum away from a little-used automobile-safety technology.

The spectrum from 5.850GHz to 5.925GHz has, for about 20 years, been set aside for Dedicated Short Range Communications (DSRC), a vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure communications service that's supposed to warn drivers of dangers on the road. But as FCC Chairman Ajit Pai today said, "99.9943 percent of the 274 million registered vehicles on the road in the United States still don't have DSRC on-board units." Only 15,506 vehicles have been equipped with the technology, he said.

In today's decision, the FCC split the spectrum band and reallocated part of it to Wi-Fi and part of it to a newer vehicle technology. The lower 45MHz from 5.850GHz to 5.895GHz will be allocated to Wi-Fi and other unlicensed services.

Enlarge (credit: Cisco)

Cisco is rolling out fixes for three vulnerabilities in its Webex video-conference software that made it possible for interlopers to eavesdrop on meetings as a “ghost,” meaning being able to view, listen, and more without being seen by the organizer or any of the attendees.

The vulnerabilities were discovered by IBM Research and the IBM’s Office of the CISO, which analyzed Webex because it’s the company’s primary tool for remote meetings. The discovery comes as work-from-home routines have driven a more than fivefold increase in the use of Webex between February and June. At its peak, Webex hosted up to 4 million meetings in a single day.

The vulnerabilities made it possible for an attacker to: