An issue in the new iOS 13.4 and macOS Catalina 10.15.4 software updates apparently prevents FaceTime calls with older devices such as the iPad 2 and iPhone 4s.

Just three months after capping what was the best year for Indian startups, having raised a record $14.5 billion in 2019, they are beginning to struggle to raise new capital as prominent investors urge them to "prepare for the worst" and cut spending. From a report: In an open letter to startup founders in India, ten global and local private equity and venture capitalist firms including Accel, Lightspeed, Sequoia Capital and Matrix Partners cautioned that the current changes to the macro environment could make it difficult for a startup to close their next fundraising deal. The firms, which included Kalaari Capital, SAIF Partners, and Nexus Venture Partners -- some of the prominent names in India to back early-stage startups -- asked founders to be prepared to not see their startups' jump in the coming rounds and have a 12-18 month runway with what they raise. "Assumptions from bull market financings or even from a few weeks ago do not apply. Many investors will move away from thinking about 'growth at all costs' to 'reasonable growth with a path to profitability.' Adjust your business plan and messaging accordingly," they added. Signs are beginning to emerge that investors are losing appetite to invest in the current scenario. Indian startups participated in 79 deals to raise $496 million in March, down from $2.86 billion that they raised across 104 deals in February and $1.24 billion they raised from 93 deals in January this year, research firm Tracxn told TechCrunch.

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The planned merger between T-Mobile and Sprint is now complete, and Mike Sievert is stepping up as the new T-Mobile CEO.

Zoom, the popular video call service has had a number of privacy and security issues over the years and we’ve seen several very recently as Zoom has seen usage skyrocket during the coronavirus pandemic. Now two new bugs have been discovered that allow hackers to take control of Macs including the webcam, microphone, and even full root access.

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The push for contact tracing apps continues with a joint initiative in Europe and a rather more authoritarian app launching tomorrow in Russia.

We recently outlined how contact tracing works, and described an option for a privacy-respecting version that could potentially be baked into iOS and Android for near-universal coverage…

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I’ve been working from home the past few weeks as many of you. One of the challenges I’ve run into is that I don’t have a proper home office, and my children are also at home doing their school work. I’ve had countless Zoom, Google Hangouts, and Skype meetings over the past few weeks, so I have been searching for a way to eliminate background noise from my calls. Thankfully, I’ve discovered a great solution: Krisp.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: In March, a laid-off customer-service representative for one of the airline companies attended an Amazon.com employee orientation in Dallas. He found himself packed into a room with about 70 other applicants, sitting shoulder-to-shoulder to watch a PowerPoint presentation about what it's like to work for the online retailer. The man, who provided a smartphone photo to document his experience, said the event was exactly like one he attended last year for a seasonal holiday job with Amazon. In other words, there were no special precautions to keep attendees safe from the coronavirus. When the man raised concerns about the crowded conditions, he said an Amazon manager mocked him and a fellow recruit sneered. "They made jokes and told me to leave if I was unhappy," he said, adding that one manager said Amazon's operations were exempt from the rules because the company is considered an essential service. "They didn't care one tiny bit." The former customer rep took the job but still worries about getting sick. Amazon also ignored official social-distancing guidelines at hiring events near Portland, Oregon, and in Kenosha, Wisconsin, according to two applicants. A fourth person who attended an Amazon job fair in West Jefferson, Ohio, said she was sent home and asked to return another day because the gathering was too crowded, suggesting precautionary measures are in place at least at some events or Amazon is changing its practices.

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You can keep this petite vintage pouch on your body versus having to dig through your purse, backpack or computer bag when you need your AirPods most.

After almost two years, T-Mobile and Sprint’s $26 billion merger is now officially a done deal. The result is the “New T-Mobile” that has big aspirations for moving the US wireless market forward.

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Various people have suggested in the past that Apple should allow FaceTime for Android and Windows, in an attempt to make it the default standard for consumer video calls. That idea gained new impetus when Apple launched the Group FaceTime function for calls between up to 32 people.

But the coronavirus outbreak has taken consumer group videoconferencing to a whole new level. Back in February, most non-techies had never done it in their lives. Fast-forward to now, and Zoom conferences are a completely normal thing for everyone …

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After many months of experimenting with connecting various optical drives to his iPhone, an iDB reader tried one last trick in an effort to make optical media work with his iPhone.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Four global drinks giants are responsible for more than half a million tons of plastic pollution in six developing countries each year, enough to cover 83 football pitches every day, according to a report. The NGO Tearfund has calculated the greenhouse gas emissions from the open burning of plastic bottles, sachets and cartons produced by Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Nestle and Unilever in developing nations, where waste can be mismanaged because people do not have access to collections. Taking a sample of six developing countries, reflecting a spread across the globe, the NGO estimated the burning of plastic packaging put on to the market by the companies creates 4.6 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent -- equivalent to the emissions from 2 million cars. Tearfund analyzed the plastic put on the market in China, India, the Philippines, Brazil, Mexico and Nigeria by the four companies to examine the impact of single use plastic in developing countries. The countries were chosen because they are large developing country markets, spread across three continents. The sachets, bottles, and cartons sold in these countries often end up either being burned or dumped -- creating a pollution problem equivalent to covering 83 football pitches with plastic to 10 centimeters deep each day. The report says: "This massive plastic pollution footprint, while a crisis in and of itself, is also contributing to the climate crisis." "These companies continue to sell billions of products in single-use bottles, sachets and packets in developing countries," says the report. "And they do this despite knowing that: waste isn't properly managed in these contexts; their packaging therefore becomes pollution; and such pollution causes serious harm to the environment and people's health. Such actions -- with such knowledge -- are morally indefensible."

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Apple has more than doubled its donations to COVID-19 recovery efforts in China to $7 million (50 million yuan) after it originally donated 20 million yuan ($2.8 million) to the country’s Foundation for Poverty Alleviation a few weeks ago.... Read...

As the investor community fears devastating repercussions to the production schedules of Chinese industry in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak, many doubt whether Apple’s major iPhone 12 release cycle will be able to go ahead as normal.

For its part, Foxconn appears unfazed. Via Bloomberg, the key iPhone assembly told investors on a private conference call today that it is still prepared for a fall 5G iPhone debut.

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If you’re working from home and need help concentrating on your work, take advantage of the Screen Time limits on Mac, we’ll show you how.

If you’re looking for a different way to manage your incoming emails, this tutorial shows you how to organize your inbox with flags in the Mail app.

An Apple coronavirus donation has been doubled as the company seeks to provide additional help in China.

Apple CEO Tim Cook today announced on Weibo that the company would be contributing more than 50 million yuan ($7M) in total …

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Dan Goodin writes via Ars Technica: For almost three years, OpenWRT -- the open source operating system that powers home routers and other types of embedded systems -- has been vulnerable to remote code-execution attacks because updates were delivered over an unencrypted channel and digital signature verifications are easy to bypass, a researcher said. Security researcher Guido Vranken, however, recently found that updates and installation files were delivered over unencrypted HTTPs connections, which are open to attacks that allow adversaries to completely replace legitimate updates with malicious ones. The researcher also found that it was trivial for attackers with moderate experience to bypass digital-signature checks that verify a downloaded update as the legitimate one offered by OpenWTR maintainers. The combination of those two lapses makes it possible to send a malicious update that vulnerable devices will automatically install. [...] The researcher said that OpenWRT maintainers have released a stopgap solution that partially mitigates the risk the bug poses. The mitigation requires new installations to be "set out from a well-formed list that would not sidestep the hash verification. However, this is not an adequate long-term solution because an attacker can simply provide an older package list that was signed by the OpenWRT maintainers." From there, attackers can use the same exploits they would use on devices that haven't received the mitigation. OpenWRT maintainers didn't immediately respond to questions asking why installation and update files are delivered over HTTP and when a longer-term fix might be available. In the meantime, OpenWRT users should install either version 18.06.7 or 19.07.1, both of which were released in February. These updates provide the stopgap mitigation.

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Whether you’re having temporary trouble with your Wi-Fi or would like to set up a persistent network connection, follow along for how to use Ethernet with iPad over both USB-C and Lightning.

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An Australian astrophysicist has been admitted to hospital after getting four magnets stuck up his nose in an attempt to invent a device that stops people touching their faces during the coronavirus outbreak. The Guardian reports: Dr Daniel Reardon, a research fellow at a Melbourne university, was building a necklace that sounds an alarm on facial contact, when the mishap occurred on Thursday night. The 27 year-old astrophysicist, who studies pulsars and gravitational waves, said he was trying to liven up the boredom of self-isolation with the four powerful neodymium magnets. Reardon said he placed two magnets inside his nostrils, and two on the outside. When he removed the magnets from the outside of his nose, the two inside stuck together. Unfortunately, the researcher then attempted to use his remaining magnets to remove them. "As I was pulling downwards to try and remove the magnets, they clipped on to each other and I lost my grip. And those two magnets ended up in my left nostril while the other one was in my right. At this point I ran out of magnets." Before attending the hospital, Reardon attempted to use pliers to pull them out, but they became magnetized by the magnets inside his nose. At the hospital, a team of two doctors applied an anesthetic spray and manually removed the magnets from Reardon's nose. "Needless to say I am not going to play with the magnets any more," Reardon said.

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