Tech Digest daily roundup: Amazon will continue to accept Visa credit cards
Amazon has announced that it will not stop accepting Visa credit cards for UK payments later this week as had been planned. In an email to customers, the online retailer said it was “working closely with Visa on a potential solution”. The move had been due to take effect on 19 January with Amazon blaming “high fees Visa charges for processing credit card transactions”. Sky News
Asmosdee’s digital board game, Pandemic, has been quietly withdrawn from sale “for a multitude of reasons that [the publisher] cannot disclose”. Without formal announcement, Pandemic was delisted from Steam on 6th January, and it looks as though players can’t pick it up on mobile devices now, either (although if you already own the game, you should be able to re-download it again from your library if you’re quick). All signs of the game have been scrubbed from the company’s website, too. Eurogamer
A London investment fund backed by the billionaire Belgian aristocrats behind the AB InBev beer empire have backed a tech start-up that submerges data centres in liquid to reduce their carbon footprint. Planet First Partners has led a $34m (£25m) funding round in Submer, a Barcelona-based start-up that is seeking to cut the rapidly increasing environmental cost of high-powered computers. Data centres – the remote server farms where much of the hosting and processing of the modern internet is done – account for a growing percentage of worldwide electricity consumption, largely due to the high costs of cooling the machines. Telegraph
A Friday report indicated that Apple was having trouble with its rumored AR/VR headset due to overheating, camera, and software challenges, which could make the company delay its plans to unveil its Mixed Reality headset this year. Now, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman is back with some more tidbits regarding the product. In previous reports, Gurman had indicated that Apple’s AR/VR headset will be “pricey.” Although analysts were predicting the product will cost around $3,000, Bloomberg’s journalist says in his latest Power On newsletter that Apple has discussed price points above $2,000. 9to5Mac
Wordle is a free browser game, and a browser game only — it has no accompanying apps, something that some people (myself included, regrettably) might not realize during a time when nearly everything has an app. This leaves plenty of room for fake Wordle apps to crowd app stores in an attempt to leech off of the word puzzle game’s sudden rise in popularity. But there’s one app coincidentally called Wordle! that’s not a clone — it actually existed before the browser game itself. That’s why its developer is teaming up with the mind behind the browser-based Wordle, Josh Wardle, to use its accidental success as an opportunity to give back, according to a report from GameSpot. The Verge
Authorities in Russia say they have dismantled the ransomware crime group REvil and charged several of its members. The United States had offered a reward of up to $10m (£7.3m) for information leading to the gang members, following ransomware attacks. Russia’s intelligence bureau FSB said the group had “ceased to exist”. However, it does not appear that any Russian members of the gang will be extradited to the United States. The agency said it had acted after being provided with information about the REvil gang by the US. BBC
