Google, along with other foreign tech firms, has been under pressure in Russia for several years over the content it distributes, but while Moscow has blocked social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, it appears reluctant to ban YouTube, used by around 50 million Russians every day.

Critics believe YouTube is being deliberately disrupted by the authorities to prevent Russians from viewing content there that is critical of Putin and his government.

Russia denies that, saying the issues are caused by Google's failure to upgrade equipment - a charge disputed by the company and technology experts.

Putin, addressing Russians in his annual phone-in, reiterated Moscow's stance that Google, having reduced spending in Russia and the supply of relevant equipment, had created problems for itself.

"Secondly, YouTube and Google must observe our laws, must avoid any kind of deception on the internet and especially, must not use and abuse the internet to achieve their government's political goals," Putin said.

Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

YouTube in August said it was aware of reports that some people were unable to access YouTube in Russia, but that this was not because of any actions or technical issues on its part.

Putin said competition was growing, naming domestic platforms VK Video, run by state-controlled VK, and RuTube, as well as Telegram, founded by Russian Pavel Durov. None of those platforms has managed to significantly eat into YouTube's market share in terms of video hosting.

In addition to hosting content Moscow objects to, YouTube has blocked more than 1,000 YouTube channels, including state-sponsored news, and over 5.5 million videos, since the war in Ukraine began.

The Kremlin hopes that huge legal claims racking up against Google will force it to change its stance.

Live Translation currently supports over 44 languages, including English, Spanish, French, Russian, Arabic, and Korean. So when an audio containing words from a non-English language is played, the feature automatically shows their English translation as subtitles on the screen. It becomes handy especially when attending a video call with participants who do not speak a familiar language – English in this case. It also works with YouTube – although the video streaming platform already has its translation feature built into the video player.

Intel and AMD-based Copilot Plus PC users can head to Settings > Windows Update and then click the “Check for updates” button to receive the update prompt. They can then download and “install any new drivers that Windows Update delivers to you.”

The new addition comes as part of Microsoft’s efforts to expand the availability of artificial intelligence-based features to Copilot Plus PCs that do not run a Qualcomm chip. Previously, the Redmond-based giant started testing Recall, a feature that takes intermittent snapshots of a user’s activity on their PC to make them available later when required. Like Live Translation, Recall was introduced on Qualcomm-powered Copilot Plus PCs initially.

As for the Qualcomm-powered Copilot Plus PCs, which already support Live Translation, Microsoft is upgrading the experience for Windows 11 Insiders where they can now choose translate select languages to Simplified Chinese. A stable rollout of the translation ability is expected in the coming days – likely around the same time as the Intel and AMD Copilot Plus PCs receive the Live Translation functionality.

The hacking amount exceeded $1 billion for the fourth straight year and the number of incidents rose to 303 from 282 in 2023, it said. Hackers had stolen $1.8 billion in 2023.

The rise in crypto heists comes as bitcoin jumped 140 per cent this year to surpass $100,000 mark, drawing institutional participation and backing from US President-elect Donald Trump.

"As the digital asset market booms, it is typical to see the illicit use of crypto grow in tandem," Chainalysis' cybercrimes research lead Eric Jardine said.

"Countering the proliferation of these crimes — especially fraud — will undoubtedly be a key challenge for the industry in the new year."

Compromises to private key that controls access to users' assets accounted for the majority of stolen crypto this year with most of the attacks targeting centralized platforms, the report said.

Among the most notable hacks are the theft of more than $305 million from Japan's crypto exchange DMM Bitcoin in May and the loss of $235 million from India's WazirX in July.

Crypto hacking linked to North Korea more than doubled from a year ago to a record high of $1.3 billion in 2024, Chainalysis said.

Cryptocurrency allows North Korea to circumvent international sanctions, the United Nations has said. The country routinely denies involvement in cyber hacking or crypto heists.

An eight-person jury in a US federal court in Delaware will determine whether Qualcomm or Nuvia, a startup Qualcomm purchased for $1.4 billion in 2021, breached a license agreement with UK-based Arm, which supplies intellectual property to both firms.

If Arm is victorious, the British firm could force Qualcomm to destroy the technology it purchased from Nuvia, which has become the basis of a chip released this year that Microsoft and the entire Windows PC industry had hoped would claw back market share lost to Apple.

The dispute centres on the royalties that chip companies pay on each semiconductor made using Arm's technology. Before its acquisition by Qualcomm, Nuvia's license agreement required it to pay far higher royalty rates than Qualcomm.

After Qualcomm bought Nuvia, it aimed to use Nuvia's technology in its chips while paying the lower royalties due under its own agreement with Arm. Arm objected, kicking off a dispute that led Arm to sue Qualcomm in 2022.

In a trial that started Monday, Arm sought to portray Qualcomm's moves as a first-of-its-kind flouting of standard contractual terms the British company had used successfully for decades and that would have upended its business model.

Qualcomm, by contrast, portrayed Arm as a longtime vendor whose new CEO had ambitions to reap higher royalty rates and compete against Qualcomm by starting to design its own chip.

Documents and testimony also showed that San Diego, California-based Qualcomm estimated it could eventually save $1.4 billion per year in payments to Arm by switching to Nuvia's technology as it pushed into new markets. Its executives repeatedly testified that their plans did not violate license agreements.

The jury must determine if Qualcomm and Nuvia breached the deals and whether Arm met its obligations under the agreements.

During the trial, jurors were shown contract language that appeared to give Arm sweeping license rights to products built using its instructions, which could have implications for Arm's agreements with other chipmakers. Qualcomm executives testified that such a reading of the language ignored that its license covered the extensive design work done by Qualcomm engineers to create almost entirely new products.

A verdict in the trial, which started on Monday and was set to last five days, could come as early as Thursday.

The European Union has published a paper listing all the changes that it wants Apple to make to its iOS ecosystem in a bid to 'to ensure effective 
interoperability'.

What changes is EU asking Apple to make to its iOS ecosystem?

The 25-page-long document shared by the European Union asks Apple to make changes to features across iOS's ecosystem ranging from its notification to peer-to-peer Wi-Fi to AirDrop and AirPlay. Here are the top changes that the EU is asking Apple to make:

-- EU is asking Apple to open up iOS notifications feature to the third-party developers giving them same accesses as the company has. "Apple shall implement an interoperability solution that provides third parties with 
access to the same iOS notifications feature described in the preceding paragraph as available to Apple, in a way that is equally effective as the solution available to Apple," EU wrote in its paper.

-- EU also wants Apple to provide 'effective interoperability' including all functionalities of the iOS notifications feature that are available to Apple devices such as Apple Watch, and Apple Vision Pro to third party physical devices.

-- EU also wants Apple to provide third-party developers all the metadata pertaining to iOS notifications.

-- In addition to this, EU wants Apple to open up its background execution feature to third party developers. For the unversed, the background execution feature enables Apple to ensure that an iPhone can continuously scan for Bluetooth Low Energy devices, establish and maintain a connection with connected physical devices and send and receive data via the internet. The list of demands shared by EU require Apple to allow third party developers to provide interoperability with all functionalities of the background execution feature which are available to the company's own connected physical devices.

-- EU also wants Apple to provide the same access to its audio switching features as it uses in its own devices. This feature allows end users switch between two different wireless audio devices, such as AirPods. "This means that third parties must have access to the same data and information controlled or accessed by iOS that Apple uses to implement automatic audio switching functionality on Apple devices," EU added in its document.

-- EU also wants Apple to provide third parties with access to the same high-bandwidth P2P Wi-Fi feature as it has access to.

-- EU also wants Apple to open up AirDrop and AirPlay to third-party developers. "Apple shall make available the possibility for a third-party connected physical device to become an AirPlay receiver, i.e., allowing the iOS device to cast content to a receiving third-party connected physical device, to all interested third parties independently of the product category, for video, audio, and screen mirroring," EU added.

What is Apple saying about EU's requests and what impact these changes could have on the users?

Apple has published its own 11-page-long document in response to the paper shared by EU detailing how giving third-party developers access to iOS's detailed components could have an impact on the privacy of users' personal data. The company, in particular, has called out Meta for being the company that has made the highest number of interoperability requests. "Meta has made 15 requests (and counting) for potentially far-reaching access to Apple’s technology stack that, if granted as sought, would reduce the protections around personal data that our users have come to expect from their devices," Apple wrote in its response.

"If Apple were to have to grant all of these requests, Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp could enable Meta to read on a user’s device all of their messages and emails, see every phone call they make or receive, track every app that they use, scan all of their photos, look at their files and calendar events, log all of their passwords, and more. This is data that Apple itself has chosen not to access in order to provide the strongest possible protection to users," the company added.

Apple is known for deploying some of the most stringent privacy features -- a move that has been criticised for affecting companies' bottom lines, including by giants such as Meta. Opening up iOS to third-party developers could therefore give companies unwarranted access to user data, which could also be leveraged for targeted advertising.

That said, EU has said that it will seek feedback from third parties and Apple and investigate further before finalising the measures that could make or break the iOS ecosystem.

Nothing OS 3.0 rollout

Nothing Phone 2 and Phone 2a can check for a new update on their devices, but the company said it is an incremental rollout. That means some users will receive it before others. In any case, the company expects to complete the rollout by early 2025 across regions to both phones and also add the Phone 1 and CMF Phone 1.

Nothing OS 3.0 features

As part of the update, Nothing OS 3.0 introduces Shared Widgets to the interface, allowing users to share their widget activities with friends and family. For instance, a Phone 2 user could share their reminders with others through Shared Widgets. People with access to a user’s Shared Widget can also make changes to the stored information. Shared Widgets, however, is currently in beta. Another update to widgets on the Nothing Phone 2 and Nothing Phone 2a includes the addition of a new Countdown Widget, which lets users track deadlines or events.

Nothing has revamped the app drawer with the new update, making it more intuitive for users. The Smart Drawer, powered by artificial intelligence (AI), is claimed to sort apps automatically into folders of different categories. It is similar to how Apple’s App Library in iOS works, but Nothing OS 3.0 allows users to change categories or folders.

The Gallery app in Nothing OS 3.0 features significant improvements over the last generation, offering advanced search options, new editing tools, new filters, and “smart” suggestions. However, the update does not include any generative artificial intelligence (AI) based features yet. The Quick Settings panel has also been redesigned to make common controls more reachable. Nothing said it has also added a tool called Enhanced Pop-up View that “streamlines multitasking.”

iPhone 15 deal on Flipkart

The iPhone 15 is available for ₹58,999 on Flipkart across colourways. That price represents a discount of ₹10,901 on the revised price of the iPhone 15. However, that is not all. Customers who opt to pay using a credit card can get additional discounts and cashbacks. For instance, those using a Flipkart Axis Bank credit card are eligible for a 5 per cent unlimited cashback, while HDFC Bank credit card users can get up to ₹750 on the purchase. Flipkart also allows customers to trade in their old, used smartphone and receive a discount on the final cart price for the iPhone 15.

iPhone 15 specifications

The iPhone 15 from last year features a 6.1-inch Super Retina XDR display complete with a Dynamic Island, but it operates at a 60Hz refresh rate. It is powered by an Apple A16 Bionic chip, featuring a 6-core processor and a 5-core GPU, along with 6GB of RAM. The iPhone 15 supports eSIM connectivity and includes Wi-Fi 6, NFC, GPS, and Bluetooth 5.3 connectivity options. On the camera front, it boasts a 48MP main camera alongside a 12MP ultrawide camera, equipped with sensor-shift optical image stabilisation (OIS). The camera capabilities include 2x optical zoom-in, 2x optical zoom-out, a 4x optical zoom range, and utilises technologies such as the Photonic Engine, Deep Fusion, and Smart HDR 5. The front camera, featuring a 12MP sensor, includes Autofocus with Focus Pixels and benefits from the Photonic Engine, Deep Engine, and Smart HDR 5. Although the iPhone 15 launched with iOS 17, it is compatible with iOS 18. However, it does not support Apple Intelligence due to hardware limitations.

Bloomberg has reported that the service, which could have allowed customers to pay for an iPhone as they do for an app, was initially expected to debut at the end of 2022. However, regulatory concerns and the lack of a proper framework for the software required for the subscription caused a delay. Previous reports have suggested the project was delayed until 2023 and even beyond.

According to the report, Apple was testing the iPhone subscription service internally among its employees who also worked for the now-discontinued Apple Pay Later service. The iPhone maker also involved teams, working on App Store billing and the online store.

What was the iPhone subscription project?

Apple has been long-rumoured to be working on some kind of subscription service under which customers can swap their iPhones with the latest model every year. As such, buyers would pay a yearly or monthly fee to own the iPhone instead of paying the full amount upfront. It would have been similar to how users subscribe to an app or an in-app service, such as Apple Music. According to the report, the hardware subscription service would leverage the company’s financial infrastructure and even involve offering loans to customers.

Why has Apple discontinued the project?

While the report does not offer a reason behind Apple’s fresh move, the company likely had to deal with several challenges, including regulatory concerns, in implementing the project. Moreover, the discontinuation of the Apple Pay Later service may also have prompted Apple to abandon the project since the subscription service was essentially going to be its extension.

What are the existing options?

Apple’s iPhone Upgrade Program is still available in select countries, allowing customers to trade in their old or used device when buying a newer model. It also offers the ability to split the purchase into instalments for up to two years.
 

Congress passed the measure in April and President Joe Biden, a Democrat, signed it into law. The Justice Department had said that as a Chinese company, TikTok poses "a national-security threat of immense depth and scale" because of its access to vast amounts of data on American users, from locations to private messages, and its ability to secretly manipulate content that Americans view on the app. TikTok has said it poses no imminent threat to U.S. security.

TikTok and ByteDance asked the Supreme Court on Dec. 16 to pause the law, which they said violates free speech protections under the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment. TikTok on Wednesday said it was pleased the court will take up the issue. "We believe the court will find the TikTok ban unconstitutional so the over 170 million Americans on our platform can continue to exercise their free speech rights," the company said.

The companies said that being shuttered for even one month would cause TikTok to lose about a third of its U.S. users and undermine its ability to attract advertisers and recruit content creators and employee talent. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in Washington on Dec. 6 rejected the First Amendment arguments by the companies.

In their filing to the Supreme Court, TikTok and ByteDance said that "if Americans, duly informed of the alleged risks of 'covert' content manipulation, choose to continue viewing content on TikTok with their eyes wide open, the First Amendment entrusts them with making that choice, free from the government's censorship." Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell on Wednesday, in a brief filed with the Supreme Court, urged the court to reject any delay, comparing TikTok to a hardened criminal.

A U.S. ban on TikTok would make the company far less valuable to ByteDance and its investors, and hurt businesses that depend on TikTok to drive their sales.

Republican President-elect Donald Trump, who unsuccessfully tried to ban TikTok during his first term in the White House in 2020, has reversed his stance and promised during the presidential race this year that he would try to save TikTok. Trump said on Dec. 16 that he has "a warm spot in my heart for TikTok" and that he would "take a look" at the matter.

Trump takes office on Jan. 20, the day after the TikTok deadline under the law.

In its decision, the D.C. Circuit wrote, "The First Amendment exists to protect free speech in the United States. Here the government acted solely to protect that freedom from a foreign adversary nation and to limit that adversary's ability to gather data on people in the United States." TikTok has denied it has or ever would share U.S. user data, accusing U.S. lawmakers in the lawsuit of advancing speculative concerns. It has characterized the ban as a "radical departure from this country's tradition of championing an open Internet." 

The dispute comes at a time of growing trade tensions between the world's two biggest economies after the Biden administration placed new restrictions on the Chinese chip industry and China responded with a ban on exports of gallium, germanium and antimony, metals which are used in making high-tech microchips, to the United States. The U.S. law would bar providing certain services to TikTok and other foreign adversary-controlled apps including offering it through app stores such as Apple and Alphabet's Google, effectively preventing TikTok's continued U.S. use unless ByteDance divests TikTok by the deadline. An unimpeded ban could open the door to a future crackdown on other foreign-owned apps. In 2020, Trump had also tried to ban WeChat, owned by Chinese company Tencent, but was blocked by the courts.

The US firm started the rollout of OpenAI's ChatGPT into its devices this month, part of the Apple Intelligence product that allows its Siri voice assistant to tap the chatbot's expertise including on user queries about photos and documents such as presentations.

ChatGPT is not available in China and the country's regulatory requirements mandate that generative AI services obtain government approval before public release, forcing Apple to seek local partners for its AI features at a time when its market share in the country is declining.

Apple's discussions with Tencent and ByteDance on using their AI models are at a very early stage, said the sources, who declined to be named as the talks are not public.

ByteDance declined to comment, while Apple and Tencent did not respond immediately to requests for comment.

A successful partner for Apple's AI services in China could be a major winner in the country's increasingly crowded AI field where dozens of large language models have been launched by large tech firms as well as startups.

They include ByteDance's Doubao, Tencent's Hunyuan and search engine giant Baidu's Ernie.

Apple and Baidu have reportedly been in talks about using the latter's AI model in China, but The Information this month reported the discussions faced setbacks due to technical issues, including disputes over using iPhone user data to train AI models.

Baidu did not respond immediately to a request for comment.

The absence of AI capabilities in the latest iPhones sold in China has become a major setback for Apple, as it faces declining market share in the world's biggest smartphone market due to growing competition from domestic brands including Huawei.

Huawei, which returned to the high-end market in August with a phone using a Chinese-made chip, launched its Mate 70 series last month featuring AI capabilities powered by its proprietary large language model.

Apple briefly fell out of China's top five smartphone vendors in the second quarter before recovering in the third quarter. The U.S. company's smartphone sales in China still slipped 0.3% during the third quarter from a year earlier, while Huawei's sales surged 42%, according to research firm IDC. 

Under the European Union's landmark Digital Markets Act that took effect last year, Apple must allow rivals and app developers to inter-operate with its own services or risk a fine of as much as 10% of its global annual turnover.

Meta has made 15 interoperability requests thus far, more than any other company, for potentially far-reaching access to Apple's technology stack, the latter said in a report.

"In many cases, Meta is seeking to alter functionality in a way that raises concerns about the privacy and security of users, and that appears to be completely unrelated to the actual use of Meta external devices, such as Meta smart glasses and Meta Quests," Apple said.

Meta Quest is Meta's virtual reality headset, part of the company's ambition to own the computational platform that powers virtual reality (VR) and mixed reality (MR) devices.

"If Apple were to have to grant all of these requests, Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp could enable Meta to read on a user's device all of their messages and emails, see every phone call they make or receive, track every app that they use, scan all of their photos, look at their files and calendar events, log all of their passwords, and more," Apple said.

It pointed to Meta's privacy fines in Europe in recent years as a cause of concern.

"What Apple is actually saying is they don't believe in interoperability," a Meta spokesperson said in a statement.

"Every time Apple is called out for its anticompetitive behavior, they defend themselves on privacy grounds that have no basis in reality."

Separately, the European Commission - which in September said it would spell out how Apple must open up to rivals - published its preliminary findings on the issue late Wednesday evening, giving individuals, companies and organisations until Jan. 9 to provide feedback on its proposed measures for Apple.

The measures would require Apple to provide a clear description of the different phases, deadlines and the criteria and considerations that it would apply or consider in assessing interoperability requests from apps developers.

Apple should also provide developers regular updates and give and receive feedback regarding the effectiveness of its proposed interoperability solution while there would be a fair and impartial conciliation mechanism to address technical disagreement with Apple.

The Commission also set out the steps for Apple to provide interoperability with all functionalities of the iOS notifications feature available to Apple Watch, Apple Vision Pro and any future Apple connected physical devices to its rivals as well.

A decision by the EU executive, which acts as the competition watchdog in the 27-country bloc, on whether Apple complies with the DMA's interoperability provision is expected in March next year.

In the New York City area, for example, the company has multiple warehouses and smaller delivery depots. The International Brotherhood of Teamsters said unionized workers at facilities in New York City; Skokie, Illinois; Atlanta, San Francisco and southern California will join the picket line to seek contracts guaranteeing better wages and work conditions. The Teamsters union has said it represents about 10,000 workers at 10 of the company's U.S. facilities. Workers at seven of those facilities will walk out on Thursday, the Teamsters said. An Amazon spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.

The union had given Amazon a deadline of Sunday to begin negotiations, and workers at facilities voted recently to authorize a strike.

Teamsters local unions are also putting up picket lines at hundreds of Amazon Fulfillment Centers nationwide, the union said in a statement on Wednesday. Observers said Amazon is unlikely to come to the table to bargain, calculating it could open the door to additional union actions.

“Amazon clearly has developed a strategy of ignoring their workers’ rights to collectively organize and negotiate,” said Benjamin Sachs, a Harvard Law School professor of labor and industry. He noted that more than two years after workers at a Staten Island warehouse became the first in the United States to vote to unionize, Amazon still has not recognized the group.

RIGHT TO ORGANIZE

Amazon, which has said it prefers direct relationships with workers, has challenged union drives while saying workers have the right to organize.

The company has filed objections with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) over the 2022 Staten Island election, alleging bias among agency officials, among other issues. Further, Amazon challenged the constitutionality of the NLRB itself in a September federal lawsuit.

The Seattle-based company has also said the Teamsters "attempted to coerce" workers illegally to join the union.

The Teamsters said the Staten Island warehouse could join the strike at any time, as well as another southern California facility that had earlier voted to join the walkout. Amazon is unlikely, at least initially, to come to the table with the Teamsters because there is little legal pressure to do so, said Jake Rosenfeld, a sociology professor at Washington University in St. Louis who has studied unions. He noted that there has been no apparent penalty to Amazon for ignoring the Staten Island workers' demands. "It's been a very successful strategy, the work continues there and there is still no contract," said Rosenfeld.

In recent years, Amazon.com has faced worker walkouts in Spain and Germany, among other regions, overpay and working conditions.

As the world's second-largest private employer after Walmart, Amazon has long been a target for unions. Some workers have said Amazon's emphasis on greater speed and efficiency can lead to injuries, while Amazon has said it pays industry-leading wages and regularly introduces automation designed to reduce repetitive stress.

The company will face other union actions in the months ahead. Workers at a Philadelphia Whole Foods in November filed to hold a union election, the first since Amazon acquired the grocery chain in 2017. Last month, an administrative judge ordered a third union election at an Alabama warehouse after ruling Amazon had acted unlawfully to thwart unionization there. 

Earlier this year, Amazon announced a $2.1 billion investment to raise pay for fulfillment and transportation employees in the U.S., increasing base wages for employees by at least $1.50 to around $22 per hour, a roughly 7% increase. 

The projection surfaced while Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon was testifying to a jury in Delaware federal court about his firm's rationale for purchasing Nuvia for $1.4 billion in 2021.

"It justified the acquisition," he said of the potential savings on royalty payments to Arm.

The chip firm's CEO was testifying as part of a trial to resolve claims that Arm can force Qualcomm to destroy the technology it acquired because Arm never consented to the transfer of Nuvia's license agreements.

Qualcomm has used the technology and talent it acquired from Nuvia to spearhead its push into the PC market, where it is hoping to help Microsoft's Windows ecosystem claw back market share lost to Apple in recent years.

Amon's testimony on Wednesday described how relations between Arm and Qualcomm, Arm's biggest customer, began to curdle years before the court dispute between the two firms. In the 2010s, Qualcomm stopped designing its own computing cores and decided to purchase designs off the shelf from Arm.

Near the end of the decade, Qualcomm believed the technology it was buying from Arm was causing it to fall behind Apple in the smartphone market at the same time Amon saw an opportunity to challenge Intel in the laptop market. But Qualcomm had no viable plan for developing its own computing cores to lessen its dependence on Arm, Amon testified.

That changed when a team of ex-Apple engineers who had helped design the iPhone maker's flagship chips founded their own startup in 2019 called Nuvia. After trying without success to persuade Nuvia to develop computing cores for Qualcomm, Amon decided the best path was to buy the young company.

Qualcomm faced a challenge in justifying the deal. While Nuvia had designs and sought-after talent, it lacked a finished product and was focused on the server market, not laptops and mobile devices.

To justify spending hundreds of millions of dollars or more for the firm, Amon told Qualcomm's board that the company could eventually save as much as $1.4 billion per year on payments to Arm by switching away from Arm's computing core designs to those based on work by Nuvia and its team.

The $1.4 billion a year of theoretical savings was based on the expectation that Qualcomm would enter a massive new market for PC chips that would require similarly massive payments to Arm for the use of its technology.

That figure is far higher than the $50 million reduction in revenue from Qualcomm that Arm executives feared when the Nuvia deal was announced.

Analysts have estimated that Qualcomm currently pays Arm about $300 million a year, though that figure does not take into account possible Qualcomm expansions into new markets.

Amon said he believed Qualcomm would be free to start using Nuvia's technology because both Nuvia and Qualcomm had their own licenses to build computing cores that would be compatible with Arm's underlying computer architecture.

Arm's executives objected and eventually terminated Nuvia's license, demanding that Qualcomm destroy all Nuvia technology that was developed with it.

Closing arguments in the trial are expected on Thursday.

This feature will enable users to ask ChatGPT to look for information and answer their queries almost instantaneously and it can ne accessed in all countries where OpenAI's chatbot is available. This means that now WhatsApp users in India can drop a message to ChatGPT's toll-free number and ask it to pull up a cake recipe or curate a list of must-visit places in a location.  

"You can now talk to ChatGPT by calling 1-800-ChatGPT (1-800-242-8478) in the U.S. or by sending a WhatsApp message to the same number—available everywhere ChatGPT is," OpenAI wrote in a post on X.

However, this feature comes with a catch. OpenAI in a blog post has revealed that at the moment, WhatsApp messaging supports text conversations only. Simply put, users can drop a voice message in the chat to get the desired information. The company has also confirmed that the feature does not support group chats yet.

Furthermore, OpenAI has confirmed that 'features that require logging into a ChatGPT account, such as ChatGPT search, chatting with images, and personalisation features like custom instructions and memory', are not currently available in ChatGPT on WhatsApp. 

In addition to making ChatGPT available in WhatsApp chats, OpenAI is also making its AI chatbot available over calls. The company today announced that people in the US will be able to call ChatGPT to get information. As of now, the limit on free calling has been set to 15 minutes per month. However, this limit is likely to be revised in the future.

"It even works on flip phones and landlines," OpenAI wrote in another post adding that support for features such as search and greater personalisation is restricted to ChatGPT accounts that can be accessed via the AI chatbot's web, desktop app and mobile apps.

Why it's important

Instagram's Reels competes with ByteDance's TikTok and YouTube Shorts, as users find short-form videos more engaging, driving marketers to adopt the format at a time when Meta is looking to boost revenue from the product by placing more ads.

Context

If a TikTok ban takes effect in the US, Reels and YouTube Shorts could become attractive alternatives for advertising, potentially boosting Instagram's growth.

Key quotes

"Instagram is now a video-first platform, with users spending close to two-thirds of their Instagram time watching videos," Jasmine Enberg, principal analyst at Emarketer.

"If the TikTok ban is enforced in 2025, Instagram could capture over one-fifth of reallocated TikTok ad dollars in the US," Enberg added.

By the numbers

In 2024, Instagram's ad revenue primarily came from its Feed and Stories features, contributing 53.7 per cent and 24.6 per cent, respectively.

However, as Reels' revenue increases, the combined revenue share from Instagram Explore, Reels and potentially Threads is projected to rise to 9.6 per cent in 2025.

Congo is a major source of tin, tantalum and tungsten, so-called 3T minerals used in computers and mobile phones. But some artisanal mines are run by armed groups involved in massacres, rapes and other crimes, say UN experts and rights groups.

Apple said on Tuesday that it strongly disputes the claims and has told suppliers they must not use the minerals in question sourced from Congo or Rwanda.

The lawyers representing Congo said on Wednesday they welcomed that statement with "satisfaction and caution."

"Apple's statements about changes to its supply chain will have to be verified on the ground, with facts and figures to support them," the lawyers said in a statement to Reuters.

"Apple's statements do not change the past and the crimes that are alleged to have been committed," they added, saying it was now up to the French and Belgian judges to rule on the case.

There has been no comment from either nation's prosecuting authorities.

Suppliers instructed

The lawyers argue that Apple used minerals pillaged from Congo and laundered through international supply chains, making it complicit in crimes taking place in Congo.

Apple does not directly source primary minerals and says it audits suppliers, publishes findings and funds bodies that seek to improve mineral traceability.

"As conflict in the region escalated earlier this year we notified our suppliers that their smelters and refiners must suspend sourcing tin, tantalum, tungsten, and gold from the DRC and Rwanda," Apple said in its statement on Tuesday, using an abbreviation for Congo's full name.

It did not say when suppliers were notified.

"We took this action because we were concerned it was no longer possible for independent auditors or industry certification mechanisms to perform the due diligence required to meet our high standards."

Apple said the majority of the minerals in question in its phones and computers are recycled.

Since the 1990s, Congo's mining heartlands in the east have been devastated by conflict between armed groups, some backed by neighbouring Rwanda, and the Congolese military.

Millions of civilians have died and been displaced.

Competition for minerals is one of the main drivers of conflict as armed groups sustain themselves and buy weapons with the proceeds of exports, often smuggled via Rwanda, according to the U.N. experts and rights organisations.

Rwanda denies benefiting from the trade.

Motorola Moto G15, Moto G15 Power, and Moto G05 Price

The Lenovo-owned smartphone company has not revealed the price or the availability details for the three smartphones. However, the Moto G15, Moto G15 Power, and Moto G05 are expected to go on sale in Asia Pacific, Europe, the Middle East, and Latin America in the coming days.

Motorola Moto G15, Moto G15 Power specifications

Except for their battery capacities, both smartphones are the same. While the Moto G15 has a 5,200mAh battery, the G15 Power packs a bigger 6,000mAh battery. That is also why the latter is slightly bulkier and thicker. The Moto G15 Power is 8.8mm thick and weighs 203g. Meanwhile, the G15 has an 8.2mm thickness and a 190g weight.

Coming to the commonalities, the Moto G15 and G15 Power use a 6.72-inch full-HD+ LCD with a 60Hz refresh rate. The display has a punch-hole that includes an 8MP selfie camera inside. On the back, both phones have a 50MP main camera and a 5MP ultrawide camera, arranged in a squarish island. Powering the phones is a MediaTek Helio G81 chip, which is a 4G-only chip with an octa-core 2GHz CPU. It uses 4GB of RAM and up to 512GB of internal storage, but users can expand the storage via a microSD card on both phones. The phones support FM radio, NFC, and a 3.5mm audio jack.

The Moto G15 and G15 Power come in Gravity Gray, Iguana Green, and Sunrise Orange colours with vegan leather finish on the back.

Motorola Moto G05 specifications

Intended for light smartphone users, the Moto G05 sticks to the essentials. It has a 6.67-inch HD+ LCD stuck at 60Hz refresh rate. An octa-core MediaTek Helio G81 chipset powers the smartphone with 4GB of RAM and up to 128GB of internal storage. It also supports external microSD card alongside dual SIM cards. The Moto G05 has a 50MP main camera and a secondary unspecified camera on the back, while its selfie camera is an 8MP shooter, located inside the punch-hole. The Moto G05 packs a 5000mAh battery and has an IP54 rating for dust and water resistance.
 

For the unversed, Genmojis are custom emoji that have been created using Apple Intelligence. This feature was announced alongside the other Apple Intelligence-powered features that the company announced at the Worldwide Developers' Conference (WWDC) 2024 earlier this year and it arrived on iPhone models with iOS 18.2.

Genmojis are not only available in Apple's messaging app, that is, iMessage, but also in WhatsApp. This means that WhatsApp users can create and share custom-made emojis with their friends and family members on iPhone.

So, here is a step-by-step guide that follow to create and use Genmojis in WhatsApp on iPhone:

How to create, use Genmoji in WhatsApp

Step 1: Download iOS 18.2 on your iPhone.

Step 2: Download the latest version of WhatsApp on your iPhone.

Step 3: Open the chat on WhatsApp where you want to share the Genmoji.

Step 4: Tap the emoji icon that is placed right next to the spacebar in the keyboard.

Step 5: Now tap the emoji icon that appears in red right next to the emoji search bar on the screen.

Step 6: Tap the Continue button.

Step 7: Type the prompt for the Genmoji that you want to create.

Step 8: On doing so, Apple will generate an image based on your prompts. Keep scrolling until you get the Genmoji that you want to use.

Step 9: Tap the three dots that appear right next to the selected emoji.

Step 10: Tap the Save to Stickers option to add it to your WhatsApp sticker collection.

Step 11: Tap the Add button on the top right corner to share the selected Genmoji in the chat.

While users can create any emoji using the newly launched Genmoji feature, they cannot add text to the emoji created using Apple Intelligence's Genmoji feature.

The latest move is an expansion of YouTube’s plan to give celebrities and creators tools that would help them manage AI-generated depictions of themselves and their voices. With the upcoming tools, the same accounts will be able to flag content using their AI copies, including videos with their faces, “at scale.”

“CAA’s clients’ direct experience with digital replicas in the evolving landscape of AI will be critical in shaping a tool that responsibly empowers and protects creators and the broader YouTube community,” said YouTube.

“By collaborating with CAA, we’ll gain insight from some of the world’s most influential figures—some of whom have been significantly impacted by the latest waves of AI innovation—to refine our product before releasing it to a wider group of creators and artists,” said YouTube in a blog spot. “CAA’s clients’ direct experience with digital replicas in the evolving landscape of AI will be critical in shaping a tool that responsibly empowers and protects creators and the broader YouTube community.”

YouTube has argued that the “emergence of AI” has led to growing concerns of artists and creators who need to “have more control over how their likeness is represented.” CAA’s CAAvault, which is a repository for an artist’s face, voice, and body, will help artists on YouTube identify a video’s content for any unauthorised representation and offer them tools to get the video removed.

"Furthermore, customers did not receive sufficient information when they asked Netflix which data the company collects about them. These are violations of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)," the watchdog said.

Netflix, which has since updated its privacy statement and improved its information provision, objected to the fine.

"Since this investigation began over five years ago, we have cooperated with the Dutch Data Protection Authority and proactively evolved our privacy information to provide even greater clarity to our members. We have objected to this decision," a Netflix spokesperson said in an email to Reuters.

In other news, Netflix has broadened access to a feature that enables users to share clips from their favorite shows and movies to Android devices. Originally launched on iOS in October, this feature has previously been unavailable to Android users who want to share memorable parts of a film or series.

In a recent update posted on the official Netflix Tudum website, the streaming service announced that this feature is now being rolled out. After users install the update, they can find the new ‘Moment’ button next to ‘Speed’, ‘Episodes’, and ‘Audio & Subtitles’. This allows them to choose and save their preferred clips while watching TV shows and movies. Users can share these clips via messaging apps and on social media, letting others see the moments they have enjoyed in a show or film.

Netflix has also intensified its investments in regions beyond the US to create more captivating local content that resonates with its global audience. In India, the platform has renewed numerous web series and secured streaming rights for major films in Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, and Kannada. In February, the streaming giant reported a 49 percent increase in profits, reaching ₹52 crore in the last fiscal year, largely due to the surge in its Indian subscriber base.

Written with inputs from Reuters

"Gear up for what's next #OnePlus13, #OnePlus13R and #OnePlusBudsPro3 - Sapphire Blue are on the way," OnePlus India wrote in a post on X (formerly Twitter).

OnePlus 13R India launch: What to expect?

According to the details shared by the company, the OnePlus 13R will feature a flat screen design with an 8mm thin body. It will be available in Nebula Noir and Astral Trail colour variants and that it will be backed by a 6,000mAh battery.

As per reports, the OnePlus Ace 5, which will launch in China later this month, will arrive in India as the OnePlus 13R. It is tipped to get a 6.67-inch display with 120Hz screen refresh rate. In terms of the internals, the phone will be powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset and run Android 15-based OxygenOS. On the camera front, the OnePlus Ace 5 is likely to get 50MP + 8MP + 2MP camera setup at the back and get 80W fast charging support.

OnePlus 13 India launch: What to expect?

OnePlus has already launched the OnePlus 13 in China. The company is expected to bring the same to India and other markets across the globe on January 7.

The OnePlus 13 launched in China comes with a 6.82-inch OLED display with a 1440p resolution and up to 120Hz screen refresh rate. It is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset that is coupled with up to 24GB of RAM and up to 1TB of storage space. The phone has a 50MP camera at the back and a 32MP camera in the front. The phone runs Android 15-based OxygenOS 15 and it is backed by a 6,000mAh battery with support for 100W fast charging technology.

The OnePlus 13 will be available in India in Midnight Ocean, Artic Dawn and Black Eclipse colour variant.

JioTag Go price in India

A single unit of the Jio TagGo costs ₹1,499, but customers can use coupons to receive a flat 5 per cent discount. The JioTag Go comes in black, white, yellow, and orange colour options. Customers can buy the JioTag Go from Amazon, JioMart, Reliance Digital, and MyJio Stores.

