A new rumor says Apple may announce the new low-cost "iPhone 9" on April 15, with shipments starting on April 22.

Apple has released the first developer beta of iOS 13.4.5. This comes following last week’s public release of iOS 13.4 and iPadOS 13.4. This week’s update focuses on bug fixes and performance improvements.

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New emails show just how far Apple CEO, Tim Cook, went to help mitigate the potential damage of China tariffs against the company last year.

Even with everything going on in the world, keeping your important files, family photos, and other content backed up is always something to have on your mind. In fact, having a reliable at-home backup might be even more relevant these days. So with today being World Backup Day, we’re taking a deep dive into how using Synology’s latest entry-level NAS, you can build a respective backup server, or upgrade an existing for off-site storage and more. Head below for all the details.

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In the era of big data, memes and disinformation, the Democrats are trying to regain their digital edge as the president and his loyalists dictate the terms of debate. From a report: The deceptively edited video that purported to show Joseph R. Biden Jr. endorsing President Trump's re-election bounced relentlessly around the internet, falsely painting the former vice president as too confused to know what office he was running for or whom he was vying to run against. The doctored video didn't originate with one of the extremist sites that trade in left-bashing disinformation. It was posted on Twitter by Mr. Trump's own social media director. [...] The video, based on a speech Mr. Biden gave earlier this month, registered five million views in a day before his campaign responded -- with statements to the press and cable interviews that largely focused on persuading Facebook to follow the example of Twitter, which had labeled the content "manipulated media." A direct social media counterattack, aides said later, would have risked spreading the damage. [...] As Mr. Biden closes in on his party's nomination, that digital mismatch underscores one of the Democrats' biggest general-election challenges: They are up against a political figure who has marshaled all the forces of the modern web to refract reality and savage his opponents. Yet they are starting from a deficit, struggling to regain their once-formidable online edge. Now closing this technological divide has taken on deepening urgency, with public life shut down against the threat of the coronavirus. Already, Mr. Biden's allies have expressed anxiety about his ability to break into the national conversation around the pandemic as it reverberates from the president's daily briefings to social media feeds. If modern politics is increasingly digital politics, today even more so. In the three years since Hillary Clinton's humiliating 2016 defeat, the Democrats have been urgently scrambling to reorder the digital equation, an all-hands-on-deck effort that has drawn a range of new donors, progressive activists and operatives together with veterans of the tech-forward Obama campaigns and the old-line contributors and party regulars of the Bill Clinton era. So far, the Democrats and their allies have produced new apps to organize volunteers and register voters, new media outlets to pump out anti-Trump content and a major new data initiative to drive what the party hopes will be the biggest voter-mobilization effort in its history.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Snapchat announced last year that it would begin letting third-party apps build in support for its Stories feature. Now that functionality, called “App Stories” is live as part of the Snap Kit suite of developer tools.

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Ahead of new episodes of the family-friendly series "Helpsters" arriving on April 3 for Apple TV+, Apple has shared a new trailer.

A chain of emails obtained by The Verge show that Tim Cook personally worked to ensure Apple was as unaffected by China tariffs as possible. The emails were obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request.

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Apple should fix the VPN security issue that was reported last week with the upcoming iOS 13.4.1 update, with other planned bug-fix updates potentially reaching up to iOS 13.4.4.

The FBI has issued an alert on Monday about state-sponsored hackers using the Kwampirs malware to attack supply chain companies and other industry sectors as part of a global hacking campaign. From a report: This marks the third alert about this particular group sent this year, in as many months, after the FBI sent alerts on January 6 and February 5. This time around, the FBI highlighted that some of the group's targets are organizations in the healthcare industry, currently grappling with the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak. Besides sending out a PIN (Private Industry Notification), the FBI has also published two Flash alerts, one containing YARA rules to identify the group's Kwampirs malware on infected networks, and the second containing a technical report, complete with IOCs (indicators of compromise).

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Today’s best deals include the first discount on the new Mac mini, plus Apple’s official iPhone Smart Battery Cases are on sale, and MacBook Pros are discounted. Hit the jump for all that and more.

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The supermarket chain Publix has confirmed that Apple Pay support is coming to the checkout.

As shutdowns caused by COVID-19 remain in place, Apple has committed to paying its contractors. The Wall Street Journal reports that initially, some contractors were told their jobs would be suspended without pay during the shutdown, but Apple has clarified that position.

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The Logitech-owned Streamlabs has just launched its Streamlabs OBS streaming software in a beta capacity for Mac users.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Zoom, the video conferencing service whose use has spiked amid the Covid-19 pandemic, claims to implement end-to-end encryption, widely understood as the most private form of internet communication, protecting conversations from all outside parties. In fact, Zoom is using its own definition of the term, one that lets Zoom itself access unencrypted video and audio from meetings. With millions of people around the world working from home in order to slow the spread of the coronavirus, business is booming for Zoom, bringing more attention on the company and its privacy practices, including a policy, later updated, that seemed to give the company permission to mine messages and files shared during meetings for the purpose of ad targeting. Still, Zoom offers reliability, ease of use, and at least one very important security assurance: As long as you make sure everyone in a Zoom meeting connects using "computer audio" instead of calling in on a phone, the meeting is secured with end-to-end encryption, at least according to Zoom's website, its security white paper, and the user interface within the app. But despite this misleading marketing, the service actually does not support end-to-end encryption for video and audio content, at least as the term is commonly understood. Instead it offers what is usually called transport encryption. Further reading: Regarding Zoom.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Spotify Kids is a brand new app geared towards younger audiences featuring no ads, better overall privacy, and curated playlists.

Apple Music has launched several new playlists to help folks keep their spirits up during global lockdowns.

Comcast said that internet traffic has risen 32% because of the coronavirus, but the company said it has the capacity to handle peak traffic demands in the U.S. From a report: Tony Werner, Comcast president of technology, said in a press briefing that the company normally adds capacity 12-18 months ahead of time, with typical plans targeting 45% a year increases in traffic. "First and foremost, I think it's important to know that the network is performing well," Werner said. "And people are able to -- both business and customers working from home -- do the things they need to do with a great deal of proficiency." He said the company engineers the networks for "peak traffic" and that traffic is up more than 32% overall as of last week. Some parts of the country are up 60%, including Seattle, San Francisco, and now Chicago. [...] Video conference calls using the voice-over-internet-protocol on Comcast are up 212% since March 1.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Shopping at Publix may be a pleasure, but checking out at the grocery store chain has been a bit archaic for the last five years. The retailer waited half a decade to acknowledge Apple Pay, but the contactless payment service may finally be accepted by the grocery store chain. No better time than a social distancing mandate to embrace contactless payments from 2014 for buying your Pub Sub, right?

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As people adjust to shelter in place orders around the world due to the coronavirus pandemic, new behaviors are impacting almost every industry and that includes podcasts. While at first, you might think podcast listener numbers would be up with the extra time many people have on hand, it’s actually the opposite, here’s why.

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