Here is the top trending news from the world of technology. News that we feel every tech enthusiast must keep a tab on.
1)
U.K bans TikTok from Government Devices
United-kingdom has become the latest country to ban TikTok from all government devices. Oliver Dowden, one of the influential ministers in the current U.K government, announced the decision about the ban in the parliament. “The security of sensitive government information must come first, so today we are banning this app on government devices,” Dowden said in the parliament. According to media reports, the New Zealand government has also taken a similar decision. The latest developments will obviously pose additional challenge for TikTok, which is already facing pressure from the U.S government to split from its Chinese parent company Bytedance or else face a ban.
2)
Twitch CEO Emmett Shear is stepping down
Live video streaming company Twitch’s CEO Emmett Shear announced on Thursday that he is resigning after remaining at the helm of the affair for almost 16 years. He will be passing the baton to Dan Clancy, who is currently the president and has been with the company since 2019. Shear will continue to serve as advisor to the company. Shear had founded Twitch in 2006, back then it was known as a Justin.tv. Slowly and steadily, Justin.tv caught the imagination of the young American gamers and soon become one of the most visited video streaming platforms in the U.S. By 2013 it had 45 Mn unique visitors before it was rebranded as Twitch and was acquired by the e-commerce giant Amazon for almost $1 Bn.
3)
YouTube TV increases its subscription price to $73 per month
There is bad news for YouTube TV subscribers as the Google owned live streaming platform has once again increased its monthly subscription plan. The YouTube Tv subscribers now will have to shell $73 per month to avail the services. The platform had last time increased the subscription plan in 2020 by fixing the monthly subscription plan at $65. An official statement issued by the YouTube TV says ““As content costs have risen and we continue to invest in the quality of our service, we are updating our price to keep bringing you the best possible service.” The platform started dolling live streaming services in the U.S. in 2017 at only $35. Since then its monthly subscription plan have been increasing at an incremental pace.
4)
Google warns some Android phones including Pixel phones are vulnerable to hacking
Google’s security research team Project ZERO has said certain Android models that work on Samsung’s Exynos modems are highly susceptible to hacking. These models include Pixel 6, Pixel 7, and some models of the Galaxy S22 and A53. The Project ZERO team has said in its blogpost that several Exynos modems are riddled with vulnerabilities that can “allow an attacker to remotely compromise a phone at the baseband level with no user interaction.” The hacker won’t need anything apart from the victim’s phone number. Worse, until now Samsung has not issued any statement about how it plans to fix this problem.
5)
Popular porn website ‘Pornhub’ has a new owner
Popular porn website Pornhub has got a new owner. Pornhub is now the property of the Canadian private equity firm Ethical Capital Partners (ECP). ECP has bought Pornhub’s parent company MindGeek, which also owns other popular porn websites like Brazzers and RedTube. Over the years Pornhub has been facing several lawsuits and allegations of promoting ‘child porn’ material on its website. These allegations led to the departure of MindGeek’s CEO Feras Antoon and COO David Tassillo in 2022. MindGeek is considered to be one of the biggest American porn companies.