JioTag Go features

The coin-sized tracking device from Jio integrates with Google’s Find My Device network through the official app that comes pre-installed on Android smartphones and other devices. Pairing it involves a simple process as the JioTag Go automatically pops up on supported devices once it is turned on. Users can add as many JioTag Go devices as they can to their account using the Find My Device app.

“Once paired, just attach the JioTag Go to your important items, and you can easily track them wherever they are,” the company said on its website.

According to Jio, the JioTag Go is more convenient than Bluetooth- or GPS-based trackers as it uses a blend of Bluetooth and Google’s Find My Device network to provide location information. Within a Bluetooth range, pressing the “Play sound” button on the Find My Device app will trigger the JioTag Go to beep loudly (up to 120dB), which makes it and the tagged items easy to find. However, once a JioTag Go is out of the Bluetooth range, its last location is detected by the Find My Device network with the last seen time. Tapping the “Get directions” option opens a navigation app on the phone to allow users to follow the directions to reach the device. Once the phone approaches a JioTag Go device’s range, it will automatically connect to it, enabling the “Play sound” function to become active.
 

As far as the services are concerned, Vi, via a post on X, said that while it had begun rolling out its 5G services in India, it will share its detailed availability roadmap in the future.

"We have successfully rolled out 5G services in accordance with MRO guidelines. A full-scale launch to all users is part of our roadmap, and we will share more details at an appropriate time," Vi wrote in a post on X.

Meanwhile, reports suggest that Vodafone Idea has started rolling out its 5G network in licensed service areas (LSAs) in India on the 26GHz and 3.3GHz spectrums to both prepaid and postpaid users. Reports also suggest that the company is making its 5G services available to prepaid subscribers who have subscribed to Rs 475 plan and the postpaid subscribers who have subscribed to the RedX Rs 1,101 plan.

Furthermore, reports suggest that Vodafone Idea is deploying non-standalone (NSA) 5G. NSA 5G is the type of 5G that uses 4G infrastructure for providing 5G connectivity. Such a network is easier to deploy and more cost-effective as telecom operators don't have to install additional infrastructure for its deployment. Airtel uses NSA 5G. Standalone 5G or SA 5G, on the other hand, requires telecom operators to install dedicated equipment, which makes pricier to deploy. However, NSA 5G is less power efficient and it doesn't deliver low latency unlike SA 5G.

As far as availability is concerned, Vi's 5G network is reportedly available to select users in Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai and Jaipur among others.
 

According to the screenshots posted by an X (formerly Twitter) user Khushal Bherwani, Google will likely put the attachment tool next to the Search by Voice and Search by Image options in the search bar. Tapping the attachment tool, dubbed “Ask anything about a file” will immediately open the file explorer, allowing users to choose a file. Once uploaded to Google Search, users can “ask anything” about the file by typing a related query into the Search bar.

Google’s upcoming file search option is currently in development, but it will likely be available to the public in the coming days and it could help users quickly find information in a lengthy document. However, the tool may not be privacy-friendly as Google will have access to the file once it is uploaded to the servers. Any personal information in an uploaded document could also be at risk of exposure. Since Google has not launched the tool, its privacy policy is unclear.

Unless Google’s file search tool arrives, users can go to any of the popular AI bots to enquire about a document. Both Google Gemini and ChatGPT can skim through a document to find answers to related questions. Obviously, this requires users to upload the document, but both AI services allow the removal of the documents.

What is also unclear at the moment is whether Google will roll out the feature to upload files and ask questions to the web interface for Google Search or if it would also consider rolling it to the mobile app on Android and iOS.

At stake in a trial in U.S. federal court in Delaware this week is the fate of Qualcomm's push into the laptop business, where it is helping partners such as Microsoft try to regain ground that Windows computers lost to Apple after the iPhone maker introduced its own custom chips.

Arm's flagship product is a computing architecture that competes against Intel's architecture and is ubiquitous in smartphones and increasingly used in laptops and data centers. Competing computing architectures are the reason that, until relatively recently, most smartphone apps did not work on most laptops.

Massive companies like Apple design their own computing cores based on Arm's architecture, but Arm also offers its own off-the-shelf core designs that are used by smaller firms such as MediaTek. Where Arm's ownership of the core designs based on its architecture begins and ends is at the heart of the dispute between Arm and Qualcomm.

The companies disagree over whether Nuvia, a firm Qualcomm paid $1.4 billion for in 2021, had the right to transfer its computing core designs to Qualcomm after the sale.

In U.S. federal court in Delaware on Tuesday, attorneys for both sides pressed Gerard Williams, a former Apple engineer who founded Nuvia in 2019, over whether Nuvia's cores were ultimately derivatives of Arm's technology or whether Arm's technology played only a trivial role in Nuvia's work.

Arm's attorney pressed Williams to acknowledge that the licensing contract at the heart of the dispute covered Arm technology and "derivatives" and "modifications" made from it.

Williams repeatedly said he did not believe the contract meant that all of Nuvia's work was a derivative or modification of Arm's technology, but acknowledged that was what the words on the page appeared to say.

Daralyn Durie, the Arm attorney, pointedly asked Williams to agree that "maybe you wouldn’t say that, but that’s what the contract says."

“I wouldn’t say that," Williams responded, "but I’m not a legal expert.”

Durie immediately said she was finished with her questioning.

The exchange with Durie followed questioning by Qualcomm's attorney, who guided Williams to describe how little Arm technology was in Qualcomm chips that power phones, laptops and cars.

Williams said his team of developers started with Arm architecture and was asked to estimate the amount of Arm's technology in Nuvia's final designs. "One percent or less," Williams responded.

Analysts have told Reuters that Qualcomm pays Arm about $300 million per year, and evidence introduced at trial on Monday showed Arm executives believed they were missing out on $50 million per year in additional revenue because of Qualcomm's acquisition of Nuvia.

A jury verdict could come as soon as this week in the trial, and Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon also might take the witness stand. 

Meta notified Ireland's Data Protection Commission at the time that cyber attackers had exploited a vulnerability in Facebook's code that impacted the "View As" feature that lets users see what their own profile looks like to someone else.

That led to a breach in personal data including users' full name, contact details, location, place of work, date of birth, religion, gender and their children's personal data, the DPC said.

"By allowing unauthorised exposure of profile information, the vulnerabilities behind this breach caused a grave risk of misuse of these types of data," DPC Deputy Commissioner Graham Doyle said in a statement.

Meta remedied the breach shortly after its discovery, the DPC said. Of the 29 million Facebook accounts impacted globally, about 3 million were based in the EU and European Economic Area.

The DPC is the lead EU regulator for most of the top U.S. internet firms due to the location of their EU operations in Ireland.

It has so far fined Meta almost 3 billion euros for breaches under the bloc's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) introduced in 2018, including a record 1.2 billion euro fine in 2023 that Meta is appealing.

Meta said it will also appeal Tuesday's decision and that it has a wide range of measures in place to protect users across its platforms.

"We took immediate action to fix the problem as soon as it was identified, and we proactively informed people impacted as well as the Irish Data Protection Commission," a spokesperson for Meta said in a statement.

This fine follows the fined of 797.72 Euros that the European Commission levied on Meta "for breaching EU antitrust rules by tying its online classified ads service Facebook Marketplace to its personal social network Facebook and by imposing unfair trading conditions on other online classified ads service providers'.

"The Commission's investigation found that Meta is dominant in the market for personal social networks, which is at least European Economic Area (‘EEA') wide, as well as in the national markets for online display advertising on social media," the European Commission wrote while announcing the fine.

"That is something that, to be very candid, comes under the domain of the Ministry of I&B (information & broadcasting). Having said that, I have six advisory groups that I have set up and this concept has come up as an issue that they would like to discuss from the point of view of the TSPs," Scindia said in an interview with ANI.

The debate stems from calls for OTT platforms to share the costs incurred by Telecom Service Providers (TSPs) in delivering content to consumers. While TSPs argue that cost-sharing could support much-needed investments in their network expansion, while critics highlight the potential violation of net neutrality principles.

Net neutrality mandates equal treatment of all internet traffic, prohibiting payments from content providers to TSPs. Introducing such payments, critics argue, could allow network operators to prioritize certain platforms, undermining the internet's democratic nature.

Proponents of cost-sharing highlight that the digital economy and telecom landscape have evolved dramatically in recent years. Between 2015 and 2023, India saw an explosive growth in mobile data consumption, with average usage per user jumping from 0.09 GB to 17.36 GB per month. 

However, the expansion of network infrastructure, such as the number of mobile towers, has not kept pace with this demand. Emerging technologies like artificial intelligence, cloud computing, and the Internet of Things (IoT) are expected to further amplify data consumption, intensifying the need for network upgrades.

It is argued that a blanket approach to net neutrality may no longer be sufficient to address the current challenges. Instead, a nuanced framework could balance the interests of all stakeholders. For instance, larger OTT platforms with significant revenue streams, such as subscription fees or advertising, could be required to contribute to network costs. However, smaller or less profitable platforms might be exempt to avoid stifling innovation and competition.

At the same time, any framework must address potential contractual disputes between TSPs and OTT platforms, as well as avoid creating monopolistic practices that could harm smaller players. One proposed solution is extending the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India's (TRAI) interconnection regulations to OTT platforms. This would establish clear rules for how OTTs and TSPs interact, ensuring transparency and fairness while maintaining net neutrality principles related to quality of service.

Starlink is seeking approval in India to provide satellite broadband services and the Musk-owned company is trying to address any potential security concerns as part of the process.

Musk wrote on X late on Tuesday that "This is false…Starlink satellite beams are turned off over India" and were "never on in the first place."

He was responding to a post from the Indian Army about a search operation on December 13 in Manipur state in India's northeast, where a communal conflict has raged since early last year.

The post included photos of seized weapons and a satellite dish and receiver with a Starlink logo.

Two military officers familiar with the search operation, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the device with the Starlink logo was being used by a militant group.

They said the device was likely smuggled through the porous border with neighbouring civil war-torn Myanmar, where use of Starlink devices by rebel groups has been documented in media reports although the company does not operate in Myanmar either.

Earlier this month, Indian police sent a legal demand to Starlink seeking purchase details of a device found when they caught smugglers at sea with $4.2 billion worth of methamphetamine, one of the biggest such Indian seizures.

The police suspect the smugglers were using the internet device to navigate. 

It is worth noting that Elon Musk's Starlink satellite system is not available in India yet. However, the company has made significant progress in the past couple of months in terms of getting regulatory approvals in the country. However, a potential launch date at this point remains uncertain.

Realme 14x 5G vs POCO M7 Pro 5G: Specifications compared

Display: Customers get a 6.67-inch HD+ IPS LCD screen with up to a 120Hz refresh rate on the Realme 14x. The display has a peak brightness of 625 nits and a screen-to-body ratio of 89.97 per cent. While POCO M7 Pro 5G’s display is the same size, which is 6.67 inches, it uses a full-HD+ AMOLED panel with up to a 120Hz refresh rate, Dolby Vision and HDR10+ support, and a peak brightness of 2,100 nits. POCO’s smartphone also has Corning Gorilla Glass 5 protection on top. POCO’s M7 Pro 5G also has an in-display fingerprint sensor.

Processor: Powering the Realme 14x 5G is an octa-core MediaTek Dimensity 6300 chipset, paired with up to 8GB of RAM. Realme says customers can expand the RAM virtually up to 10GB on the new phone, which has a fixed 128GB internal storage. POCO M7 Pro 5G, however, uses a more powerful MediaTek Dimensity 7025 Ultra, paired with up to 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. Both phones run Android 14, with Realme using Realme UI 5.0 and POCO using HyperOS custom skins.

Cameras: The Realme 14x 5G packs a 50MP autofocus main camera and a secondary camera with an unspecified sensor. Its front camera is an 8MP shooter. On the other hand, the POCO M7 Pro 5G has a 50MP wide sensors with optical image stabilisation (OIS) and a 2MP depth-sensing camera on the back. Its front camera is a 20MP sensor.

Battery: Realme’s 14x 5G has a 6000mAh battery that supports 45W wired and 5W reverse wired charging technology, while the POCO M7 Pro uses a 5110mAh battery but with 45W fast-charging standard.

Realme 14x 5G vs POCO M7 Pro 5G: Price in India

Both smartphones start at ₹14,999, but customers can buy them at up to ₹1,000 discount using bank cards on online platforms. The Realme 14x 5G has Crystal Black, Golden Glow, and Jewel Red colourways, while the POCO M7 Pro 5G comes in Lavender Frost, Lunar Dust, and Olive Twilight colour options.

Realme 14x 5G India price and availability

The Realme 14x 5G comes in three colour variants in India -- Jewel Red, Crystal Black and Golden Glow. It costs Rs 14,999 for the variant with 6GB of RAM and 128GB of storage space, and Rs 15,999 for the variant with 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage space.

The newly launched Realme 14x 5G will go on sale in India on November 18 via realme.com, Flipkart and offline stores. As a part of the launch, Realme is offering a bank discount of Rs 1,000, which will bring down the offer price of the 6GB variant to Rs 13,999 and that of the 8GB variant to 14,999.

Realme 14x 5G features and specifications

The Realme 14x 5G comes with a diamond design, which the company says is inspired by crystals and gems. Additionally, it has SonicWave Water Ejection and Rainwater Smart Touch features along with IP69 dust and water resistance coating, which makes it immune to occasional splashes of water.

The Realme 14x 5G sports a 6.67-inch HD+ LCD display with a resolution of 1604 x 720 pixels, a screen refresh rate of up to 120Hz, and a peak brightness of 625 nits. It supports 16.7 million colours.

Coming to the internals, the Realme 14x 5G is powered by the MediaTek Dimensity 6300 5G system-on-chip (SoC) that is coupled with up to 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage space. It also supports up to 10GB of dynamic RAM. It runs Android 14-based Realme UI 5.0.

Talking about the cameras, the Realme 14x 5G sports a dual camera setup at the back, which includes a 50MP AI camera and an unspecified lens. On the front, it has an 8MP camera and for audio, the phone has Hi-Res audio support.

As far as connectivity goes, the Realme 14x 5G has 5G, Bluetooth 5.3 and dual-band Wi-Fi support. Lastly, Realme's newly launched smartphone is backed by a 6,000mAh battery with support for 45W SuperVOOC charging support.

The Commission said it will request information and look into TikTok's policy on political advertisements and paid-for political content as well as TikTok's systems to generate recommendations and the risks of them being manipulated.

The opening of formal proceedings empowers the Commission to take further enforcement steps and to accept commitments made by TikTok. There is no specific deadline to complete proceedings.

China's ByteDance-owned TikTok said it had protected the integrity of its platform through more than 150 elections worldwide and had provided the European Commission with extensive information on its efforts.

It added it did not accept paid political advertisements and proactively removed content violating its policies on misinformation and hate speech.

The Commission ordered TikTok on December 5 to freeze data linked to the Romanian elections under the bloc's sweeping Digital Services Act (DSA), which regulates how the world's biggest social media companies operate in Europe.

Romania's top court subsequently annulled the presidential election after accusations of Russian meddling and the victory of pro-Russia ultranationalist Calin Georgescu in the first round.

The Commission is conscious of the risk of interference in the German parliamentary election in February and the presidential election in Croatia starting on December 29.

Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the new investigation followed serious indications that foreign actors interfered in the Romanian presidential election.

"We must protect our democracies from any kind of foreign interference. Whenever we suspect such interference, especially during elections, we have to act swiftly and firmly," she said in a statement.

This is the third investigation the Commission has launched against TikTok under the DSA, both related to risks for minors. One has been closed after TikTok committed to remove TikTok Lite Rewards from the EU. 

Before the Poco M7 Pro 5G and Poco C75 5G become available in India, take a look at their top features and India price.

Poco M7 Pro 5G, Poco C75 5G India price and availability

The Poco M7 Pro 5G comes in two storage variants. While the 6GB + 128GB variant costs Rs 13,999, the 8GB + 256GB variant costs Rs 15,999. It will be available in India starting 12PM on December 20 via Flipkart.

The Poco C75 5G, on the other hand, comes in a single variant with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage space. It costs Rs 7,999 and it will go on sale in India starting 12PM on December 19 on Flipkart.

Poco M7 Pro 5G Features and Specifications

The Poco M7 Pro 5G sports a 6.67-inch gOLED FHD+ display with 2,100 nits of peak brightness, 120Hz of adaptive screen refresh rate, Corning Gorilla Glass 5 protection, support for HDR 10+ and IP64 dust and water-resistant coating. Additionally, it comes with an in-display fingerprint sensor. It comes in Lunar Dust, Lavender Frost and Olive Twilight colour variants.

Coming to the internals, the Poco M7 Pro 5G is powered by the MediaTek Dimensity 7025 Ultra chipset that is coupled with up to 16GB of RAM. This newly launched smartphone runs on Android 14-based HyperOS. Poco has promised to provide two years of OS updates and four years of security updates to the buyers.

The Poco M7 Pro 5G sports a dual rear camera setup, which includes a 50MP lens with a Sony LYT-600 sensor with optical image stabalisation (OIS) feature and multi-frame noise reduction technology. The rear camera supports AI-based features such as AI Eraser, 0.8x AI zoom, AI Night Mode and AI Sky Replacement. On the front, it has a 20MP selfie camera. On the audio front, it has dual-stereo speakers and support for Dolby Atmos.

It is backed by a 5,110mAh battery with support for 45W fast charging technology.

Poco C75 5G Features and Specifications

The Poco C75 5G smartphone comes with a 6.88-inch LCD HD+ display with 600 nits of peak brightness, 120Hz of adaptive screen refresh rate and a water-drop notch. It comes in Enchanted Green, Aqua Blue and Silver Stardust colour variants.

Coming to the internals, the Poco C75 5G is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 4s Gen 2 processor that was announced back in July this year. It runs on Android 14-based HyperOS. Poco has promised to provide two years of OS updates and four years of security updates to the users.

Talking about the camera, this newly launched smartphone comes with a dual rear camera setup, which includes a 50MP lens with a Sony sensor. The rear camera supports 10x zoom along with features such as time lapse and portrait mode. On the front, it has a 5MP selfie camera.

It is backed by a 5,160mAh battery with support for 18W fast charging technology and it has 5G, a 3.5mm audio jack, dual-band Wi-Fi and Bluetooth version 5 for connectivity.

