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Senior Apple executive Lisa Jackson met with Ukraine’s foreign minister Vadym Prystaiko at Davos on Thursday, Business Insider reported. It followed the controversial labeling of the annexed region of Crimea as part of Russia in Apple Maps.

Prystaiko tweeted a photo of himself alongside Jackson, Apple’s vice president of environment, policy, and social initiatives. His tweet said the pair discussed Apple’s “next steps” in the Ukrainian market, with a follow-up tweet hinting that the Crimea issue was also discussed. He wrote: “[Ukraine has a] growing pool of loyal customers, creative IT class, improving business climate – all the ingredients for beneficial cooperation are in place.” In a follow-up he added: “2/2 Protection of IPR, ‘grey market sales’ and some outstanding issues of a political nature are being resolved, too.”

British officials have proposed that Huawei is given a limited role in Britain’s 5G network, Reuters reported. A decision is expected imminently.

The recommendation, made at a meeting of officials from senior government departments on Wednesday, comes ahead of a meeting of Britain’s National Security Council next week to decide how to deploy Huawei equipment, the sources said. The officials proposed barring Huawei from the sensitive, data-heavy “core” part of the network and restricted government systems, closely mirroring a provisional decision made last year under former Prime Minister Theresa May. “The technical and policy guidance hasn’t changed,” said one of the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations. “Now it is down to a political calculation.

The Apple Watch has, for a good while now, been known for effectively recognizing cases of Atrial Fibrillation. AppleInsider reported on a new case in Kentucky, when a Christmas present helped a woman there with the heart condition.

As highlighted in a report by WHAS 11 on Wednesday, Rosemary Stiles, who received Apple Watch as a gift from her boyfriend in 2018, wanted the device to keep in touch with her children while on the go. While not explained in detail, it appears Stiles was looking to use tbe unspecified Apple Watch model in situations that would otherwise preclude full access to an iPhone, like driving. According to Kentucky law, people are allowed to operate a cellphone while driving if at least one hand is on the wheel, but that mandate is due to change in February when drivers will be required to rely on hands-free modes of communication.

Motorola is finally going to release its foldable phone. The $1,500 Razr is going to be available for pre-order from Monday, Bloomberg News reported.

Online pre-orders for the foldable smartphone begin Jan. 26 and sales in stores start Feb. 6, Motorola said. The device will available on Motorola’s website, and through Walmart Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc. The handset was announced in November and the company originally targeted December for pre-orders. But the Lenovo Group Ltd. unit postponed that plan, saying that initial demand outstripped its supply predictions. Motorola did not blame technical issues for the delay.

Gone are the days of having to sneak notes across the classroom in order to send a message to a friend. Kids are now using AirPods and push-to-talk tech to chat during school, according to iMore.

It turns out enterprising kids are sharing AirPods and then using text-to-speech to allow them to “talk” without being caught. The obvious use case here is keeping up with your crew during class. Because nobody pays attention when their teacher is talking, right? That’s reserved for squares like me! The theory is actually one that is ingenious if you think about it. You swap an AirPod with your friend and then use text-to-speech to communicate with them.

The implementation of a French tax that would have affected Apple and other major tech firms is to be delayed. The 3 percent tariff will not be enforced whilst France and the U.S. continue trade talks, AppleInsider reported.

Originally proposed in December of 2018, the so-called GAFA – Google, Apple, Facebook, and Amazon – tax, had been given a stamp of approval by the French senate in July of 2019. The tax would have been applied retroactively. Under the measure, the 3% sales tax would be applied to sales generated in France by major multinational firms. France has pulled back on demanding the retroactive down payments temporarily, in an effort to prevent the U.S. from applying tariffs to French-made goods. “What we’re proposing is to give ourselves time and to show our goodwill, to postpone the remaining payments to December,” a French Finance Ministry source said, according to Reuters. Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire and U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin are due to negotiate the details in Davos, Switzerland, on Wednesday, the source added.

Private keys are a crucial part of the cryptocurrency ecosystem. However, in recent times, some of those have been compromised. Qredo CEO Anthony Foy shared his suggestions on how to protect them.

Bitcoin lets you be your own bank by holding your private keys, but as the cryptocurrency industry has developed, this idea has become diluted. Many cryptocurrency users now choose to surrender their private keys to third party custodians. This has brought trust back into a trustless system—with fatal effects. Cryptocurrency’s short history is littered with massive losses, where the private keys controlling millions have been stolen from exchange wallets, pilfered by scam artists, and embezzled by trusted custodians. Even those individuals who have stayed true to the spirit of Bitcoin and kept their own private keys have still suffered, with dodgy wallets, silly mistakes, and even a series of ‘horrible boating accidents’ all leading people to lose their cryptocurrency.

