Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway has slightly reduced its stake in AAPL, new regulatory findings reveal. Buffett also exited a $2.13 billion stake in Oracle, and picked up new positions in software company Red Hat and Suncor Energy.

more…

The post Warren Buffett’s Berkshire slightly reduces AAPL stake, but still holds nearly 250M shares appeared first on 9to5Mac.

Opera has unveiled a major redesign for its browser that's expected to ship in version 59. As Peter Bright writes via Ars Technica, "the new appearance adopts the same square edges and clean lines that we've seen in other browsers, giving the browser a passing similarity to both Firefox and Edge." From the report: The principles of the new design? "We put Web content at center stage," the Opera team writes on its blog. The design is pared down so that you can browse "unhindered by unnecessary distractions." Borders and dividing lines have been removed, flattening out parts of the browser's interface and making them look more uniform and less eye-catching. The new design comes with the requisite dark and light modes, a welcome trend that we're glad to see is being widely adopted. Being Web-centric is not a bad principle for an application such as a browser, where the bulk of the functionality and interest comes from the pages we're viewing rather than the browser itself. At first blush, I think that Opera has come up with something that looks good, but it does feel like an awfully familiar design rationale. [...] Opera plans to ship the R3 release in March, and a developer preview can be downloaded today to give the new appearance a spin. The new design isn't the only notable feature of R3; it also integrates a crypto wallet for Ethereum transactions. In conjunction with Opera on your phone, this feature can be used to securely make online payments to sites using Coinbase Commerce for their payment processing.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Facebook’s constant string of privacy scandals is finally catching up to it. The Washington Post reports today that Facebook is negotiating a record breaking, multi-billion dollar settlement with the FTC.

more…

The post Facebook in talks of settling FTC investigation with first ever multi-billion dollar fine appeared first on 9to5Mac.

LG's next upcoming flagship smartphone is the LG G8, which is expected to debut at Mobile World Congress at the end of the month. While much of the phone is similar to last year's model, LG yesterday announced some news on the phone's audio capabilities. "The phone uses the same 'Crystal Sound OLED' branding that LG has used on some of its TVs before; this means that the entire display will vibrate to work as a speaker, which was previously rumored," reports The Verge. "The news also confirms that the G8 will be the first flagship G-series phone not to use an LCD." From the report: The G8 still has a bottom-facing speaker for louder use cases like speakerphone calls, and LG says this can be paired with the top part of the screen for 2-channel stereo sound. Elsewhere, the signature quad DAC from LG's recent flagship phones returns -- which means there'll be a headphone jack -- as does the "Boombox Speaker" functionality that produces surprisingly bassy sound when the phone is placed on a table. LG has already confirmed that the G8 will have a front-facing 3D camera with a time-of-flight sensor, while rumors suggest there could be an optional second screen accessory.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple has acquired digital marketing startup DataTiger, according to a new report from Bloomberg. The outlet points to a regulatory filing from December that shows the iPhone-maker now controls the U.K.-based startup.

Earlier this year, the United States Golf Association opened an investigation into amateur golfer Lucy Li over her involvement in an Apple Watch “Close Your Rings” video. According to a new report from Golf Digest today, however, the USGA has concluded its investigation into the 16-year-old golfer.

more…

The post USGA lets amateur golfer Lucy Li off with a warning following her role in Apple Watch video appeared first on 9to5Mac.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: A hacker who stole close to 620 million user records from 16 websites has stolen another 127 million records from eight more websites, TechCrunch has learned. The hacker, whose listing was the previously disclosed data for about $20,000 in bitcoin on a dark web marketplace, stole the data last year from several major sites -- some that had already been disclosed, like more than 151 million records from MyFitnessPal and 25 million records from Animoto. But several other hacked sites on the marketplace listing didn't know or hadn't disclosed yet -- such as 500px and Coffee Meets Bagel. The Register, which first reported the story, said the data included names, email addresses and scrambled passwords, and in some cases other login and account data -- though no financial data was included. Now the same hacker has eight additional marketplace entries after their original listings were pulled offline, including: - 18 million records from travel booking site Ixigo - Live-video streaming site YouNow had 40 million records stolen - Houzz, which recently disclosed a data breach, is listed with 57 million records stolen - Ge.tt had 1.8 million accounts stolen - 450,000 records from cryptocurrency site Coinmama. - Roll20, a gaming site, had 4 million records listed - Stronghold Kingdoms, a multiplayer online game, had 5 million records listed - 1 million records from pet care delivery service PetFlow

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple has acquired digital marketing startup DataTiger, according to a new report from Bloomberg. DataTiger is aiming to “re-think the whole marketing experience,” according to its CEO’s LinkedIn page.

more…

The post Apple acquires DataTiger, a digital marketing startup focused on ‘putting your data to work’ appeared first on 9to5Mac.

Last week, AT&T’s controversial 5G E service icon started showing up on iPhones and iPads running the second iOS 12.2 beta, even though it isn’t true 5G service. Now, another carrier is taking a play from AT&T’s book, although with a strange and lazy approach.

more…

The post Following AT&T’s 5GE marketing controversy, another carrier is making a similar move with ‘4.5G’ appeared first on 9to5Mac.

An anonymous reader shares a report: The creators of a revolutionary AI system that can write news stories and works of fiction -- dubbed "deepfakes for text" -- have taken the unusual step of not releasing their research publicly, for fear of potential misuse. OpenAI, an nonprofit research company backed by Elon Musk, says its new AI model, called GPT2 is so good and the risk of malicious use so high that it is breaking from its normal practice of releasing the full research to the public in order to allow more time to discuss the ramifications of the technological breakthrough. At its core, GPT2 is a text generator. The AI system is fed text, anything from a few words to a whole page, and asked to write the next few sentences based on its predictions of what should come next. The system is pushing the boundaries of what was thought possible, both in terms of the quality of the output, and the wide variety of potential uses. When used to simply generate new text, GPT2 is capable of writing plausible passages that match what it is given in both style and subject. It rarely shows any of the quirks that mark out previous AI systems, such as forgetting what it is writing about midway through a paragraph, or mangling the syntax of long sentences. Feed it the opening line of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four -- "It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen" -- and the system recognizes the vaguely futuristic tone and the novelistic style, and continues with: "I was in my car on my way to a new job in Seattle. I put the gas in, put the key in, and then I let it run. I just imagined what the day would be like. A hundred years from now. In 2045, I was a teacher in some school in a poor part of rural China. I started with Chinese history and history of science."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Apple is going to offer the first glimpse at its original content during its March event, reports Variety. Citing sources familiar with the company's plans, the outlet says we could see clips of multiple shows, including the untiled drama set behind the scenes of a network news morning show starring Jennifer Aniston, Reese Witherspoon and Steve Carell.

Apple’s next media event is expected to happen on March 25, with a star-studded lineup of Hollywood guests expected to fill the Steve Jobs Theatre as the company unveils its long rumored video streaming service.

more…

The post Apple to offer first showing of original TV clips in March, but streaming service could launch as late as fall appeared first on 9to5Mac.