Google says that its newly launched Veo 2 video generation model 'brings an improved understanding of real-world physics and the nuances of human movement and expression, which helps improve its detail and realism overall'. In addition to improving the understanding of the real world, Google has also updated the video quality that this model offers. While Veo generated videos in 1080p resolution, Veo 2 is capable of generation with up to 4K resolution.

"Veo 2 understands the unique language of cinematography: ask it for a genre, specify a lens, suggest cinematic effects and Veo 2 will deliver — at resolutions up to 4K, and extended to minutes in length," Google wrote in a blog post.

"Suggest “18mm lens” in your prompt and Veo 2 knows to craft the wide angle shot that this lens is known for, or blur out the background and focus on your subject by putting "shallow depth of field" in your prompt," the company added.

In addition to this, the company has also added a bunch of safety features to its video generation model. Google says that the videos generated by Veo 2 come with 'an invisible SynthID watermark that helps identify them as AI-generated'.

Google Veo 2 availability

As far as availability is concerned, Google says that Veo 2 is available in Google Labs' video generation tool, VideoFX. However, interested users will have to join a waitlist to access it. Furthermore, the company said that it plans to bring Veo 2 to YouTube Shorts and other products sometime in 2025.

Google's Veo 2 vs OpenAI's Sora

It is worth noting that the development comes shortly after the AI startup, OpenAI, launched its text-to-video generator model called Sora Turbo. Sora Turbo builds on Sora that arrived earlier this year and it is available as a part of the ChatGPT Plus account without any additional cost.

According to a report by Telecom Talk, the telecom operator has started rolling out its 5G network in 17 licensed service areas (LSAs) in India except for Bihar . The report also says that the 5G network is being deployed on 3.3GHz and 26GHz spectrums only.

Furthermore, the report says that Vi's 5G services are commercially available in Delhi, Chennai, Pune and Jalandar. While Vodafone Idea has not updated its website in India yet, the report says that the company's 5G services are available to both, its prepaid and postpaid subscribers via Rs 475 and RedX Rs 1101 plans respectively. None of these plans are listed on Vodafone Idea's India website.

Vi 5G connectivity in India: Availability

As mentioned before, Vi's 5G network is reportedly available across 17 circles in India. Here is where it is available:

-- Delhi: Okhla Industrial Area Phase 2, India Gate, Pragati Maidan
-- Kolkata: Sector V and Salt Lake
-- Maharashtra: Shivaji Nagar in Pune, and Worli and Marol Andheri East in Mumbai
-- Tamil Nadu: Perungudi and Nesapakkam in Chennai
-- Punjab: Kot Kalan in Jalandhar
-- Karnataka: Dairy Cirlce in Bengaluru
-- Bihar: Anishabad Golamber in Patna
-- West Bengal: City Plaza Sevok Road in Siliguri
-- Andhra Pradesh: Aida Upal and Ranga Reddy in Hyderabad
-- Gujarat : Near Divya Bhaskar, Corporate Road, Makarba and Prahladnagar in Ahmendabad
-- Madhya Pradesh: Electronic Complex and Pardeshipura in Indore
-- UP West: Near JP Hotel and Fatehbad Road in Agra
-- UP East: Vibhuti Khand and Gomtinagar in Lucknow
-- Kerala: Thrikkakara and Kakkanad
-- Haryana: HSIIDC, Industrial Area and Sector-3 in Karnal
-- Rajasthan: Near Galaxy Cinema, Mansarovar Industrial Area, and RIICO in Jaipur

It is worth noting that the development comes seven to eight months after the Vi CEO, Akshaya Moondra, talked about rolling out 5G network in India within six to nine months after the completion of the company's Follow-on Public Offer or FPO.

In the latest announcement on the official Netflix Tudum website, the streaming giant said the feature is now rolling out as part of an update. After installing the update, users can use the new ‘Moment’ button available next to ‘Speed’, ‘Episodes’, and ‘Audio & Subtitles’ options to choose and save their favourite clips while streaming TV shows and movies. These clips can be shared through messaging apps and can also go on social media so that everyone knows the scenes a user has loved in a show or movie.

The latest development is part of Netflix’s efforts to increase the platform’s appeal as it faces stiff competition from several companies vying for the top spot in the streaming market. Netflix was the first company to crack down on password sharing in an attempt to boost its subscriber base and, ultimately, revenue to stay afloat in a market that began to see deep-pocketed studios-owned streaming platforms. Netflix has also experimented with its subscription tiers, giving users in select locations the most affordable plan that provides access to popular titles at the cost of an ad-free experience.

Netflix also recently doubled down on its investments in regions outside of the US to make more engaging local content that appeals to the international audience. In India, Netflix has renewed several web shows, in addition to acquiring streaming rights to blockbuster movies in Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, and Kannada. The streaming giant in February said it saw a 49 per cent rise in profit to ₹52 crore in the last fiscal year as India subscriber base booms.

Taipei has been looking at plans to preserve communications if China attacks, including satellites in medium and low Earth orbit for internet services, similar to Ukraine's use of Elon Musk's Starlink satellite broadband service.

China views democratically-governed Taiwan as its own territory and has been stepping up its military activities around the island. The government in Taipei rejects Beijing's sovereignty claims.

Speaking to reporters, Taiwan Technology and Science Minister Wu Cheng-wen said the bandwidth for the island's existing OneWeb satellite service was too small.

There are other Western companies Taiwan could work with, including in Europe and Canada, he said, without giving names, but said Amazon had the product that was most far along in its development.

"Amazon's Kuiper is the most mature in the development stage so far, so we are discussing at this moment whether its possible to have a collaboration," Wu added, without elaborating.

Amazon, which plans a network of more than 3,000 satellites that will compete with SpaceX's Starlink, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Taiwan has also been sending its own satellites into space using rockets fired by foreign companies including Arianespace, a joint venture of Airbus and Safran.

But the island wants to be able to use its own rockets, and Wu said officials expect to make a decision around late March on a launch pad location, probably along its far southeast coast where the military has missile firing ranges.

It will then take about five years before the site is operational, he added.

Lava Blaze Duo 5G price in India

The Blaze Duo 5G has two variants: the one with 6GB of RAM costs ₹18,999, while the 8GB RAM model is priced at ₹20,499. However, customers can use the launch offers to bring down the cost. As part of the introductory offer, the Blaze Duo 5G will be available for ₹16,999 and ₹17,999. Over and above this offer, customers on Amazon can use an HDFC Bank debit or credit card to receive an additional ₹2,000 off, but this offer will apply to purchases between December 20 and December 22.

Lava Blaze Duo 5G specifications

Featuring support for dual 5G SIM cards, the Lava Blaze Duo 5G boasts two displays. The main display uses a 6.67-inch 3D AMOLED panel with Full-HD+ resolution and a 120Hz refresh rate. The secondary display is on the phone’s back, allowing users to take a peek at important notifications and control music playback, among other nifty things. This display measures 1.58 inches but uses an AMOLED panel for a better viewing experience. An octa-core MediaTek Dimensity 7025 chip powers the Lava Blaze Duo 5G, paired with up to 8GB of RAM and 128GB of internal storage.

With Android 14-based software out of the box, the Lava Blaze Duo 5G comes with support for Android 15 upgrade. It has a 64MP main camera on the back, assisted by a secondary 2MP camera. The Blaze Duo 5G uses a 16MP selfie camera, but it can also be used for taking video calls. The Lava Blaze Duo 5G packs a 5000mAh battery that charges at up to 33W speed using the bundled charger. Customers also get an in-display fingerprint sensor and an IP64 rating for dust and water resistance. The connectivity options on the smartphone include Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 5.2, 5G, and USB-C port on the phone’s bottom.
 

The decision is a major win for the Justice Department and opponents of the Chinese-owned app and a devastating blow to TikTok parent ByteDance. It significantly raises the prospects of an unprecedented ban in just six weeks on a social media app used by 170 million Americans.

TikTok plans to appeal the decision to the Supreme Court.

In detailing their support of the law, the appeals court noted it was the result of Republicans and Democrats working together, as well as two presidents, as "part of a broader effort to counter a well-substantiated national security threat posed by the PRC (People's Republic of China)."

The Justice Department says under Chinese ownership, TikTok poses a threat because of its access to vast personal data of Americans, asserting China can covertly manipulate information that Americans consume via TikTok.

Attorney General Merrick Garland called the decision "an important step in blocking the Chinese government from weaponizing TikTok.”

But the Chinese Embassy in Washington called the law "a blatant act of commercial robbery" and warned the United States "must handle this case in a prudent manner to avoid harming the mutual trust between the two countries and the development of bilateral relations."

The ruling comes amid growing trade tensions between the world's two biggest economies after the administration of President Joe Biden placed new restrictions on China's chip industry and Beijing responded by imposing an outright ban on exports of gallium, germanium and antimony to the United States.

U.S. appeals court Judges Sri Srinivasan, Neomi Rao and Douglas Ginsburg rejected legal challenges brought by TikTok and users against the law, which gives ByteDance until Jan. 19 to sell or divest TikTok's U.S. assets or face a ban.

FREE SPEECH

"While today’s news is disappointing, rest assured we will continue the fight to protect free speech on our platform," TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew said in an email to staff seen by Reuters.

Free speech advocates quickly criticized the ruling. The American Civil Liberties Union said, "Banning TikTok blatantly violates the First Amendment rights of millions of Americans who use this app to express themselves and communicate with people around the world."

In its analysis, the court said China, through its relationship with TikTok parent ByteDance, threatened to distort U.S. speech through TikTok and "manipulate public discourse."

China's "ability to do so is at odds with free speech fundamentals. Indeed, the First Amendment precludes a domestic government from exercising comparable control over a social media company in the United States."

The decision -- unless the Supreme Court reverses it -- puts TikTok's fate in the hands of first President Biden on whether to grant a 90-day extension of the Jan. 19 deadline to force a sale and then President-elect Donald Trump , who takes office on Jan. 20. But it's not clear whether ByteDance could meet the heavy burden to show it had made significant progress toward a divestiture needed to trigger the extension -- or if the Chinese government would approve any sale.

Trump, who unsuccessfully tried to ban TikTok during his first term in 2020, said before the November presidential election he would not allow the TikTok ban.

Friday's decision upholds the law giving the U.S. government sweeping powers to ban other foreign-owned apps that could raise concerns about collection of Americans' data -- and could open the door to a future crackdown on many other foreign owned apps. In 2020, Trump also tried to ban Tencent-owned WeChat but was blocked by the courts.

TIKTOK BAN LOOMS

If banned, TikTok advertisers would seek new social media venues to buy ads. As a result, shares of Meta Platforms, which competes against TikTok in online ads, hit an intraday record high following the ruling and closed up 2.4%. Google parent Alphabet, whose YouTube video platform also competes with TikTok, closed up 1.25%.

The court opinion - which was written by Ginsburg, an appointee of President Ronald Reagan, and joined by Rao, who was named to the bench by Trump, and Srinivasan, an appointee of President Barack Obama - acknowledged its decision would lead to TikTok's ban on Jan. 19 without an extension from Biden.

ByteDance, backed by Sequoia Capital, Susquehanna International Group, KKR & Co, and General Atlantic, among others, was valued at $268 billion in December 2023 when it offered to buy back around $5 billion worth of shares from investors, Reuters reported then.

The law prohibits app stores like Apple and Alphabet's Google from offering TikTok and bars internet hosting services from supporting TikTok unless ByteDance divests TikTok by the deadline.

Google declined comment while Apple did not respond to a request for comment.

In a concurring opinion, Srinivasan acknowledged the decision will have major impacts, noting “170 million Americans use TikTok to create and view all sorts of free expression and engage with one another and the world. And yet, in part precisely because of the platform’s expansive reach, Congress and multiple Presidents determined that divesting it from (China's) control is essential to protect our national security.”

The crux of the litigation is a clash over Qualcomm's license agreement for the use of Arm's intellectual property following Qualcomm's $1.4 billion acquisition of chip startup Nuvia in 2021.

The remedy Arm is seeking in the case is the destruction of Nuvia's designs, which it alleges form the basis of the low-powered AI PC chips that Nuvia's executive team helped Qualcomm design. Microsoft and others expect those chips, launched earlier this year, will help the Windows operating system regain ground lost to laptops made by Apple.

Arm is central to the chip industry, licensing out underlying technology to almost every company in the industry as a neutral player. The British firm alleged that Qualcomm was required to honor Nuvia's royalty rates for the chip designs it was using in Qualcomm's chips, rather than paying Qualcomm's much lower rates.

At the trial in U.S. federal court in Delaware on Monday, jurors were shown documents that indicated Nuvia's royalty rates were "many multiples" more than Qualcomm's, and allowing Qualcomm to pay the lower rates would have damaged Arm's business model.

Qualcomm's acquisition of Nuvia potentially trimmed $50 million from Arm revenue, according to estimates in internal documents that were shown to the jury.

"We've never had an issue like this," Arm CEO Rene Haas told the court.

During a cross-examination of Haas, Qualcomm's attorney tried to portray the royalty dispute with Qualcomm as part of a strategy for Arm to confront a customer that it increasingly viewed as a competitor.

Qualcomm's legal team showed a document that Haas prepared for Arm's board outlining a strategy for Arm to start designing its own chips, which would pit it against Qualcomm and other Arm customers.

Haas was dismissive of the documents. He said that Arm doesn't build chips and never got into the business but said he is always considering various possible strategies.

"That’s all I think about, is the future," he told the eight-person jury.

Qualcomm's attorneys also questioned Haas over letters that Arm sent to dozens of Qualcomm's customers, including Samsung Electronics. The letters said the Arm dispute could result in the forced destruction of Nuvia technology, against Qualcomm's demands.

A Qualcomm attorney called those letters "misleading" and many chip industry insiders have wondered whether Arm's appetite for destruction would disrupt Qualcomm's ability to supply chips to the PC industry.

"I felt we had a reason," Haas said. "We were getting lots of questions from partners and customers at almost every meeting with senior executives."

Arm is expected to call its final witnesses on Tuesday and show some video from depositions before it rests. Qualcomm might call its CEO Cristiano Amon.

The judge indicated on Monday that the jury might begin deliberations as soon as Thursday.

Arm has not asked for monetary damages. According to Bernstein analyst Stacy Rasgon, Qualcomm pays Arm roughly $300 million a year in fees.

Britain-based Arm is owned by SoftBank Group, which listed Arm in the U.S. in 2023.

TikTok and ByteDance filed an emergency request to the justices for an injunction to halt the looming ban on the social media app used by about 170 million Americans while they appeal a lower court's ruling that upheld the law. A group of U.S. users of the app filed a similar request on Monday as well.

Congress passed the law in April. The Justice Department has said that as a Chinese company, TikTok poses "a national-security threat of immense depth and scale" because of its access to vast amounts of data on American users, from locations to private messages, and its ability to secretly manipulate content that Americans view on the app.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in Washington on Dec. 6 rejected TikTok's arguments that the law violates free speech protections under the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment.

In their filing to the Supreme Court, TikTok and ByteDance said that "if Americans, duly informed of the alleged risks of 'covert' content manipulation, choose to continue viewing content on TikTok with their eyes wide open, the First Amendment entrusts them with making that choice, free from the government's censorship."

"And if the D.C. Circuit's contrary holding stands, then Congress will have free rein to ban any American from speaking simply by identifying some risk that the speech is influenced by a foreign entity," they added.

The companies said that being shuttered for even one month would cause TikTok to lose about a third of its U.S. users and undermine its ability to attract advertisers and recruit content creators and employee talent.

Calling itself one of the "most important speech platforms" used in the United States, TikTok has said that there is no imminent threat to U.S. national security and that delaying enforcement of the law would allow the Supreme Court to consider the legality of the ban, and the incoming administration of President-elect Donald Trump to evaluate the law as well.

Trump, who unsuccessfully tried to ban TikTok during his first term in 2020, has reversed his stance and promised during the presidential race this year that he would try to save TikTok. Trump takes office on Jan. 20, the day after the TikTok deadline under the law.

The law would "shutter one of America's most popular speech platforms the day before a presidential inauguration," the companies said in their filing. "A federal law singling out and banning a speech platform used by half of Americans is extraordinary."

Asked on Monday at a press conference what he would do to stop a ban on TikTok, Trump said that he has "a warm spot in my heart for TikTok" and that he would "take a look" at the matter.

Trump was meeting with TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew in Florida on Monday, a source familiar with the plans told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity. TikTok did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the meeting.

The companies asked the Supreme Court to issue a decision on its request by Jan. 6 to allow, in the event it is rejected, for the "complex task of shutting down TikTok" in the United States and to coordinate with service providers by the deadline set under the law.

The dispute comes amid growing trade tensions between China and the United States, the world's two biggest economies.

'RIGOROUS SCRUTINY'

TikTok has denied that it has or ever would share U.S. user data, accusing U.S. lawmakers of advancing speculative concerns.

TikTok spokesperson Michael Hughes said after the filing that "we are asking the court to do what it has traditionally done in free speech cases: apply the most rigorous scrutiny to speech bans and conclude that it violates the First Amendment."

In its ruling, the D.C. Circuit wrote, "The First Amendment exists to protect free speech in the United States. Here the government acted solely to protect that freedom from a foreign adversary nation and to limit that adversary's ability to gather data on people in the United States."

The law would bar providing certain services to TikTok and other foreign adversary-controlled apps including offering it through app stores such as Apple and Alphabet's Google, effectively preventing its continued U.S. use unless ByteDance divests TikTok by the deadline.

A ban could open the door to a future U.S. crackdown on other foreign-owned apps. In 2020, Trump tried to ban WeChat, owned by Chinese company Tencent, but was blocked by the courts.

The Facebook parent, which first announced the features during its annual Connect conference in September, said the update is available for members that are part of its "Early Access Program".

The features are included in the v11 software update, which will begin rolling out on Monday.

The latest update adds video to Meta's AI chatbot assistant, which allows the Ray-Ban smart glasses to process what the user is seeing and respond to questions in real-time.

The smart glasses will now be able to translate speech in real time between English and Spanish, French or Italian.

"When you're talking to someone speaking one of those three languages, you'll hear what they say in English through the glasses' open-ear speakers or viewed as transcripts on your phone, and vice versa," Meta said in a blog.

Meta also added Shazam, an app that lets users identify songs, to the smart glasses, which will be available in the U.S. and Canada.

In September, Meta said it is updating the Ray-Ban smart glasses with several new AI features, including tools for setting reminders and the ability to scan QR codes and phone numbers using voice commands.