Lithium-ion batteries power many of our favorite gadgets. However, they rely on toxic, flammable materials. A small defect can cause devices to explode. Scientists at John Hopkins University develop better ones, and Wired told the story.

A team of researchers led by physicists at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory believed a safer battery was possible, and for the past five years they have been developing a lithium-ion battery that’s seemingly immune to failure. The rugged battery they first unveiled in 2017, working with researchers at the University of Maryland, can be cut, shot, bent, and soaked without an interruption in power. Late last year, the Johns Hopkins team pushed it further, making it fireproof and boosting its voltages to levels comparable with a commercial product. Samsung, eat your heart out.

I always enjoy Cult of Mac’s ‘Today in Apple History’ segments. Today is a particularly good one though, because on this day 36 years ago, Apple’s legendary Mac advert arrived in theaters.

The erroneous claim that Apple’s “1984” ad aired just once continues to thrive. Yes, the ad most memorably ran during 1984’s Super Bowl. But many forget its extraordinary theatrical run. The spot’s earliest showing was, as it happens, at 1 a.m. in Twin Falls, Idaho, on the last day of 1983, so as to make it eligible for ad awards the following year. Ridley Scott directed the “1984” ad. Back then, most knew Scott for making Alien and Blade Runner, although he possessed a strong advertising background. The “1984” Mac ad played on imagery from George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four novella, presenting Apple as rebels fighting a technocratic elite.

Apple shares have soared recently, hitting record highs. Writing for AppleInsider, Daniel Eran Dilger argued that this is in no small part down to investors and analysts starting to properly value AAPL.

It certainly appears that Apple’s historically low valuation in terms of Price to Earnings—its stock valuation compared to its ability to generate profits—is tied directly to one of the largest mistakes made by tech industry investment analysts over the past decade: the idea that Apple’s iPhone was a fluke product that would rapidly be commodified and overrun by an army of cheaper, less restricted and more “open” handsets running Google’s Android… This assumption was grounded on the 1990’s history of the Macintosh, which began to perform well for Apple for just a few years before Microsoft copied its foundational concepts and spread them across generic PCs…

Microsft pledged to become carbon negative by 2030 on Thursday. It made the declaration in a new blog post. Led by Lisa Jackson, Apple has made strides in this regard too, including financing a carbon-free aluminum smelting process.

By 2030 Microsoft will be carbon negative, and by 2050 Microsoft will remove from the environment all the carbon the company has emitted either directly or by electrical consumption since it was founded in 1975. We recognize that progress requires not just a bold goal but a detailed plan. As described below, we are launching today an aggressive program to cut our carbon emissions by more than half by 2030, both for our direct emissions and for our entire supply and value chain. We will fund this in part by expanding our internal carbon fee, in place since 2012 and increased last year, to start charging not only our direct emissions, but those from our supply and value chains.

Ever since the iPhone 11 emerged there have been lots of rumors about its successors. Forbes rounded up everything we know about one that is attracting a lot of attention.

The iPhone SE2 will use the same 12MP primary camera as the iPhone 11, iPhone 11 Pro and iPhone 11 Pro Max, but it will not feature ultrawide or telephoto sensors as Apple looks to save costs. The iPhone 12 will have an exciting new long-range 3D camera, but don’t expect that functionality to reach the iPhone SE2 at its affordable price point. Perhaps the one area where the iPhone SE2 may disappoint is its design. Rather than copy the iPhone X-inspired looks of current models, the iPhone SE2 will look like an iPhone 8, complete with a Touch ID fingerprint sensor and no Face ID. That said, this will make for a very portable device you’ll easily be able to use one-handed. It will also feature a glass back to support wireless charging.

Apple needs to dive headfirst into the smart home industry, with hardware at the center of the strategy. That’s according to Jason Snell, who laid out his argument for MacWorld.  He argues for the creation of a new product, a kind of hub, that will sit at the heart of it all.

Apple can contribute to the smart-home industry and its own bottom line by doing what it does best, namely creating a new product that’s a fusion of hardware, software, and cloud services. It’s time for Apple to build a product that makes your home smarter and more secure. It’s time for Apple Home. Apple got out of the home router game a while ago, with the discontinuation of the AirPort line. I’m recommending that Apple bring it back, because today’s smart homes require rock-solid wireless connectivity, and while Apple’s two biggest competitors have home-network offerings, Apple’s got nothing. An Apple-built mesh networking system a la Amazon’s Eero seems like a natural.