Technology

Pakistan has lifted its ban on TikTok, just 10 days after blocking the app on the grounds that it hosted “immoral” and “indecent” videos. Pakistan’s Telecommunication Authority (PTA) now says that TikTok has “assured” the agency that videos will be moderated “in accordance with societal norms and the laws of Pakistan.” TikTok had not been fully responsive in the past to Pakistan’s demands for restrictions on accounts and videos. The company’s latest transparency report showed that TikTok acted on only two accounts out of 40 from which Pakistan requested content be restricted. The PTA’s statement suggests that TikTok moderation may be stricter in the country going forward. A disproportionate amount of videos are already removed in Pakistan Pakistan is TikTok’s 12th largest market in terms o...

Google is updating the look and functionality of the software on its Assistant smart displays in a significant way. Starting this week, smart displays such as the Nest Hub and those made by third-party companies will be updated with a new home screen experience: dark mode, and finally, the ability to see calendar events from more than one Google account. The biggest change is the new home screen, which is designed to provide contextual information to you depending on your habits and the time of day. Instead of the endlessly scrolling horizontal list of before, Google now divides the information into five distinct sections — time of day, Home Control, Media, Communicate, and Discover — accessible from tabs at the top of the screen. The time of day tab will change its title depending on when...

Apple TV Plus will be getting the beloved Peanuts Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas holiday specials added to its catalog this year, and they’ll each be available for free to non-subscribers for a short period of time. The Halloween special, It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, will be hitting Apple TV Plus today for subscribers and will be available for free from October 30th until November 1st. A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving will be available on November 18th and watchable for free from November 25th until November 27th. And my personal favorite, A Charlie Brown Christmas, will be out on December 4th and can be watched for free from December 11th through December 13th. A new season of the Apple TV Plus-exclusive Snoopy in Space and new specials celebrating Mother’s Day, Earth Day, N...

Tomorrow, a US spacecraft more than 200 million miles from Earth will sneak up to an asteroid larger than the Empire State Building and snag a handful of rocks from its surface. If all goes to plan, the spacecraft will store the precious cache of rocks inside its belly, and will eventually transport the materials to Earth, where they can be studied by scientists in a lab. The spacecraft stealing these rocks is called OSIRIS-REx, part of the first-ever NASA mission tasked with returning samples of an asteroid back to Earth. Launched in September of 2016, OSIRIS-REx spent two years traveling to an asteroid named Bennu. Since it arrived in 2018, the spacecraft has been circling the asteroid and mapping it in excruciating detail, in order to find just the right spot to scoop up a sample. Now, ...

Apple has announced how much it’ll charge to repair the new iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Pro. For the iPhone 12 Pro, the $279 screen repair price is unchanged compared to the iPhone 11 Pro last year, despite using new ceramic-hardened glass. However the $279 cost of repairing the base iPhone 12’s display has increased by $80 compared to the iPhone 11, and the cost of repairing “other damage” has increased by $50 to $449. Repair prices for the iPhone 12 Pro Max and 12 mini are yet to be announced. For the base iPhone 12, that’s a substantial price increase compared to the $199 you’d pay to repair the iPhone 11’s screen, likely because it now has an OLED rather than an LCD display. However for the 12 Pro this $279 price is the same as what Apple’s charged for screen repairs since 2017’s iPhone X....

The USA’s largest cinema chain AMC is making its screens available for private hire, allowing groups of up to 20 people to watch a film on the big screen without having to share an auditorium with strangers. The move joins cinema chains Cinemark and Alamo Drafthouse, which SlashFilm reports started offering similar screenings earlier this summer. AMC is offering a selection of new and old films to watch, with auditorium rental prices starting at $99 plus tax. AMC’s new offering comes as its business has been hit hard by the pandemic. Locations have been forced to close, major films have been delayed, and cinemagoers have been wary of attending even when new films have been released. Last week, AMC warned investors that the situation means it could run out of cash by the end of the year, af...

Xiaomi has announced its next salvo in the fast charging wars, a new 80W wireless method that the company claims beats out any other competitor. The 80W solution is said to be able to charge a 4,000mAh battery up to 50 percent full in eight minutes and 100 percent full in 19 minutes. The video above shows it in action on a modified Mi 10 Pro. Xiaomi already has the fastest wireless charging on a shipping phone; the Mi 10 Ultra has 50W wireless technology that can fully charge its 4,500mAh battery in 40 minutes. Oppo recently announced a 65W solution that is said to be able to charge a 4,000mAh battery in 30 minutes, but the tech is yet to ship in a commercial device. Fast wireless charging is much less common outside China, where companies like Huawei and Xiaomi have been working to outdo ...

I finally got around to watching The West Wing reunion special and even though I was an ardent fan of the original show, I came away feeling a little frustrated. Let’s get this out of the way first: it was amazing seeing the super talented cast slip back into these roles so easily— Martin Sheen was born to play Jed Bartlet, Allison Janney is still wonderful as CJ Cregg, and Richard Schiff is perfect as grouchy White House conscience Toby Ziegler. Sterling K. Brown had the unenviable task of playing Leo McGarry in place of the late John Spencer, and he pulled it off beautifully. Also: Does Rob Lowe age, ever? Same question for Janel Moloney, tbh. But if the goal of this special performance was to encourage young people to vote, I’m afraid it may have missed the mark. The cut-ins with “why y...

Google will discontinue its emergency location sharing app Trusted Contacts in December, and has already yanked it from the Google Play Store. Instead, it’s directing existing users to try similar but less helpful features in Google Maps. That’s a shame, because while Trusted Contacts could let you find a family member even if they don’t respond (say, if they are unconscious or in danger), Google Maps requires them to proactively broadcast their location to you. The announcement was quite abrupt: Google’s email announcementIan Carlos Campbell Google Maps has been able to do real time location sharing since 2017, but again, you have to opt-in to constant tracking, sharing your location with other people all the time instead of only broadcasting it to loved ones if you don’t respond. Trusted...

Samsung’s next flagship phone could arrive in January 2021, Android Central reported. And new leaked renders show the camera bump of the Galaxy S20 will also feature in the forthcoming Galaxy S30 (or S21; the name isn’t official yet). According to reliable leaker Steve Hemmerstoffer (aka @OnLeaks), the Galaxy S30 standard model will have a 6.2-inch flat screen with a hole-punch front-facing camera. The S30 Ultra shows a larger, curved screen measuring between 6.7 and 6.9 inches. The leaks don’t provide detail about the phones’ internal specs, however. Steve Hemmerstoffer Android Central says three new Galaxy S models are expected in the January release, a standard, a Plus, and an Ultra. The Ultra model will have an S-Pen stylus, Hemmerstoffer says, but there doesn’t appear to be a dedicate...

The Google Assistant Driving mode that the company first announced in 2019 has started appearing on some Android devices, XDA-Developers reported. The UI looks somewhat different from what Google showed at its I/O developers conference last year. XDA says it first noticed something was coming about two weeks ago, when users reported seeing a new navigation interface in Google Maps. It’s not clear whether the rollout of this new mode is part of a test or will be coming for all users. Mishaal Rahman at XDA said he saw the new driving mode on a Google Pixel 4, an Asus ZenFone 7 Pro, and an LG Velvet, and he surmises that the new mode will replace the Android Auto app on smartphones. That seems consistent with what Google told The Verge last year. Whether the new mode will include all the feat...

Facebook vice president for global affairs Nick Clegg said the company has rejected 2.2 million ads across Facebook and Instagram because the ads were trying to “obstruct voting” in the upcoming US presidential election, Agence France-Presse reported. The social media giant also has withdrawn 120,000 posts and placed warnings on 150 million posts for the same reasons, Clegg added. Clegg made the remarks in an interview with the French newspaper Journal du Dimanche. He said Facebook has used artificial intelligence that “made it possible to delete billions of posts and fake accounts, even before they are reported by users” and noted that the company has partnered with 70 media outlets, including five in France, to verify information. Facebook introduced that fact-checking program in the aft...