The company had also introduced, Apple's Siri-like 'Hey meta' wake word support along with the ability to ask a follow-up question along withou the need of using wake word in the Ray-Ban smart glasses.

Additionally, the company had introduced the ability to 'remember things' in these smart glasses. "We’re adding the ability for your glasses to help you remember things...You can now ask Meta AI to record and send voice messages on WhatsApp and Messenger while staying present," the company had said at the time.

Lastly, Meta had also introduced support for live translation feature for its Ray-Ban smart glasses. "When you’re talking to someone speaking Spanish, French or Italian, you’ll hear what they say in English through the glasses’ open-ear speak," the company had added at the time.

In an advisory to OTT platforms, the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting said, “Such a portrayal has serious repercussions, particularly regarding the potential influence on young and impressionable viewers.”

Citing the Code of Ethics for OTT platforms, the advisory asked them to exercise due diligence in content review and issue disclaimers or user warnings for any programming that depicts drug use.

"OTT platforms are requested to conform to these guidelines voluntarily in the larger public interest. Non-compliance may result in further regulatory scrutiny, especially in the light of the provisions of the Information Technology Act, 2000 read with the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act (NDPS), 1985," the advisory said.

The Code of Ethics for OTT platforms provides that a publisher shall not transmit, publish, or exhibit any content prohibited under any law for the time being in force or by any court of competent jurisdiction.

The advisory has also been shared with the self-regulatory bodies of OTT platforms.

The government’s latest instruction to OTT platforms adds to the list of objectionable things they are expected to censor. Previously, the Ministry of Broadcasting and Information discussed voluntary scrutiny by online streaming platforms, urging them to remove content that depicts child abuse and child pornography. The government has also asked the platforms to label content according to the audience it is safe to watch alongside mentioning the minimum age for viewers. For instance, labelling content ‘A’ for an audience aged at least 18.

The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner had alleged that personal information of some users was being disclosed to Facebook's personality quiz app. This is Your Digital Life, as part of the broader scandal.

The breaches were first reported by the Guardian in early 2018, and Facebook received fines from regulators in the United States and the UK in 2019.

Australia's privacy regulator has been caught up in the legal battle with Meta since 2020. The personal data of 311,127 Australian Facebook users was "exposed to the risk of being disclosed" to consulting firm Cambridge Analytica and used for profiling purposes, according to the 2020 statement.

It convinced the high court in March 2023 to not hear an appeal, which is considered to be a win that allowed the watchdog to continue its prosecution.

In June 2023, the country's federal court ordered Meta and the privacy commissioner to enter mediation.

"Today's settlement represents the largest ever payment dedicated to addressing concerns about the privacy of individuals in Australia," the Australian Information Commissioner Elizabeth Tydd said.

Cambridge Analytica, a British consulting firm, was known to have kept personal data of millions of Facebook users without their permission, before using the data predominantly for political advertising, including assisting Donald Trump and the Brexit campaign in the UK.

A Meta spokesperson told Reuters that the company had settled the lawsuit in Australia on a no admission basis, closing a chapter on allegations regarding past practices of the firm. 

Separately, the Australian government recent said that it was planning to announce new rules that would charge big tech firms, such as Meta and Google millions of dollars if they did not pay Australian media companies for news hosted on their platforms.

"The news bargaining initiative will ... will create a financial incentive for agreement-making between digital platforms and news media businesses in Australia," Assistant Treasurer and Minister for Financial Services Stephen Jones had said at a press conference earlier this month.

"ChatGPT search is starting to roll out to all Free users today," OpenAI wrote in a post announcing the development.

According to the details shared by OpenAI, ChatGPT users can access ChatGPT Search via ChatGPT's web-based platform, its Android and iOS-based apps and ChatGPT's desktop-based apps.

Furthermore, the company said users can also set ChatGPT Search as the default search engine in a your browser. As per the details shared by the artificial intelligence (AI) startup in a support page, interested people can use ChatGPT as a web browser on Chrome by downloading its Chrome extension. "you can search directly via your browser URL bar. This will automatically start a conversation in ChatGPT that contains your search query and ChatGPT search’s response," the company says.

In addition to this, the company also announced that it will start rolling out Search with Advanced Voice in ChatGPT starting next week.

Lastly, the company announced that it has also added maps to ChatGPT's mobile apps. This feature is aimed at helping people search and chat about local restaurants and businesses.

ChatGPT Search: How to search in ChatGPT

Step 1: Open ChatGPT on your PC or on your mobile.

Step 2: Click on the web search icon in the text box.

Step 3: Enter your search query.

Today's announcement follows the launch of features such as Santa Mode, Canvas and ChatGPT Projects that the company has introduced in the past couple of weeks. 

– Clear cache and data: While cached data allows the phone to load apps, websites, and other services faster, it can accumulate over time, causing the device to slow down. Clearing the cache can help improve the speed. On Android, smartphone users can head to Settings and tap Cached data. Here, they can tap the app, go to its Storage section, and clear the cache memory.

– Uninstall unused apps: Often, Android smartphones come with bloatware, which anyone rarely uses. While some apps stay dormant and cover a limited space on the phone, some may expand their storage as soon as the phone is connected to the internet. These apps can be safely deleted to improve the device’s speed.

– Disable unnecessary background processes: Several users do not realise that having multiple apps running in the background can cause the phone to slow down. Android phones have a secret tool that allows users to limit how many apps can run in the background. All they need to do is enable developer options on the phone and then locate the option to limit the background activities. However, users should note that turning on developer options is not advisable. Alternatively, jumping into the background activity manager and clearing up individual apps is the simpler option.

– Consider a performance booster: Using a performance booster can help clear redundant files and unnecessary data on the phone. While some phones come with these booster apps come pre-installed, users can always go to the Play Store and install these apps.

Electronics manufacturers, including Dixon Technologies, Zetwerk, Tata Electronics, Micromax, Karbonn, and Amber met Chief Secretary Manoj Kumar Singh on December 10 to discuss the development in the sector.

"Singh assured timely disbursement of state incentives to the electronics industry and extended the state's unwavering support to private entities to establish manufacturing clusters," India Cellular and Electronics Association (ICEA) said in a statement.

According to the ICEA data, Uttar Pradesh has emerged as a cornerstone of India's electronics manufacturing landscape. In 2023-24, the state accounted for approximately 40-45 per cent of India's electronics production and around 60 per cent of the nation's mobile phone production by value.

"The government is committed to providing all possible support by implementing manufacturing conducive policies that promote investments across the electronics value chain, a greater role for women in the workforce and facilitate housing infrastructure for workers in the electronics clusters," Singh said in the statement.

Uttar Pradesh also contributes around 15 per cent to the country's electronics exports and around 25 per cent to mobile phone exports, the statement said.

"Uttar Pradesh should contribute significantly to India's $500 billion electronics manufacturing goal by 2030, with a major share of the $200 billion. Furthermore, UP must undertake aggressive global outreach and should consider establishing international offices, which will facilitate the integration with Global Value Chains (GVCs), and draw major international brands to India," ICEA Chairman Pankaj Mohindroo said.

Samsung Galaxy S23 deal on Flipkart

Online shopping platform Flipkart has slashed the price of the Galaxy S23. It is currently selling for ₹42,999, down from the original price of ₹74,999. Customers, however, can use a Flipkart Axis Bank credit card to save 5 per cent, which brings the cost down further to ₹40,859 – the lowest price for the smartphone since the launch. This is a cashback offer, so customers will need to pay the full amount initially but receive a little over ₹2,000 at the end of the billing cycle.

Samsung Galaxy S23 specifications

Launched in February in 2023, the Samsung Galaxy S23 boasts a 6.1-inch Dynamic AMOLED 2X display with a Full-HD+ resolution, up to a 120Hz adaptive refresh rate, and HDR10+ support. Powering the smartphone is an octa-core Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset, paired with 8GB of RAM and at least 128GB of internal storage. The smartphone is also eligible for the One UI 7 update, expected to roll out early next year.

For photography, the Galaxy S23 packs a 50MP main camera, a 12MP ultrawide camera, and a 10MP telephoto camera. The camera app offers support for 3x optical zoom, along with several photography modes. Customers also get a 12MP camera for selfies and video calls. The Samsung Galaxy S23 uses a 3900mAh battery that charges at up to 25W speed. However, the power adapter is not bundled as part of the Galaxy S23’s retail box. Samsung has equipped the smartphone with AKG-tuned stereo speakers and IP68 rating for dust and water resistance.

Media regulator Ofcom said it had published its first codes of practice on tackling illegal harms such as child sexual abuse and assisting or encouraging suicide.

Sites and apps have until March 16, 2025, to assess the risks illegal content poses to children and adults on their platforms, Ofcom said.

After the deadline, they will have to start implementing measures to mitigate those risks, such as better moderation, easier reporting and built-in safety tests, Ofcom said.

Ofcom Chief Executive Melanie Dawes said the safety spotlight was now firmly on tech companies.

"We'll be watching the industry closely to ensure firms match up to the strict safety standards set for them under our first codes and guidance, with further requirements to follow swiftly in the first half of next year," she said.

The Online Safety Act, which became law last year, sets tougher standards for platforms such as Facebook, YouTube and TikTok, with an emphasis on child protection and the removal of illegal content.

Under the new code, reporting and complaint functions will have to be easier to find and use. High-risk providers will be required to use automated tools called hash-matching and URL detection to detect child sexual abuse material, Ofcom said.

The regulator will be able to issue fines of up to 18 million pounds ($22.3 million) or 10 per cent of a company's annual global turnover if they fail to comply.

Britain's Technology Secretary Peter Kyle said the new codes were a "material step change in online safety".

"If platforms fail to step up the regulator has my backing to use its full powers, including issuing fines and asking the courts to block access to sites," he said.

More than 16,000 computer scientists and fellow travelers gathered in British Columbia over the past week for what has become AI's biggest annual event: NeurIPS, or the Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems.

Long toiling in obscurity, AI's brightest minds have convened at the event since 1987, for years in Denver, then in Vancouver and other cities. More recently these researchers have emerged as industry sensations helping drive the future of technology and the global economy.

Rock stars of the field told their budding compatriots, packed into an exhibition hall last week, how they saw the future of AI. "The more it reasons, the more unpredictable it becomes," said Ilya Sutskever, until recently OpenAI's chief scientist.

"The new ladder to climb," said Stanford's Fei-Fei Li, "is the 3D ladder, which I call spatial intelligence." She said relying on 2D data from the internet was like building AI for a "flat earth."

The conference is nothing like the intimate affair it was decades ago, when a field of outliers could fit into a hotel bar. It has become fertile ground for corporations to tout their wares and draw academics into newly lucrative business. Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg showed up in 2013, attendees recalled.

This year, major companies Alphabet, Meta and Microsoft timed AI news to the event. The crowds were so massive that NeurIPS began a day later than usual, so AI scientists would not fight for hotel rooms the same night as a Taylor Swift concert.

By Friday, with two days of events still ahead, the men's restroom near a principal entrance had three of four urinals broken, covered in plastic from apparent overuse.

'Twisty and tangly'

Conference old-timers such as AI "godfather" Yann LeCun reflected on a bygone era. Several hundred academics, almost all familiar faces, used to display posters on topics like Bayesian statistics and debate them at a Vancouver Hyatt late into the night, attendees remembered.

LeCun, Meta's chief AI scientist, remarked to reporters that he no longer could peruse these posters that have been a mainstay. He would be stopped by requests for a selfie at every step.

Money has transformed that quaint era. Venture capitalists and other investors descended on the academic affair, with some firms such as NEA and Greylock hosting after parties for the first time.

Where there were nine sponsors of the 2006 conference, this year garnered over 120, the NeurIPS website showed. A new "diamond" tier appeared in 2022, the year that some attendees pegged as the euphoria peak. OpenAI launched ChatGPT during those conference dates.

At the booth of diamond sponsor Google DeepMind, chief scientist Jeff Dean thanked attendees for listening to him through "weird headphones" connected to a microphone so he could reach them despite exhibition hall noise.

Ten times more research papers were accepted at this year's conference compared to a decade ago. David Ha, co-founder of startup Sakana AI, said he saw a huge uptick in new schemes for test-time compute to counteract exorbitant costs and technical snags as models scale up to become ever larger.

Microsoft Research's Hanna Wallach said improving AI evaluations and measurement science was in greater focus this year. One winning paper proposed an AI model that predicts images at higher resolutions iteratively. China's ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, has reportedly sued that paper's co-author, its former intern.

A 10-year-old, Harini Shravan, was the youngest person ever to have a paper accepted at NeurIPS. She attended from India, with her parents, and used AI tools to fashion a 3,000-year-old tale into a musical.

And Dean said at a crowded event on the sidelines that AI "models should be much more modular, and sparse, and kind of twisty and tangly than the current model architectures."

That, he said, was his "spicy" view.

HMD Arc price

The new HMD Arc has been listed on the company website, but the details on its price and availability are unclear, according to a Finnish blog Suomimobiili.

HMD Arc specifications

The listing of the smartphone on the company’s website has revealed what the HMD Arc comes with. It has a 6.52-inch HD+ LCD with a 60Hz refresh rate and an aspect ratio of 20:9. Powering the smartphone is  an Unisoc 9863A processor, paired with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of internal storage, expandable via a microSD card. The smartphone runs Android 14 (Go edition), which supports the lighter versions of most apps.

The HMD Arc features a 13MP main sensor on the back, alongside a secondary sensor the resolution of which is unclear currently. The selfie camera uses a 5MP sensor, which also doubles as a video call camera. The smartphone packs a 5000mAh battery, which the company claims can last a day easily. However, charging this battery may take a lot of time, thanks to just 10W charging speed support on the smartphone. HMD has included a side-mounted fingerprint sensor on the Arc, but there is also face unlock functionality available. The HMD Arc is also IP52/IP54-rated for resistance against dust and water ingress.

In other news, HMD Global’s vice president for India and APAC, Ravi Kunwar exclusively told Republic Tech that the company plans to launch the popular Barbie Phone in India towards the end of December or early next year.

Lower discretionary tech spends by customers in key markets of the US and Europe, amid an uncertain macroeconomic environment, has led to moderation in demand for Indian IT services companies over the last 6-8 quarters. Factors such as lower employee attrition and a focus on increasing employee utilisation also contributed to the slowdown in hiring.

"While there has been some recovery in Q2 FY2025, ICRA expects hiring to remain low in the near term until the growth momentum picks up by H2 FY2026," the agency said.

Moderation in demand coupled with the increase in utilisation of excess manpower added during FY2022-FY2023 exerted pressure on hiring by IT services companies through FY2024 and Q1 FY2025.

Coupled with an increase in attrition levels, this also led to negative net employee addition for the seven quarters till Q1 FY2025 for ICRA's sample set companies, which includes HCL Technologies, Infosys, Tata Consultancy Services, Tech Mahindra and Wipro Ltd.

As Gen AI makes rapid inroads, all leading IT services companies are upskilling their employees as they explore AI-driven business opportunities. This is likely to lead to an overall moderation in fresh hiring, as compared to pre-Covid levels, it predicted.

ICRA said that the impact of higher adoption of Generative AI (Gen AI) on improving employee productivity is expected to be visible over the next few years.

Average revenue in USD per employee for the sample set has largely been stable at around USD 50,000 over FY2020-FY2024. However, this metric will show steady improvement if assessed on revenue in rupee terms due to depreciation of the rupee against some key foreign currencies over this period.

The last twelve-month (LTM) attrition rate had peaked at about 23 per cent during Q4 FY2022 and Q1 FY2023, led by significant hiring and subsequent demand-supply mismatch.

However, it sequentially tapered with lower hiring by IT services companies amid moderation in demand in key markets of the US and Europe. The LTM attrition rate for ICRA's sample set companies started stabilising from Q3 FY2024 at about 13 per cent, much lower than the pre-pandemic level of about 18 per cent in Q1 FY2020 for the sample set companies.

In a blog post, Google said the “Safety reset” feature “gives users a way to get back to a good known state by disabling extensions and resetting settings that could hurt their experience.” This is a significant change to how ChromeOS previously handled hard resets where users would have to “powerwash” – which essentially means wiping the entire laptop including the stored data.

Google has explained that when a user chooses “Safety reset” for the ChromeOS-powered laptop, the action will initiate a sequence of tasks wherein the Chromebook will reset Chrome settings and shortcuts, disable extensions, and delete cookies and other temporary site data. However, personal data such as bookmarks, history and saved passwords will not be affected by “Safety reset.”

In a separate help document, Google said users can alternatively trigger the “Safety reset” dialogue box by pressing CTRL + Shift + Search + R. This combination of buttons will immediately call up the new reset feature, but those looking for an even easier way can just search Settings or Launcher using keywords such as “pop-up,” “spam,” or “virus” and the “Safety reset” option will appear.

Other than the new resetting feature, the ChromeOS M131 update also brings “Flash notifications,” which essentially allow the Chromebooks to flash the screen whenever a new notification arrives. The company said this will help users who are “hard of hearing or who use screen magnification and are often zoomed in.” To enable this setting, users can navigate to Settings, followed by Accessibility > Audio and captions > Flash notifications.

Both new features will be available as part of the update, which the company said will be “progressively” rolling out over the coming days, so most devices may not immediately see them.

“Whether or not you’re a bull or a bear in the technology, generative AI is clearly producing content that is difficult to discern from recordings of reality, and improving rapidly,” said Moserri in a post. He highlighted that while “internet platforms” are already enabling AI labels for generated content “as best as we can,” there will always be “some content” that will escape the labels. That, he argued, could mislead users, especially when “not all misrepresentations will be generated with AI.”

Mosseri said that social media platforms need to provide more context “about who is sharing” so users can decide whether to trust that content. His concerns stem from the inundation of AI-generated content on social media platforms. AI services such as Meta’s Llama, OpenAI’s ChatGPT and DALL-E, and X’s Grok-2 AI allow users to create hyper-realistic images, which many users find hard to tell apart.

That is why platforms such as X and BlueSky have moderation systems in place, tagging AI generated and human-created content with additional notes to provide context. X’s Community Notes and BlueSky’s custom moderation filters help users identify such content. However, Meta does not have a similar content moderation system. Mosseri’s call for content moderation and tools that offer context will likely arrive with an upcoming update. While it is unclear what that system would look like for Meta’s platforms, including Threads, the company has often been inspired by BlueSky for new features and services.

The comments come after US allegations of a sweeping Chinese cyber espionage campaign known as Salt Typhoon that targeted and recorded telephone calls of senior American political figures.

The White House has said at least eight telecommunications and infrastructure firms in the United States had been affected and a large number of Americans' metadata was stolen in the sweeping cyber espionage campaign.

Waltz did not say what the Trump administration would do in response to Salt Typhoon but spoke more generally about the incoming administration's approach. He said Washington for too long had focused mostly on bolstering its cyber defenses.

"We need to start going on the offense and start imposing, I think, higher costs and consequences to private actors and nation-state actors that continue to steal our data, that continue to spy on us," Waltz told CBS News' Face the Nation.

He also said the private US technology industry could also be helpful in making adversaries vulnerable as well as aiding in US defense.

Chinese officials previously have described the allegations as disinformation and said that Beijing "firmly opposes and combats cyber attacks and cyber theft in all forms."

Last year 185 content moderators sued Meta and two contractors, saying they had lost their jobs with Sama, a Kenya-based firm contracted to moderate Facebook content, for trying to organise a union.

They said they were then blacklisted from applying for the same roles at another firm, Majorel, after Facebook changed contractors.

Moderators focusing on Ethiopia said they were targeted by members of the Oromo Liberation Army (OLA) rebel group for removing their videos but their complaints were dismissed by Sama, according to court documents filed on December 4 by Foxglove, a British non-profit supporting the moderators' case.

The moderators said in the petition seen by Reuters that Sama had accused them "of creating a false account and manufacturing" the threatening messages, before eventually agreeing to an investigation and sending one of the moderators who was publicly identified by the rebels to a safehouse.

Sama told Reuters it was unable to comment on the allegations. Spokespeople for Meta and OLA did not respond to requests for comment.

One moderator said in his affidavit that he had received a message from OLA threatening "content moderators who were constantly pulling down their graphic Facebook Posts".

"They told us to stop removing their content from Facebook or else we would face dire consequences," he said, adding that his supervisor dismissed his concerns.

Another moderator said in his affidavit that he received a message from OLA listing his and his colleagues' names and addresses.

"Since I received that threatening message, I have lived in so much fear of even visiting my family members in Ethiopia," he said.

The government of Ethiopia's largest region, Oromiya, has accused OLA rebels of killing "many civilians" in attacks that followed the failure of peace talks in 2023 in Tanzania aimed at resolving a decades-old conflict.

'Endless loop of hateful content'

The court documents also said that Meta ignored advice from experts it hired to tackle hate speech in Ethiopia.

One expert, who supervised dozens of moderators, said in an affidavit that she felt "stuck in an endless loop of having to review hateful content that we were not allowed to take down because it technically did not offend Meta policies".

Out-of-court settlement talks between the moderators and Meta collapsed in October last year.

The case could have implications for how Meta works with content moderators globally. The US giant works with moderators around the world tasked with reviewing graphic content posted on its platform. The OLA is an outlawed splinter group of a formerly banned opposition party. Its grievances are rooted in the alleged marginalisation of Ethiopia's Oromo community.

In a separate case filed in Kenya in 2022, Meta was accused of letting violent and hateful posts from Ethiopia flourish on Facebook, inflaming the civil war between the federal government and Tigrayan regional authorities.

Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman’s latest post in his Power On newsletter has suggested the new UWB chip may triple the existing range of 10-30 metres, allowing Apple’s Find My network to locate the tracker more easily. The UWB chip that would power the AirTag’s 2025 model is “on par” with the one inside the iPhone 15 and newer models. The next AirTag will likely debut at one of Apple’s events next year, but a specific timeline is unclear.

In addition to upgrading the AirTag next year, Apple may also plan to entirely revamp the Magic Mouse. Introduced back in 2009 – when Steve Jobs was still Apple’s chief executive officer, Magic Mouse disrupted the personal computing industry as it allowed gesture-based inputs. Since then, Magic Mouse has seen several improvements, but these all have been minor. For instance, Apple switched from removable batteries to a rechargeable system, upgraded the mouse’s housing to make it lighter and slide more smoothly, and, more recently, swapped the Lightning Connector with a USB-C port. However, the biggest pain point that Mac users have had with the Magic Mouse is the unusual placement of the charging port – which is at the underside of the Magic Mouse.

Apple’s next Magic Mouse version will likely target that “design flaw,” with Gurman saying that it could fit better the “modern era.” Apple’s design team has been working on multiple “prototyping versions” of the Magic Mouse in recent months, according to his report. That means the next Magic Mouse may offer the charging port anywhere but the bottom. But it may include more changes, which Gurman said, would be “more relevant.” Apple’s next mouse, however, may take between 12 to 18 months to arrive.

In the latest post in his Power On newsletter, Gurman said that Apple’s next vision for computing could materialise into a device that uses two screens the size of the iPad Pro side-by-side. The iPhone maker has reportedly invested “a couple of years” into developing what could be positioned as Apple’s official take on foldable smartphones. Gurman predicts the launch to happen sometime around 2028, refuting previous leaks that have often pointed at a timeframe of 2027.

In Apple’s defence, the hinge that could allow two iPad Pro screens to stick together in the foldable is taking time. Gurman said Apple wants a creaseless design for its foldable – a design element that the likes of Samsung have tried to achieve in their foldable devices. The prototypes Apple has developed so far have “a nearly invisible crease.” However, reaching the mass production stage may take time.

Apple’s plan to diversify its portfolio relies heavily on its learnings from the Vision Pro mixed reality headset. According to Gurman, while the Vision Pro is a part of the company’s vision for the future of computing, that form factor and the device itself have limitations. For instance, the Vision Pro is not a handy device, causes discomfort over prolonged use, and is ultimately expensive. The existing form factors, such as phones, tablets, and laptops, are the most popular when it comes to computing on the fly. That demand is what Apple thinks its upcoming iPad-like foldable could leverage.

The existing iPad Pro’s display maxes out at 13 inches, so two of them, with a combined size of around 26 inches, could make the foldable unwieldy. The only sensible way to ship a product like this is to make it foldable, yet keep the ergonomics of a pocketable device in mind. Moreover, the foldable device would need an optimised version of iPadOS, but, Gurman said, it will not turn the foldable into “a true iPad-Mac hybrid.” Still, the device may support macOS apps alongside the ones meant for iPadOS and Apple Pencil.

iPhone 16 deal on Croma

Instead of the original price, the iPhone 16 is listed at ₹77,400 on Croma. That is ₹2,500 less, but customers can get more if they use a credit card. Eligible users with an ICICI Bank, SBI, or Kotak Mahindra Bank get an instant discount of ₹5,000. After that discount, the price of the iPhone 16 becomes ₹72,400. This offer applies to all the colourways and storage variants.

iPhone 16 specifications

Launched in September, the iPhone 16 is Apple's most affordable way to experience Apple Intelligence. Customers can talk to the redesigned Siri, use AI to write and compose messages or texts better, edit photos to remove unwanted objects or people, and use the Notes app in an entirely different way.

In addition to the capability to run AI, the iPhone 16 uses the new A18 chip, based on the 3nm process, for faster performance and better power efficiency. Apple claims the iPhone 16 can load graphics-intensive apps and games faster and allows for better multitasking. The iPhone 16 features a 48MP Fusion Camera with improved HDR and low-light performance. Its second camera is a 12MP ultrawide sensor, which also doubles as a macro sensor. The iPhone 16 has a 12MP front camera, capable of recording Dolby Vision videos in 4K 60fps.

The iPhone 16 offers a 6.1-inch Super Retina XDR display with HDR10 and Dolby Vision support and a peak brightness of 2,000 nits. It has storage options of up to 512GB.

A tipster who goes by Alvin on X (formerly Twitter) has said the Galaxy S25 series smartphones will be launched on January 22, 2025. He has revealed that the Galaxy Unpacked 2025 event will kick off in San Jose, California at 10 AM PT, approximately 11:30 PM IST. Since this will be a global launch, Samsung is expected to announce it through both physical and online modes.

Furthermore, the tipster said Samsung would launch the Galaxy S25, Galaxy S25+, and Galaxy S25 Ultra. While those smartphones are expected, Samsung could surprise everyone with a teaser of its first extended reality headset, currently called Project Moohan. However, this may not be a launch, so people waiting for an Android counterpart of the Apple Vision Pro may be in for disappointment. Samsung will reportedly launch its first extended reality headset sometime later in 2025.

What to expect from the Samsung Galaxy S25 series?

Multiple rumours and leaks have already revealed what the Galaxy S25 trio could look like. While Samsung is not expected to bring any significant changes to the next flagship series, the upcoming phones will come with a specifications bump. The Galaxy S25 Ultra may come with the Snapdragon 8 Elite chip, and while the other two smartphones in the series are also expected to use Qualcomm’s chip, some reports have pointed out that Samsung may use an Exynos chip on the Galaxy S25 and Galaxy S25+.

As reported by Computer Base, the HDMI Forum has scheduled a press conference for January 6, a day ahead of the official CES 2025 schedule. While the company has not explicitly mentioned, speculations are rife that the successor of HDMI 2.1 is set to debut. While the exact specifications of the new standard are currently unclear, reports have suggested that HDMI 2.2 could take a major leap in terms of delivering data bandwidths.

For reference, HDMI 2.1 offers a 48Gbps bandwidth, allowing content with a resolution of up to 8K at 60fps. On the other hand, its predecessor HDMI 2.0 technology supported a bandwidth of 18Gbps, which was capable of delivering up to 4K at 60fps resolutions.

According to HDMI LA, the next-generation HDMI technology will offer higher resolutions, refresh rates, and enhanced transmission quality. The change in the HDMI standard could also upgrade the cable, which the company said will take advantage of all the benefits. The announcement, set for January’s second week, likely falls in line with the increased consumption of video content at higher quality. However, the commercial viability of content is still at a nascent stage. For instance, 8K videos have yet to catch up and become mainstream like 4K resolution.

However, hardware companies are preparing for the next-generation HDMI standard already. NVIDIA has hinted that its upcoming GeForce RTX 50-series could support HDMI 2.2, whereas AMD is also reportedly preparing for the new technology in its Radeon RX 8000 series GPUs. While both companies have not said anything publicly, they have their separate events scheduled for CES the same day as HDMI Forum’s press conference.
 

"As always, Premium and Premium+ users get higher usage limits and will be the first to access any new capabilities in the future," said artificial intelligence startup, which seeks to compete with more popular consumer-facing AI services such as Google Gemini, OpenAI’s ChatGPT, and Microsoft’s Bing AI.

In addition to making the AI chatbot free to all users, xAI has also rolled out a Grok button on X. Appearing on posts across the timeline, the new button helps users find relevant context, understand real-time events, and explore more about trending discussions.

xAI has been quietly testing a new version of the Grok-2 model over the past few weeks, it said. The new model, the company said, leverages the X platform “to understand what’s happening in the world in real-time.” This feature is powered by two additional features that the company recently rolled out: web search and citations. With web search, Grok-2’s new version can scour posts on X and webpages “from the broader internet to provide timely and accurate answers to your queries.”

Musk’s AI company highlighted that it has expanded the integration of its AI chatbot with the X platform through a new “draw me” feature, which allows users to generate reimagined avatars of themselves with the help of profile data. The feature is available through the “Create your version with Grok” button available on profiles.

In other news, Musk has asked a federal judge in the US to stop OpenAI from going for-profit, citing concerns on the misuse of his initial investment in the AI company to fund its growth as a non-profit AI startup. Microsoft-backed OpenAI, however, has responded to Musk’s latest move in the legal battle that has been going on for over seven years.

India's data centre market has emerged as a magnet for global and domestic investors, attracting nearly $60 billion in investment commitments between 2019 and 2024.

Mumbai, which accounts for 49 per cent of India's total DC stock, continues to dominate the market, followed closely by Chennai, Delhi-NCR, and Bengaluru. Together, these Tier-I cities constituted about 90 per cent of the country's DC stock in the January-September 2024 period.

Mumbai and Chennai's stronghold is bolstered by their strategic infrastructure, including multiple cable landing stations, government support, and established financial industries, making them prime hubs for BFSI, cloud, hyperscale, and OTT companies.

India's DC stock stood at approximately 1,255 MW (~19 million sq. ft.) as of September 2024 and is projected to grow to around 1,600 MW (~24 million sq. ft.) by the end of the year.

In 2025, an additional 475 MW of capacity is under construction, with Mumbai and Chennai expected to lead the supply additions.

Demand from technology firms, BFSI, fintech, and media sectors, along with public sector undertakings, is expected to further boost occupancy rates, which currently stand at 75-80 per cent.

India's generative AI sector is forecasted to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 28 per cent from 2023 to 2030, contributing significantly to DC demand. The adoption of generative AI is projected to add USD 400 billion to India's economy by 2030, underscoring the importance of robust digital infrastructure.

State-level incentives have played a pivotal role in attracting DC investments. Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, and Telangana were among the first to introduce dedicated policies, defining DCs as an "essential service" and offering extensive infrastructure support.
 

Swiggy Scenes

Unlike Zomato District, Scenes is not a standalone service or app. Instead, it is available as part of Dineout, a restaurant table booking service that Swiggy acquired from Times Internet in an all-stock deal worth $120 million. Currently, Swiggy Scenes lists events such as NYE (New Year’s Eve) parties, live music, DJ Nights, among others in Delhi-NCR, Mumbai, and Bengaluru among other select locations. Users can buy tickets and even sell them using Scenes – a move that Zomato introduced with District and later received criticism for after tickets to Punjabi singer Diljit Dosanjh’s Dil-luminati Tour concerts were put up at exorbitantly inflated prices.

With Scenes, Swiggy – which reported an increase of one million in its monthly transacting users (MTU) in the second quarter of 2024-25 financial year – seeks to change its brand as a food ordering app to an equivalent of what its rival Zomato did after it acquired Paytm’s event ticketing platform and launched it as District. However, Swiggy and Zomato still do not sell movie tickets, giving the industry leader BookMyShow an upper hand.

Swiggy One BLCK

One BLCK, launched earlier this week, is an exclusive membership available to Swiggy users on an invite-only basis. According to the company, this membership enables users willing to pay a premium for better concierge services, which Zomato does not offer currently. Since the service is currently in a pilot stage, it is not available to everyone.

The newly launched Parent Code feature builds on top of the Parent Control features that the company offers to the users. These controls are available in the YouTube Kids app and the special supervised account set for pre-teens. The new Parent Code feature goes a step ahead and prevents kids from accessing YouTube on the TVs in their homes -- one area that wasn't covered by the existing set of available features.

YouTube says that when the feature has been turned on, the parent code must be entered to watch YouTube signed out, access accounts for older members of the household and remove accounts from the TV device.

The company has also confirmed that turning on a parent code on a smart TV will not impact other signed-in devices.

"We hope this change gives you added comfort in knowing kids cannot use accounts and features on your smart TV that aren’t meant for them, while also making recommendations in your profile more relevant to your interests rather than what you previously watched together as a family," the company wrote announcing the feature.

YouTube Parent Code: How to turn this feature on?

Step 1: Open the YouTube app on your smart TV.

Step 2: Select Settings on the left side of the screen on the homepage.

Step 3: Select the Parent code tab.

Step 4: Follow the prompts to set up your four-digit code.

YouTube Parent Code: How to turn off this feature?

Step 1: Open the YouTube app on your TV.

Step 2: On the home page, select Settings option.

Step 3: Select the Parent Code tab.

Step 4: Select Off button and then enter your four-digit code.

As reported by WABetaInfo, the latest WhatsApp beta for iOS build has a call dialer built into the app to allow users make calls to unsaved numbers. In other words, iPhone users with WhatsApp can place calls to people who are not in their contacts using the new dialer. This solves the problem of having to save a number every time a user wants to make a call because WhatsApp currently supports calls only for saved contacts. WhatsApp users can call a contact by simply tapping the phone icon, which appears next to the contact’s name in the app.

The upcoming dialer could be available through a new “+” button in the Calls tab in the iOS app. It is currently available for TestFlight users – Apple’s version of Android beta programme, so everyone cannot access it currently. However, WhatsApp will likely roll it out to the public in the coming days.

The development comes days after Apple rolled out iOS 18.2, which allows iPhone users to change default apps for different functions. That means Apple’s default dialer app could be replaced with WhatsApp’s dialer as and when the latter becomes available. This could be helpful for users who prefer calling through WhatsApp instead of their mobile network. However, the call functionality in WhatsApp works only when the device is connected to the internet, so it cannot entirely replace cellular calling.

In related news, WhatsApp announced a slew of improvements to its calling service, offering users better video calls with higher resolution. As part of the server-side update, WhatsApp has also rolled out the ability to initiate a call with specific members of a group chat, giving admins more control over interaction with participants of a group. The new calling features are now available to WhatsApp’s Android and iOS apps worldwide.

With iOS 18.2 update, iPhone users can not only change the default browser, but they can also change the calling, call filtering, email, messaging and passwords apps to name a few. And in some regions, users can also choose an alternative app store instead of Apple's App Store and a different app to make contactless payments.

Here is a step-by-step guide as to how iPhone users can change the default app on their devices.

iOS 18.2 update: How to change the default app on iPhone

Step 1: Open the Settings app.

Step 2: Go to General Settings and then go to Software Update.

Step 3: Tap the Download and Install option and then enter your device password to begin the process.

Step 4: Once iOS 18.2 has been installed successfully, open the Settings app again.

Step 5: Go to the Apps setting.

Step 6: Tap Default Apps option at the top of the list of your apps.

Step 7: Tap the Email, Messaging, Calling, Call Filtering, Browser App, Passwords & Codes, and Keyboards options one by one and add a third-party app in each of these categories based on your preferences.

Apple says that the App Installation feature, which the ability to choose an alternative app marketplace instead of the App Store to use as a default option is available only in the European Union.

The company has also confirmed that the ability to change the default app for contactless transactions using your iPhone’s built-in technology is available in the European Union, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States only.

With a social media hashtag, FinMinYearReview2024, on X, the ministry highlighted the significance of UPI, which is getting prominence in countries across the globe. 
India's digital payments revolution is gaining international momentum, with both UPI and RuPay expanding rapidly across borders. Currently, UPI is operational in seven countries, including key markets like the UAE, Singapore, Bhutan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, France, and Mauritius.

UPI is a digital payment system that allows users to make instant money transfers between bank accounts. Launched in 2016 by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), UPI has revolutionised the nation's payment ecosystem by integrating multiple bank accounts into a single mobile application. This system enables seamless fund transfers, merchant payments, and peer-to-peer transactions, offering users flexibility through scheduled payment requests.

