AC Information Weekly
Information Weekly is our column, the place we spotlight and summarize a few of the week’s high tales so you may make amends for the most recent tech information.
That is Android Central’s Information Weekly, your go-to supply for a concise roundup of the week’s most vital tech tales. That is the place we delve into the highest headlines that present the most recent developments and improvements contributing to the digital panorama.
This week, AT&T suffered a large information leak, Pixel launched its April replace on its units, Spotify was set to extend its subscription, Google made fact-checking dependable, and Galaxy S23 struggled with a singular difficulty.
AT&T suffers huge information breach
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Sadly, this wasn’t an April Idiot’s prank
Over 70 million AT&T clients awakened to an enormous information breach on Monday, April 1. The corporate reported in a weblog publish that over 7.6 million present clients and 65.4 million former clients’ information have been floating round on the darkish internet as a result of leak.
AT&T stated that the leaked information included full names, e-mail addresses, mailing addresses, telephone numbers, social safety numbers, birthdates, AT&T account numbers, and passcodes. For the lively clients impacted, the corporate has reset their safety passcodes.
The information was posted on the darkish internet two weeks in the past, and the corporate said that it appears to be from 2019 or earlier.
For those who’re involved about your private data, Android Central’s Jerry Hildenbrand has some recommendation for dealing with data breaches.
Pixel units received a contemporary patch of updates
Learn extra on the watch and phone replace.
Earlier this week, Google rolled out a slew of updates to its telephones and watches. The brand new TWD9.240405.001 firmware has begun rolling out and can doubtless attain all Pixel Watch homeowners over the following week.
This replace “contains new options, quite a few bug fixes, and efficiency updates for Pixel Watch customers.” One thing new that watch customers can look out for is the vibration characteristic, and because the title suggests, customers will discover the present time play in haptics every time a consumer chooses to make use of gestures on the watch face.
Moreover, it additionally received enhancements in auto brightness performance, permitting “customers to understand the distinction when switching ranges simply.” One other characteristic to look out for is the brand new progress bar for app downloads/ updates accomplished by way of Google Play Retailer, which is not formally included, but it surely was spotted by some Pixel watch customers just lately.
In the meantime, Pixel telephone customers additionally get their very own set of updates on the identical time. The replace contains 28 basic safety patches for Android and one other 25 which might be completely for Pixel units.
You’ll be able to verify in case your Pixel telephone has the April 2024 replace by navigating to Settings > System > Software program replace.
Spotify might get costly
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Spotify subscribers is likely to be in for a pinch of one other couple of {dollars}, in keeping with a brand new report that was launched this week. The Bloomberg report claims that the music streaming service is likely to be elevating the value for its ‘primary’ plan by a greenback and its duo plan by $2 in sure markets worldwide. Because of this subscribers within the UK, Australia, and Pakistan will see these will increase take impact by the top of April. The U.S. can also be anticipated to see this value hike later this 12 months. Spotify can also be wanting into including extra subscription plans for customers to drive income.
Speculations round Spotify engaged on a brand new “primary” tier with music and podcasts, and with out audiobooks, have additionally been making the rounds. This plan could price $11, the identical because the premium plan for a solo consumer.
A brand new “Supremium” plan was briefly talked about within the report that enables customers to stream HiFi audio for a steeper value.
Galaxy S23 customers are having a troublesome time with One UI 6.1
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Samsung’s new One UI 6.1 update for the Galaxy S23 series was meant to be a sport changer, giving older telephones entry to the magic of Galaxy AI. Nonetheless, issues did not go as deliberate for people with the S23 collection. Many confronted charging points, fingerprint scanner glitches, touchscreen woes, and biometric sensor points.
Customers took to Reddit to report issues with the biometrics (fingerprint), stating that their “fingerprint sensor randomly does not register my enter” when making an attempt to unlock their machine.
The touchscreen difficulty was seen on particular fashions just like the Galaxy S23, Galaxy S23 Plus, and Galaxy S23 Ultra. For some, the display screen is totally unresponsive, whereas others can solely use it with the S Pen. In response to a post on Samsung Korea’s assist boards, they stated that the Google Uncover characteristic is likely to be accountable for the touchscreen efficiency points on affected units.
Nonetheless, there is no want to stress, because the touchscreen points could have a brief repair: delete any information related to the Google app and replace it to the most recent model. However for now, it is best if S23 customers may wish to avoid the One UI 6.1 replace if it may be helped.
Google makes truth checking simpler
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With AI-manipulated photos doing the rounds as of late on social media, it is robust to gauge the reality from, nicely, clickbait. Nonetheless, Google could have made cross-checking this a bit simpler.
April 2 is seen as Worldwide Truth-Checking Day, and Google is increasing the attain of a few of its most helpful instruments in Google Seek for verifying details, photos, and sources. As well as, Google announced that its Truth Verify Explorer is exiting beta and might be accessible to all.
Two acquainted Google search options, About this picture and About this web page, are actually accessible in 40 extra languages globally. On the subject of About this picture, if you open a picture’s element menu in Search and faucet the About this picture possibility, you can be taught extra about a picture and the place it got here from.
Particularly, Google says that About this picture can listing the next sorts of details about a picture in Search: the historical past of a picture, how the picture is used and described by different websites, and the metadata related to a picture. This might reveal whether or not a picture was AI-generated or got here from an untrustworthy supply.
Equally, About this web page and About this outcome will show extra details about an internet site earlier than you determine to click on on a Google Search outcome. This might reveal whether or not the positioning is reliable, whether it is believed to be biased indirectly, and who owns it.
These are a few of the greatest tales from this week. In the meantime, listed here are another tales which might be price catching up on: