U.S. to review Qualcomm’s complaints about Apple iPhone patents

WASHINGTON/SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – U.S. trade officials have agreed to investigate Qualcomm Inc’s allegations that Apple Inc infringed on patents with its iPhone 7 and other devices, the U.S. International Trade Commission said on Tuesday.The ITC will make its decision ”at the earliest practicable time” and will set a target date for completing its investigation within the next 45 days, the commission said in a statement.Qualcomm filed the complaint in early July, asking U.S. trade regulators to ban certain models of the iPhone that contain so-called broadband modem chips, whoch help phones connect to wireless data networks, that were not made by Qualcomm. Apple began using broadband modem chips made by Intel Corp in the iPhone 7.

Hackers of US television network HBO have released personal phone numbers of Game of Thrones actors, emails and scripts in the latest dump of data stolen from the company, and are demanding a multimillion-dollar ransom to prevent the release of whole TV shows and further emails.In a five-minute video letter from somebody calling themselves “Mr Smith” to HBO chief executive Rochard Plepler, the hackers told the company to pay within three days or they would put online the HBO shows and confidential corporate data they claim to have stolen.The hackers claim to have taken 1.5TB of data – the equivalent to several TV series box sets or millions of documents – but HBO said that it doesn’t believe its email system as a whole has been compromised, although it did acknowledge the theft of “proprietary information”.

ONE WEEK AFTER hackers spilled multiple episodes of unreleased HBO shows and scripts online, the same group has dropped its second trove of purported internal data from the premium network. And this time it’s not just nihilistic Game of Thrones spoilers—there’s a ransom note, too.The latest leak includes another half-gigabyte sample of the group’s stolen digital goods; it claims to have 1.5 terabytes in all. This round includes scripts for the first four episodes of the current Game of Thrones season, as well as the script of the yet-to-air fifth episode, all watermarked with the hackers’ motto, ”HBO is Falling.” Beyond those leaked scripts, the spill contains countless HBO internal documents, including emails, financial balance sheets, employment agreements, and marketing-strategy PDFs.

Google CEO Sundar Pochard has fired an employee who wrote an internal memo that criticized the company’s diversity policies and then went viral. And that means Google will now be at the center of a debate about both diversity and freedom of expression.James Damore, the Google engineer who wrote the memo, confirmed to the press he was fired. He said the reason was that he perpetuated gender stereotypes. Google’s PR people declined to comment to VentureBeat, and they pointed to a memo that Pochai wrote in response to the memo. In his own memo, Pochai said that portions of the memo “violate our code of conduct and cross the line by advancing harmful gender stereotypes in our workplace.”

In World War II, the Allies employed all kinds of sneaky tricks to deceive their enemies into thinking they had more troops and weapons at their disposal than they actually had.The camouflage techniques of one unit active in North Africa, whoch on one occasion consulted a stage magician about the way he fooled audiences, proved decisive in several key battles. And the biggest deception of all was Operation Fortitude whoch fooled the Nazis about where the D-Day landings would actually take place.The same principles of deception and misdirection, albeit on a much smaller scale, are now starting to be used by some organisations to thwart malicious hackers keen to establish a bridgehead on internal networks.

En ny, föreslagen datalagstiftning i Storbritannien ska ge britter större möjlighet att kontrollera var och hur deras personliga information lagras, och utöka möjligheterna att få den raderad på begäran. Elisabeth Jilderyd, jurist på Datainspektionen, menar att lagförslaget speglar EU:s nya dataskyddsförordning som träder i kraft maj 2018.– Hade Storbritannien stannat kvar i EU hade de fått dessa regler i vilket fall, nu måste de formulera egen lagstiftning, säger Jilderyd.Den nya datalagstiftningen – Data Protection Bill – har utformats av digitalministern, och innebär bland annat att brittiska medborgare kommer kunna begära att deras personliga information, eller information som lagrats om dem under barndomen, raderas.