UPI has not only made financial transactions fast, secure, and effortless, but it has also empowered individuals, small businesses, and merchants, driving the country's shift toward a cashless economy. 
In October 2024, the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) achieved a historic milestone by processing 16.58 billion financial transactions in a single month, underscoring its pivotal role in India's digital transformation. 

UPI processed an impressive Rs 23.49 lakh crores across 16.58 billion financial transactions in October 2024, marking a 45 per cent year-on-year growth from 11.40 billion transactions in October 2023, as per the Ministry of Finance figures. 

With 632 banks connected to its platform, this surge in usage highlights UPI's expanding dominance in India's payment landscape. UPI has had a profound impact on small businesses, street vendors, and migrant workers, offering them an easy and efficient way to transfer money and receive payments. Its adoption was particularly accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic, as people sought safer, contactless alternatives to cash transactions.

UPI's success, however, extends beyond the strength of its infrastructure; it also stems from the behavioural shift it has inspired, where trust in the system and its accessibility have been key factors in driving widespread use. UPI's entry into France is particularly significant, marking its first foray into Europe. This expansion enables Indian consumers and businesses to make and receive payments seamlessly, even while living or travelling abroad.

As part of its global outreach, Prime Minister Modi has actively pitched for UPI's expansion within the BRICS grouping, which now includes six new member states. This initiative is expected to further bolster remittance flows, improve financial inclusion, and enhance India's stature in the global financial landscape.

According to the ACI Worldwide Report 2024 cited by the Finance Ministry, India now accounts for around 49 per cent of global real-time payment transactions as of 2023, underscoring India's leadership in digital payment innovation.
 

Airtel ₹398 plan vs Jio ₹448 plan

Under the new Airtel prepaid plan, users get 2GB daily data, unlimited voice calls, and 100 SMS per day for 28 days. However, the more enticing offer in the plan is the complimentary Disney+ Hotstar subscription. Available only for the ‘Mobile’ tier, the subscription will be available for 28 days, which otherwise costs less than ₹50 for a month.

On the other hand, Jio offers the same voice and data benefits along with subscriptions to more than one OTT platforms as part of its ₹448 prepaid plan. In addition to 2GB daily data, unlimited voice benefits, and 100 SMSes per day, users get access to SonyLIV, ZEE5, JioCinema Premium, Lionsgate Play, Discovery+, Sun NXT, Kanchha Lannka, Planet Marathi, Chaupal, Hoichoi, FanCode, and JioTV under the ₹448 plan. However, the plan does not offer subscription access to Disney+ Hotstar.

Both telecom companies offer unlimited 5G internet to users as part of their respective recharge plans. However, 5G internet is available only in areas where Airtel and Jio 5G connectivity is available.

Airtel also has a ₹409 prepaid plan that comes with 2.5GB daily data benefit alongside complimentary access to Airtel Xstream Play Premium, which includes subscriptions to over 22 OTT platforms, including SonyLIV, Lionsgate Play, Aha, Chaupal, Hoichoi, Sun NXT. Prepaid users buying this plan are eligible for the Unlimited 5G internet offer and a talk-time of ₹5 for the validity of 28 days.

So, what does ChatGPT Projects do? This feature is essentially OpenAI's term folders, and it can be used for grouping files and chats for personal use, which in turn would simplify management of work involving multiple chats.

According to the details shared by OpenAI, Projects store chats, files, and custom instructions in one place. Conversations in a project support Canvas, Advanced data analysis, DALL•E and Search. The company has also said that at the moment, the feature does not support connectors to add files from Google Drive or Microsoft OneDrive. But that could change in future.

ChatGPT Projects: Availability

ChatGPT Projects is available to ChatGPT Plus, Pro, and Team users globally. The company is planning to bring it to Enterprise and Edu users in January, and to Free users soon.

The company has also revealed that ChatGPT Projects can be created and edited only on ChatGPT web and the ChatGPT Windows app at the moment and that users on mobile and the macOS can only view and chat in Projects.

ChatGPT Projects: How to create a project?

Step 1: Open ChatGPT in a web browser.

Step 2: Log into your ChatGPT paying account.

Step 3: Click on the Plus button next to Project on the top-right of the page.

Step 4: Select a name for your project and click on Create Project button.

ChatGPT Projects: How to delete a project?

Step 1: Open ChatGPT in a web browser.

Step 2: Log into your ChatGPT account.

Step 3: Go to your project.

Step 4: Select the dots next to your project name.

Step 5: Click on the Delete Project button.

ChatGPT Projects: How to add a file to a project?

Step 1: Open ChatGPT in a web browser.

Step 2: Log into your ChatGPT account.

Step 3: Go to your project.

Step 4: Click on the Add Files icon.

Step 5: Select the files from a folder available on your PC to ChatGPT.

Under the scheme, to be released as soon as this month, these companies would have to comply with strict requirements, including reporting key information to the US government and blocking Chinese access to AI chips. That would permit them to offer artificial intelligence capabilities within the cloud overseas without a license, the sources said.

The new rules, some of whose details are being reported for the first time, show officials are scrambling in the waning days of the Biden administration to streamline the process for approving AI chip exports while also preventing bad actors from accessing them. The US fears China could harness the power of AI to supercharge its military, unleash powerful cyber attacks or even train a bioweapon.

The Commerce Department declined to comment on the content and timing of the new regulations. Sources cautioned the administration's plans may change.

Alphabet's Google and Microsoft did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The measure takes a page from a national security agreement Microsoft inked with the US government in April allowing it to provide AI technology to Emirati firm G42, the people said.

Under the new draft rules, other companies beyond those with gatekeeper status will compete for licenses to import a smaller number of high-end Nvidia and AMD AI chips in each country, one of the sources said.

Nvidia, which makes the world's most powerful AI chips, said it is ready to work with the administration on the rules. AMD did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Exempted from the caps would be 19 allied countries like the Netherlands and Japan plus Taiwan, which would have unlimited access to the AI chips or the capability they provide, two of the sources said.

Also outside the framework would be a list of nuclear embargoed countries, including Russia, China, Iran and Venezuela, which are already blocked from acquiring US AI semiconductors and would remain so.

The caps could upset some countries, however.

Geoffrey Gertz, a former White House official now at the Center for a New American Security, said a global program of country caps "would likely raise significant concerns from US partners and allies around the world, who are wary of the United States acting as a unilateral arbiter on who gets to access advanced chips critical for AI."

The US government is conducting a final review of an "Artificial Intelligence Diffusion" rule drafted by the Commerce Department, according to a government posting this week, indicating it may be closing in on publication. Three sources said the posting referred to the AI caps.

The Information Technology Industry Council, an advocacy association whose members include AMD and Google, is concerned the Biden administration is rushing the complex rule out without industry input that could head off adverse consequences.

"If reports are accurate, such changes would dramatically expand the scope of export controls and have significant global implications," Naomi Wilson, the council's senior vice president of Asia and global trade policy, said in a statement.

The rules build on a program unveiled in September that gives permission to pre-approved data centers overseas to receive AI chips without a license, two sources said.

To achieve that status, data centres must provide information about customers, business activities, access restrictions and cybersecurity.

Balaji, who left OpenAI in August citing concerns he no longer wanted to help build technologies that he believed could harm society, has argued in his post that the Sam Altman-led company used copyrighted materials to train its AI models. He highlighted that while AI’s broader implications remain unclear, OpenAI’s foundational models and ChatGPT were undermining the commercial relevance of businesses, internet companies, and even individuals whose years of work were unlawfully used to train AI systems.

Although OpenAI has responded to Balaji’s death, it has not acknowledged his blog post, which is now under heavy scrutiny. It could challenge the company’s stance as it faces multiple lawsuits worldwide from educators, academicians, publishing houses, and news organisations for alleged copyright infringement. Balaji’s post, which has gained significant attention for his allegations against OpenAI following his death, may be pivotal to the legal challenges the company faces.

– The allegation that OpenAI’s plan to switch to becoming for-profit based on its foundational models that were trained by copyrighted material could be a challenging argument. As a profit-driven company, OpenAI cannot qualify for “fair use,” especially when all its data models rely on copyrighted content. The “fair use” doctrine is used by AI companies as a legal shield wherein they argue that they substantially transform the copyrighted works, so the results their AI chatbots offer do not compete directly with the latter. However, the intent with which AI chatbots work is similar, so they can be seen as competing and substituting original works.

– Balaji pointed out that generative AI, in general, dismisses the concept of legal boundaries of copyrighted works. As an AI company, this could impact OpenAI’s argument that it upholds the legal restrictions of copyrighted material. He mentioned that OpenAI’s technology violates copyright protection laws because of several instances where GPT-4 and DALL-E AI models have produced outputs similar to the inputs. “The outputs aren’t exact copies of the inputs, but they are also not fundamentally novel,” he wrote.

– OpenAI also allegedly created duplications of the data it obtained from various sources, including the copyrighted ones. While this is not a regular occurrence, AI models often replicate data sets for later use in an event where access to the source may potentially be cut. He argued that while data repetition is not “always problematic,” it ends up giving the AI model a memory if “done excessively.” If it is copyrighted data, then it could challenge OpenAI’s side in lawsuits.

Cases against OpenAI

OpenAI, which rose in popularity after its AI bot ChatGPT gained traction on the internet, faces several lawsuits for using copyrighted data without the owner’s permission. In most cases, these owners are news organisations, researchers, and academicians, who have accused OpenAI of feeding its AI models their works without permission.

India

News agency Asian News International (ANI) sued OpenAI last month for using its publicly available data to train AI models without prior permission. ANI has also accused OpenAI in its lawsuit of using quotes and pieces of work verbatim, as well as misconstruing information to spread fake news. The suit is under trial at the Delhi High Court.

Canada

A group of Canadian news and media companies, such as the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, have collectively filed a lawsuit against OpenAI wherein they allege the company illegally used their copyrighted works to train its large language models (LLMs). They have underscored how OpenAI scours through the published content to create data sets for its AI models.

United States

Several news organisations, including The New York Times and Associated Press, sued OpenAI for infringing the copyright law by using their data without permission. However, AP signed a deal with OpenAI later to offer data for AI training.

According to the details shared by OpenAI in a support page, Projects provides a new way to users for grouping their files and chats for personal use. "Projects keep chats, files, and custom instructions in one place. Use them for ongoing work, or just to keep things tidy," the company wrote in its support page.

Essentially, 'Projects' is OpenAI's name for a folder that can be used for storing all the information, including data, images and chats, pertaining to a topic in one place. It essentially enables users to segregate their chats and data within ChatGPT -- something that wasn't possible until now.

ChatGPT Projects: What formats does it support?

OpenAI has revealed that a ChatGPT Project supports chats, files, and custom instructions. The company has also revealed that Chats in Projects supports Canvas, Advanced data analysis, DALL•E and Search.

The company has said that at the moment, connectors to add files from Google Drive or Microsoft OneDrive are not supported. However, that is expected to change in the future.

ChatGPT Projects: Who can access it?

As far as availability is concerned, OpenAI says that this feature is rolling out to ChatGPT Plus, Pro, and Team users globally. The company is planning to bring it to Enterprise and Edu users in January, and to Free users soon.

Paying customers can create a Projects in ChatGPT's web-based platform and its ChatGPT desktop app for Windows.

For the unversed, OpenAI has been releasing new features for ChatGPT users throughout December. Earlier this week, the company announced Santa Mode and video support for Advanced Voice Mode. Prior to that the company announced a code writing and text editing tool called Canvas for ChatGPT users. 

Last week, a U.S. federal appeals court upheld a law requiring China-based ByteDance to divest TikTok in the United States or face a ban. Representative John Moolenaar, a Republican and chair of the committee, and the top Democrat on the committee, Representative Raja Krishnamoorthi, separately urged TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew to sell the short-video app used by 170 million Americans.

"Congress has acted decisively to defend the national security of the United States and protect TikTok’s American users from the Chinese Communist Party. We urge TikTok to immediately execute a qualified divestiture," the lawmakers wrote.

Apple, Alphabet and TikTok did not immediately comment. On Monday, ByteDance and TikTok made an emergency bid to temporarily block the law pending a review by the U.S. Supreme Court.

The DOJ said on Wednesday if the ban takes effect on January 19, it would "not directly prohibit the continued use of TikTok" by Apple or Google users who have already downloaded TikTok. But it conceded the prohibitions on providing support "will eventually be to render the application unworkable."

TikTok said in response on Thursday the law, absent a court order, means TikTok will disappear from mobile app stores on Jan. 19 and "be unavailable to the half of the country that does not already use the app." It warned ending support services will "cripple the platform in the United States and make it totally unusable."

ByteDance and TikTok noted President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to prevent a ban on TikTok.

Republican Senator Josh Hawley said in an interview he hopes ByteDance will sell TikTok because the law leaves no wiggle room. "The statute is what the statute is," Hawley said. "The main issue is it's subject to Chinese oversight, Beijing oversight - that's the problem." 

Business leaders have attempted to establish a positive rapport with Trump since his election win in November.

Meta Platforms and Amazon have each donated $1 million to Trump's inaugural fund. Bank of America, the second-largest US lender, also plans to contribute to Trump's inaugural committee but has yet to decide on the amount.

Trump will take office in January. He said in October when he was running for the White House that he received a call from Cook over concerns about the financial penalties that have been imposed by the European Union on the iPhone maker.

European regulators have launched a series of investigations into Big Tech firms in recent years, with the aim of curbing their power and ensuring a level playing field for smaller rivals. A US Justice Department case accuses the iPhone maker of unlawfully dominating the smartphone market.

Trump's team and Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The Trump-Cook meeting was reported earlier by the New York Times.

In a letter to Attorney General Rob Bonta dated Thursday, Meta said that allowing OpenAI to become a for-profit company would set a dangerous precedent of allowing startups to enjoy the advantages of nonprofit status until they are poised to become profitable, WSJ reported.

"OpenAI's conduct could have seismic implications for Silicon Valley. If OpenAI's new business model is valid, non-profit investors would get the same for-profit upside as those who invest the conventional way in for-profit companies while also benefiting from tax write-offs bestowed by the government," the WSJ report quotes Meta as saying in the letter.

Meta and the California AG's office did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

Earlier on Friday, OpenAI asked a federal judge in California to reject a request by billionaire Elon Musk to halt the ChatGPT maker's conversion to a for-profit company.

Musk sued OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman in August, claiming they violated contract provisions by putting profits ahead of the public good in the push to advance AI.

In November, Musk asked U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers in Oakland for a preliminary injunction blocking OpenAI from converting to a for-profit structure.

"While our work remains ongoing as we continue to consult independent financial and legal advisors, any potential restructuring would ensure the nonprofit continues to exist and thrive, and receives full value for its current stake in the OpenAI for-profit with an enhanced ability to pursue its mission," OpenAI chairman Bret Taylor said in a statement.

In its letter, Meta said it supported an effort by Musk to represent the interests of the public in deciding whether OpenAI will be allowed to become a for-profit company, the WSJ report added.

Musk, who was an OpenAI co-founder, has since launched a competing artificial intelligence company, xAI.

Musk, an early OpenAI investor and board member, sued the artificial intelligence company earlier this year alleging it had betrayed its founding aims as a nonprofit research lab benefiting the public good rather than pursuing profits.

Musk has since escalated the dispute, adding new claims and asking for a court order that would stop OpenAI’s plans to convert itself into a for-profit business more fully.

The world's richest man, whose companies include Tesla, SpaceX and social media platform X, last year started his own rival AI company, xAI. Musk says it faces unfair competition from OpenAI and its close business partner Microsoft, which has supplied the huge computing resources needed to build AI systems such as ChatGPT.

“OpenAI and Microsoft together exploiting Musk’s donations so they can build a for-profit monopoly, one now specifically targeting xAI, is just too much,” says Musk's filing that alleges the companies are violating the terms of Musk’s foundational contributions to the charity.

OpenAI filed a response Friday opposing Musk’s requested order, saying it would cripple OpenAI’s business and mission to the advantage of Musk and his own AI company. A hearing is set for January before US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers in Oakland.

At the heart of the dispute is a 2017 internal power struggle at the fledgling startup that led to Altman becoming OpenAI's CEO.

Musk also wanted the job, according to emails revealed as part of the court case, but grew frustrated after two other OpenAI co-founders said he would hold too much power as a major shareholder and chief executive if the startup succeeded in its goal to achieve better-than-human AI known as artificial general intelligence, or AGI. Musk has long voiced concerns about how advanced forms of AI could threaten humanity.

“The current structure provides you with a path where you end up with unilateral absolute control over the AGI," said a 2017 email to Musk from co-founders Ilya Sutskever and Greg Brockman. “You stated that you don't want to control the final AGI, but during this negotiation, you've shown to us that absolute control is extremely important to you.”

In the same email, titled “Honest Thoughts,” Sutskever and Brockman also voiced concerns about Altman's desire to be CEO and whether he was motivated by “political goals.” Altman eventually succeeded in becoming CEO, and has remained so except for a period last year when he was fired and then reinstated days later after the board that ousted him was replaced.

OpenAI published the messages Friday in a blog post meant to show its side of the story, particularly Musk's early support for the idea of making OpenAI a for-profit business so it could raise money for the hardware and computer power that AI needs.

It was Musk, through his wealth manager Jared Birchall, who first registered “Open Artificial Technologies Technologies, Inc.”, a public benefit corporation, in September 2017. Then came the “Honest Thoughts” email that Musk described as the “final straw.”

“Either go do something on your own or continue with OpenAI as a nonprofit,” Musk wrote back.

Musk didn't immediately respond to emailed requests for comment sent to his companies Friday.

Asked about his frayed relationship with Musk at a New York Times conference last week, Altman said he felt “tremendously sad” but also characterized Musk’s legal fight as one about business competition.

“He’s a competitor and we’re doing well,” Altman said. He also said at the conference that he is “not that worried” about the Tesla CEO’s influence with President-elect Donald Trump. OpenAI said Friday that Altman plans to make a $1 million personal donation to Trump’s inauguration fund, joining a number of tech companies and executives who are working to improve their relationships with the incoming administration.

TikTok and ByteDance on Monday had filed the emergency motion with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, asking for more time to make their case to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The companies had warned that without court action, the law will "shut down TikTok — one of the nation's most popular speech platforms — for its more than 170 million domestic monthly users."

But the court rejected the bid, saying TikTok and ByteDance had not identified a previous case "in which a court, after rejecting a constitutional challenge to an Act of Congress, has enjoined the Act from going into effect while review is sought in the Supreme Court," Friday's unanimous court order said.

A TikTok spokesperson said after the ruling that the company plans to take its case to the Supreme Court, "which has an established historical record of protecting Americans' right to free speech."

