TECHNOLOGY

Apple is cutting the price of its out-of-warranty battery replacement program for anyone with an iPhone 6 or later down to £25. The decision follows claims the company deliberately slowed down older models’ performance with a software update – something it flatly denies. However, Apple did issue an apology to customers for the way it communicated the issues surrounding older ...

A pair of new security vulnerabilities have been discovered in computer processors made by Intel, AMD and ARM by security researchers at Google. The bugs affect the hardware of the CPUs themselves – so all computer users are affected, whether they run Windows or macOS on a Dell or an Apple Macbook. Potentially, they could let hackers access personal information ...

A trio of new robots from tech giant LG are set to be shown off at next week’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The little ‘droids are designed to carry out tasks at airports, hotels and supermarkets – such as carrying suitcases or giving directions. And to make sure they’re up to the task of replacing human workers, the ...

Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg has said his personal challenge for 2018 is to “fix” the social site and how it handles hate, abuse and fake news. The social network platform’s founder said the firm was making “too many errors” when enforcing its policies and stopping misuse of the site. The platform has been repeatedly criticised in the last year for ...

Apple has said that all iPhones, iPads and Mac computers are affected by two major flaws in computer chips. It emerged this week that tech companies have been racing to fix the Meltdown and Spectre bugs, that could allow hackers to steal data. Apple said it had already released some patches but there was no evidence that the vulnerability had ...

Egypt’s top imam has endorsed a ban on trading in Bitcoin by declaring it “forbidden” by Islam. Sheikh Shawki Allam, the Grand Mutfi, said the digital crypto-currency carried risks of “fraudulence, lack of knowledge, and cheating”. Bitcoin began last year below $1,000 (£737) but reached nearly $20,000 before the end of the year. Then it lost more than 25% of ...

A team of Google researchers has created psychedelic stickers that can fool image recognition software into seeing objects that are not there. Using a toaster as an example, the team produced colourful computer-generated patterns by sampling hundreds of photographs of the appliance. When the patterns were put next to another item, such as a banana, many neural networks saw a ...

An American YouTube star says he does not expect to be forgiven after he posted a video which showed the body of an apparent suicide victim in Japan. The video showed Logan Paul and friends discovering the body in the Aokigahara forest at the base of Mount Fuji, known to be a frequent site of suicides. It prompted a barrage ...

Some smartphone games are listening to what your mic picks up — but not to hear what you say. Instead, they’re trying to hear what you’re watching. This is something smartphone apps have been doing for a little while now: using microphone access to tell what shows you watch, which ads you hear, and even what movies you see. But ...

Gaming addiction is to be listed as a mental health condition for the first time by the World Health Organisation. Its 11th International Classification of Diseases (ICD) will include the condition “gaming disorder”. The draft document describes it as a pattern of persistent or recurrent gaming behaviour so severe that it takes “precedence over other life interests”. Some countries had ...