A new study from the Oxford Internet Institute claims to have found no link between time spent playing violent video games, and increased aggressive behavior teen teenagers. From a report: Published in Royal Society Open Science, the study is "one of the most definitive to date" according to the University of Oxford. While many studies have previously made similar and contrary claims, lead researcher professor Andrew Przybylski said the "idea that violent video games drive real-world aggression is a popular one, but it hasn't tested very well over time". According to the university, this study is set apart from previous work by preregistration, where researchers publish their hypothesis, methods and analysis technique before beginning research. "Part of the problem in technology research is that there are many ways to analyze the same data, which will produce different results," said Przybylski. "A cherry-picked result can add undue weight to the moral panic surrounding video games. The registered study approach is a safeguard against this." This was supported by co-author Dr Netta Weinstein from Cardiff University who said: "Our findings suggest that researcher biases might have influenced previous studies on this topic, and have distorted our understanding of the effects of video games."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader shares a report: In early 2018, a Facebook user made a public threat on the social network against one of the company's offices in Europe. Facebook picked up the threat, pulled the user's data and determined he was in the same country as the office he was targeting. The company informed the authorities about the threat and directed its security officers to be on the lookout for the user. "He made a veiled threat that 'Tomorrow everyone is going to pay' or something to that effect," a former Facebook security employee told CNBC. The incident is representative of the steps Facebook takes to keep its offices, executives and employees protected, according to nine former Facebook employees who spoke with CNBC. The company mines its social network for threatening comments, and in some cases uses its products to track the location of people it believes present a credible threat. Several of the former employees questioned the ethics of Facebook's security strategies, with one of them calling the tactics "very Big Brother-esque." Other former employees argue these security measures are justified by Facebook's reach and the intense emotions it can inspire. The company has 2.7 billion users across its services. That means that if just 0.01 percent of users make a threat, Facebook is still dealing with 270,000 potential security risks. [...] One of the tools Facebook uses to monitor threats is a "be on lookout" or "BOLO" list, which is updated approximately once a week. The list was created in 2008, an early employee in Facebook's physical security group told CNBC. It now contains hundreds of people, according to four former Facebook security employees who have left the company since 2016. Facebook notifies its security professionals anytime a new person is added to the BOLO list, sending out a report that includes information about the person, such as their name, photo, their general location and a short description of why they were added. In recent years, the security team even had a large monitor that displayed the faces of people on the list, according to a photo CNBC has seen and two people familiar, although Facebook says it no longer operates this monitor.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Ahead of New York Toy Fair this weekend, LEGO has unveiled an entirely new line of kits, Hidden Side. By pairing traditional brick-built creations with a companion smartphones app, the new theme introduces Augmented Reality to bridge the gap between physical and digital play. Centered around a series of haunted builds, LEGO Hidden Side will be launching later this year with eight kits.

more…

The post LEGO debuts new Augmented Reality-enabled Hidden Side sets w/ iPhone companion app appeared first on 9to5Mac.

What’s your Apple device worth? Whether an iPhone, Apple Watch, or Mac, here’s how to find the estimated value with Apple GiveBack.

A website that uses AI -- Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) -- to generate photos of people who do not exist is circulating on social media and forums this week. A news writeup adds: Every time the site is refreshed, a shockingly realistic -- but totally fake --picture of a person's face appears. Uber software engineer Phillip Wang created the page to demonstrate what GANs are capable of, and then posted it to the public Facebook group "Artificial Intelligence & Deep Learning" on Tuesday. The underlying code that made this possible, titled StyleGAN, was written by Nvidia and featured in a paper that has yet to be peer-reviewed. This exact type of neural network has the potential to revolutionize video game and 3D-modeling technology, but, as with almost any kind of technology, it could also be used for more sinister purposes.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

After years of fighting the idea, Sony announced last September it is finally bringing "cross-platform gameplay, progression, and commerce" to the PlayStation Network, with Fortnite as the first example. Months later, the company's efforts have yet to gain wide traction and now we may have identified the bottleneck: Sony. Several major third-party developers have accused the company of standing in the way of letting the PS4 versions of their games play nicely with other platforms. ArsTechnica reports: "We just launched Wargroove with crossplay between PC, Switch, and Xbox," Chucklefish CEO Finn "Tiy" Brice wrote on the ResetEra forums. "We made many requests for crossplay (both through our [Sony] account manager and directly with higher-ups) all the way up until release month. We were told in no uncertain terms that it was not going to happen." Brice's comments came days after new Hi-Rez Studios CEO Stew Chisam tweeted at Sony that the studio was "ready to go when you are" for cross-play on Smite, Paladins, and Realm Royale. "It's time to stop playing favorites and tear down the crossplay/progression wall for everyone," he said. In a follow-up tweet, Chisam explained that Xbox/Switch cross-play has led to a direct improvement in the Paladins online user experience, including reduced wait times, more balanced matchmaking, and fewer "bad" matches overall. Brice's comments in particular come in direct response (and contradiction) to a recent Game Informer interview in which Sony Interactive Entertainment chairman Shawn Layden said that cross-play was open to pretty much any PS4 developer that wants it.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Get your jailbroken handset into the Valentine's Day spirit with a new free jailbreak tweak called AppLabelValentineDay.