Under the law, TikTok will be banned unless ByteDance divests it by Jan. 19. The law also gives the U.S. government sweeping powers to ban other foreign-owned apps that could raise concerns about collection of Americans' data.

The U.S. Justice Department argues "continued Chinese control of the TikTok application poses a continuing threat to national security."

TikTok says the Justice Department has misstated the social media app's ties to China, arguing its content recommendation engine and user data are stored in the U.S. on cloud servers operated by Oracle while content moderation decisions that affect U.S. users are made in the United States.

The decision - unless the Supreme Court reverses it - puts TikTok's fate first in the hands of Democratic President Joe Biden on whether to grant a 90-day extension of the Jan. 19 deadline to force a sale, and then of Republican President-elect Donald Trump, who takes office on Jan. 20.

Trump, who unsuccessfully tried to ban TikTok during his first term in 2020, said before the November presidential election he would not allow the ban on TikTok.

Also on Friday, the chair and top Democrat on a U.S. House of Representatives committee on China told the CEOs of Google-parent Alphabet and Apple they must be ready to remove TikTok from their U.S. app stores on January 19. 

Accepting a "Test Of Time" award for his 2014 paper with Google's Oriol Vinyals and Quoc Le, Sutskever said a major change was on AI's horizon.

An idea that his team had explored a decade ago, that scaling up data to "pre-train" AI systems would send them to new heights, was starting to reach its limits, he said. More data and computing power had resulted in ChatGPT that OpenAI launched in 2022, to the world's acclaim.

"But pre-training as we know it will unquestionably end," Sutskever declared before thousands of attendees at the NeurIPS conference in Vancouver. "While compute is growing," he said, "the data is not growing, because we have but one internet."

Sutskever offered some ways to push the frontier despite this conundrum. He said technology itself could generate new data, or AI models could evaluate multiple answers before settling on the best response for a user, to improve accuracy. Other scientists have set sights on real-world data.

But his talk culminated in a prediction for a future of superintelligent machines that he said "obviously" await, a point with which some disagree. Sutskever this year co-founded Safe Superintelligence Inc in the aftermath of his role in Sam Altman's short-lived ouster from OpenAI, which he said within days he regretted.

Long-in-the-works AI agents, he said, will come to fruition in that future age, have deeper understanding and be self-aware. He said AI will reason through problems like humans can.

There's a catch.

"The more it reasons, the more unpredictable it becomes," he said.

Reasoning through millions of options could make any outcome non-obvious. By way of example, AlphaGo, a system built by Alphabet's DeepMind, surprised experts of the highly complex board game with its inscrutable 37th move, on a path to defeating Lee Sedol in a match in 2016.

Sutskever said similarly, "the chess AIs, the really good ones, are unpredictable to the best human chess players."

AI as we know it, he said, will be “radically different.”

As news of the outage spread, we learned that it affected almost all of Meta’s products, including Messenger and Threads, as well as Meta’s business products, such as Facebook Ads Manager and the Messenger API for Instagram.

Most services are beginning to come back online. But what went wrong, and what can we learn from this massive outage? The scope of the outage Outages have been reported from the United Kingdom to Canada to the United States and beyond.

The outage was first reported in the US on Wednesday (around 12.30pm in New York, 5.30pm in London, or 4.30am Thursday in Sydney).

Five hours later, Meta posted to X to say it was 99 per cent of the way to resolving the outage.

What might have caused it? At the moment, there has been no official word on the cause of the outage. However, we can make some educated guesses based on its scope.

From reporting so far, the outage covered not only Meta’s major social media platforms and messaging services, but also some of its business products. It also affected Meta’s Login with Facebook service, which allows users to log in to third-party sites using their Facebook username and password.

In other words, there seem to be very few Meta products this outage did not impact.

That suggests that whatever went wrong was a single point of failure: something relied upon by all of Meta’s services, without which the services can’t function.

Design for reliability These kinds of outages are rare. That’s because major internet platforms are designed to be highly reliable.

The main way reliability is achieved is through replication. When you visit Instagram, for example, your computer connects to a server that sends back your Instagram feed. In fact, Instagram content is not stored on just one computer but is replicated across a massive array of computers known as a content delivery network (or CDN).

Practically all major web platforms, including news sites such as The Conversation, large companies, and online services such as YouTube and Google, use content delivery networks to increase the reliability and efficiency of their websites.

The idea behind a content delivery network is that if one computer in the network has a problem, another can take over in its place. This is what makes the networks reliable.

Content delivery networks also help when websites are under heavy demand. If many people are trying to request the same content, those requests can be spread out between many computers in the network, allowing each to be handled efficiently.

The widespread nature of Meta’s outage suggests it might have happened in a part of Meta’s systems that wasn’t replicated. However, we’ll have to wait for word from Meta on the causes before we will know for sure.

Lessons to be learned Meta’s outage comes in the wake of the major outage caused earlier this year by CrowdStrike’s Falcon security software. Falcon’s design meant it was deeply entangled with Microsoft Windows. That made Falcon a single point of failure so that, when it crashed, it brought down Windows as well – in spectacular fashion.

A key lesson from this outage was that invasive security software such as Falcon should be re-engineered to operate at arm’s length of Windows. This idea is known as fault isolation, which says that systems should be built as a collection of separate components so that if one component fails it cannot cause the entire system to fail.

This is the reason why modern ships are designed to have multiple internal compartments, with mechanisms to try to make each compartment watertight. That way, if the ship’s hull is breached, water cannot flood the entire ship.

Meta’s outage is a timely reminder of the need to engineer critical systems to maximise their reliability, including minimising central points of failure and employing engineering principles like fault isolation.

Looking ahead In the meantime, the precise cause of Meta’s outage remains to be determined.

Many people all over the world rely on Meta’s services. These include businesses using Instagram as their primary platform for engaging customers online, or merchants using Facebook Marketplace as a key revenue stream. For many families, WhatsApp has become an indispensable way to keep in contact, especially during times of crisis.

We can only hope Meta will be forthcoming about the causes of this outage and the measures it will put in place to make sure it cannot happen again. 

With the ChatGPT integration, iPhone users can use Siri to access ChatGPT for certain requests, including questions about photos and documents. Users can also 'ask ChatGPT to generate content for anything they are writing about from the Writing Tools available on iPhones.

In addition to this, iPhone users can also use ChatGPT’s image-generation capabilities to add images alongside their written content. Additionally, iPhone users can use 'visual intelligence with Camera Control to quickly learn more about the places and objects' around a user.

Apple has revealed that iPhone users don't need a ChatGPT account to use ChatGPT-powered AI features on their iPhones. However, they can connect their paid ChatGPT accounts to their Apple accounts, which will provide advanced ChatGPT capabilities to the users.

As ChatGPT becomes available in Apple Intelligence-powered Siri, here is a step-by-step guide to using it.

Apple Intelligence: How to set up ChatGPT on iPhone?

Step 1: Update your iPhone.

Step 2: Go to Settings and then tap Apple Intelligence & Siri.

Step 3: Tap ChatGPT.

Step 4: Tap the Set Up option. Users can either choose to set up ChatGPT with or without an existing account.

Once ChatGPT has been setup, iPhone users can ask Siri to compose text or images using text or voice-based prompts. They can also use ChatGPT's image-generation capabilities to add images alongside their written content.

Apple Intelligence: How to block access to ChatGPT in Screen Time on iPhone?

Step 1: Go to the Settings app.

Step 2: Tap the Screen Time option.

Step 3: Now tap Content & Privacy Restrictions.

Step 4: Turn on Content & Privacy Restrictions.

Step 5: Now tap Intelligence & Siri and then tap ChatGPT Extension.

Step 6: Tap Don’t Allow.

Earlier, Gemini in Google Drive could summarise one or multiple documents, and give users quick facts about a project. It could deep dive on a topic without needing to find and click through numerous documents in Google Drive. However, it couldn't summarise all the content related to a topic inside a folder. But that has changed now as the updated Gemini can not only find files in the folder but also write a summary of the folder’s content.

Google says that, at the moment, Gemini in Google Drive, can only answer questions about text documents, PDFs, spreadsheets, and presentations. However, some reports suggest that Gemini can also identify images in a folder.

As far as availability is concerned, this feature is available to Google Workspace customers with Gemini Business, Enterprise, Education, Education Premium add-ons. It is also available to Google One AI Premium subscribers.

Gemini in Google Drive: How to summarise selected file or folder?

Step 1: Open drive.google.com on your PC.

Step 2: At the top right, click the Ask Gemini option.

Step 3: In the side panel, enter a prompt defining what you want to do.

Step 4: In the side panel, add '@' followed by the file or folder name.

Step 5: Press Enter.

Step 6: After you receive a response, click Sources to find which files and documents were used to generate the response for file summaries.

Step 7: Click Retry to generate new text.

Gemini in Google Drive: How to summarise information across several files?

Step 1: Open drive.google.com on your PC.

Step 2: At the top right corner, click the Ask Gemini icon.

Step 3: In the side panel, select a prompt or enter your own prompt.

Step 4: Press Enter.

On doing so, Gemini will get the information elaborating on a topic based on a user's Google Drive files.

As of now, Apple only manufactures its iPhones in India. The company began manufacturing its iPhones in India as early as in 2017. Over the years, the company has ramped up its production capabilities in the country. In 2021, Made-in-India iPhones became available in the market a few months after their launch. In 2022, this gap was reduced to around two weeks with the launch of the iPhone 14. With the launch of the iPhone 15 in 2023, Made-in-India iPhones became available in the market on the same day as the China-made iPhone models. All this while, the company restricted the manufacturing to the base iPhone models, which includes the Plus variants. Then in 2024, the company started manufacturing its entire iPhone series in the country, which includes the iPhone 16 Pro and the iPhone 16 Pro Max.

Now, a new report by Bloomberg says that the company is planning to add its AirPods to its manufacturing portfolio in the country. The manufacturing process is expected to begin in the first quarter of 2025 at a manufacturing plant of the Foxconn Technology Group near Hyderabad in Telangana. Furthermore, the report says Foxconn's factory has already started manufacturing Apple's AirPods on a trial basis, and that the manufacturing process is expected to ramp up after production begins next year.

The report points out that the Indian subsidiary of Jabil Inc began shipping the plastic encasing used in the AirPods to the company's manufacturing plants in China and Vietnam last year. Next year, the company will begin the manufacturing process in India, which will most likely be shipped to markets across the globe.

Intel both designs and manufactures chips, making it unique in the industry. The company has shed more than $100 billion in value as it struggles to regain its lost lead in manufacturing and missed out on the AI boom dominated by Nvidia.

Intel shares rose about 2.3 percent following the executives' comments.

Speaking at a Barclays investment banking conference in San Francisco on Thursday, Michelle Johnston Holthaus and David Zinsner - who were tapped as co-CEOs after the ouster of former CEO Pat Gelsinger last week - were asked if the company's continued combination of manufacturing and design was tied to the success of a new chipmaking technology called 18A due next year.

Intel plans to use that technology to bring manufacturing of a flagship PC chip back in-house after being forced to outsource its biggest product to rival Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (TSMC).

"Pragmatically, do I think it makes sense that they're completely separated and there's no tie?" Holthaus said of the company's product and manufacturing divisions. "I don't think so. But someone will decide that."

Zinsner, also chief financial officer, outlined how Intel is already separating the finances and operations of this manufacturing division into a standalone subsidiary. Zinsner said Intel Foundry, as the division is known, is already run separately from Intel's other businesses and is setting up a separate operational board and business process software system.

"That's going to happen," Zinsner said. "Does it ever fully separate? That's an open question for another day." 

The development comes shortly after the US Department of Commerce decided to provide a subsidy of $7.86 billion to the company. Interestingly, the $7.86 billion subsidy is the largest subsidy that the company has awarded by the US as a part of a 2022 law that aims to boost semiconductor manufacturing in the US.

The chip, code-named Proxima, has been under development for several years and is now slated to go into the first iPhones and smart home devices produced in 2025, the report said, citing people familiar with the matter.

The iPhone maker's in-house chips will be produced by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC), the report added.

At its annual developer conference in June, Apple said that it plans to use its own server chips to help power artificial intelligence features on its devices.

The move is separate from Apple's reported plans to launch its long-awaited series of cellular modem chips next year, which will replace components from longtime partner Qualcomm, the report added.

However, the two parts will eventually work together, Bloomberg said on Thursday.

Apple did not immediately respond to Reuters' request for comment.

The company is working with Broadcom to develop its first server chip, which is internally code-named Baltra, specifically designed for AI processing, the Information reported on Wednesday.

The iPhone maker, along with some other big technology companies, has found it hard to cut reliance on Nvidia's pricey and short-in-supply processors despite in-house efforts to develop their own chips to power compute-heavy AI services.

Last year, Broadcom, a major supplier of wireless components to Apple, had signed a multi-billion-dollar deal with the company to develop 5G radio frequency components. 

The development comes at a time when reports have hinted towards Apple its first in-house 5G chip in its upcoming budget iPhone model, that is, the iPhone SE 4. If the reports are true, the move would make the iPhone SE 4 Apple's first iPhone model to come without Qualcomm's 5G chip.

Reports also suggest that Apple will phase out Qualcomm's 5G chip gradually. This gradual roll out is expected to be complete by 2027.

The company has been plowing tens of billions of dollars into its investments in AI, augmented reality and other Metaverse technologies, driving up its capital expense forecast for 2024 to a record high of between $37 billion and $40 billion.

Meta has also been releasing many of its AI models for free use by developers, believing that an open approach could benefit its business by fostering the creation of better tools for its services.

"We believe this research could pave the way for fully embodied agents in the Metaverse, leading to more lifelike NPCs, democratization of character animation, and new types of immersive experiences," the company said in a statement.

Meta Motivo addresses body control problems commonly seen in digital avatars, enabling them to perform movements in a more realistic, human-like manner, the company said.

Meta said it was also introducing a different training model for language modeling called the Large Concept Model (LCM), which aims to "decouple reasoning from language representation".

"The LCM is a significant departure from a typical LLM. Rather than predicting the next token, the LCM is trained to predict the next concept or high-level idea, represented by a full sentence in a multimodal and multilingual embedding space," the company said.

Other AI tools released by Meta include the Video Seal, which embeds a hidden watermark into videos, making it invisible to the naked eye but traceable.

The development comes shortly after the company updated Meta AI such that it is now powered by the company's Llama 3.2 large language model. Llama 3.2 brings image editing and voice features for the company's artificial intelligence-based chatbot. Simput put, the update enables users to edit an existing image as opposed to just creating an image based on text-based prompts. The update also enables users to interact with Meta AI using voice-based prompts. Earlier, users could interact with Meta AI only with text-based prompts.

Enabling the Santa Mode will essentially give users access to Santa's voice in ChatGPT. ChatGPT users can find Santa's voice by tapping on the snowflake icon on the ChatGPT home screen or on the top-right of the screen inside the Voice Mode.

OpenAI says that ChatGPT users can chat with Santa in both Advanced Voice and Standard Voice Modes. However, the company has cautioned that conversations with Santa do not support custom instructions or memories. These conversations are also temporary and will not appear in chat history. OpenAI will also delete these chats after 30 days.

Advanced Voice Mode gets Videos

OpenAI has also rolled out updates to its Advanced Voice Mode that was announced back in September this year. This feature gives paying customers access to natural conversations with ChatGPT along with access to multiple voices, and memory and custom instructions for shaping responses. However, at the time, the feature enabled users to hear a user and respond accordingly. Now, the company has added videos capabilities to its Advanced Voice Mode, which will enable ChatGPT to see and tailor its responses accordingly.

"Now you can chat with ChatGPT over video and voice in real time," OpenAI wrote in a post announcing the development.

As far as availability is concerned, OpenAI says that it has started rolling out the Advanced Voice in the ChatGPT mobile app to all Team, Plus and Pro. The company also said that the Enterprise and Education users will have access in early 2025.

"...over 2 billion calls are made on WhatsApp every single day. Ahead of the holiday season, we’re introducing new calling features across desktop and mobile, so that connecting with your loved ones is easier than ever," WhatsApp wrote.

WhatsApp update: Select Call Participants feature

The first feature that the company has announced enables users to select specific participants from a group for calling. Up until now when users initiated a call from a group, all the participants would get connected to the call. However, with this update, users will be able to call specific participants from a group without disturbing the others.

WhatsApp update: Effects for Video Calls

In addition to this, WhatsApp is also improving the video calling experience in the app. The company has added 10 effects, including puppy ears and glasses, which the users can add while making a video call in the app.

WhatsApp update: Improved Desktop Calling Interface

Additionally, WhatsApp has also improved the calling interface on desktop. WhatsApp says that now users will find all the calling related features including the option to start a call, create a call link, or dial a number, under the calls tab on WhatsApp's desktop app.

Lastly, the company has improved the video quality in one-on-one and group calls on its platform.

It is worth noting that these new features come shortly after the Meta-owned messaging app got the Voice Message Transcript feature. This feature gives users a transcription of the voice message that they have received in a chat. This feature can be manually turned by opening the Chat Settings and toggling on the Voice Message Transcripts feature. Once enabled, users just need to tap the Transcribe button at the bottom of a voice note to get its transcription.

Internally, it has also started tweaking its existing apps and services such as Gemini, YouTube, Google TV, Google Photos, Chrome and Google Maps to run Android XR-powered devices. The company says that with Android XR, users will be able to 'watch YouTube and Google TV on a virtual big screen, or relive your cherished memories with Google Photos in 3D'. They will also be 'able to explore the world in new ways with Google Maps' and multitask with multiple virtual screens in Chrome. They will also be able to use gestures to find information on a particular topic via Circle to Search.

Android XR: When will this new OS arrive?

Google says that Android XR-powered smart glasses and headsets will arrive in 2025. The company has also confirmed that mobile and tablet apps from Google Play will work right out of the box on Android XR-powered devices.

Android XR: Which devices will this OS support?

The company has also confirmed that Samsung is working on a new headset, Project Moohan, that will be the first device to run on Android XR. While details about this device are scarce at the moment, Qualcomm has confirmed that this headset will be powered by its Snapdragon XR2+ Gen 2 system-on-chip (SoC).

"This mixed reality device features state-of-the-art displays, support for hand, eye and voice input and was designed to be comfortable with balanced weight distribution," Qualcomm wrote in a blog post.

It is worth noting that Google's newly launched Android XR competes with Apple's Vision OS that powers the company's Apple Vision Pro headset and was announced at the Worldwide Developers' Conference last year.