Tech Digest daily roundup: Oppo and OnePlus deny European withdrawal
Oppo and OnePlus have been struggling in Europe for a while now, and a patent dispute with Nokia that effectively stopped the companies from advertising their products in Germany certainly didn’t help. Combined with a shrinking smartphone market, the outlook isn’t too bright. According to multiple reports, it looks like the two BBK Electronics-owned entities are now preparing their full exit from most if not all European markets, including the UK. Both Oppo and OnePlus deny these reports in statements to the press. Android Police
A team of hackers from French security shop Synacktiv have won $100,000 and a Tesla Model 3 after subverting the Muskmobile’s entertainment system, and from there opening up the car’s core management systems. The prize was awarded at the annual Pwn2Own competition in Vancouver and it wasn’t Synacktiv’s only win. The team walked away from the competition with over half a million dollars in prize money after a series of cracks found not only in Tesla’s armor but in that of established players too. The Register
Facial recognition firm Clearview has run nearly a million searches for US police, its founder has told the BBC CEO Hoan Ton-That also revealed Clearview now has 30bn images scraped from platforms such as Facebook, taken without users’ permissions. The company has been repeatedly fined millions of dollars in Europe and Australia for breaches of privacy. Critics argue that the police’s use of Clearview puts everyone into a ‘perpetual police line-up’. “Whenever they have a photo of a suspect, they will compare it to your face,” says Matthew Guaragilia from the Electronic Frontier Foundation says. “It’s far too invasive.” BBC
British start-up Helixx has announced plans to produce a line-up of four quadricycles aimed at developing nations in Asia, produced using an innovative process inspired by McDonald’s. The electric quartet are all based on the same underpinnings, engineered to L7e regulations – so legally limited to 20bhp and a maximum kerb weight of 450kg (rising to 600kg for cargo vehicles). There are two commercial variants: a van with 2100 litres of cargo space and a pick-up with a 1.64m2 bed. The two passenger models, a minivan and an open-sided tuk-tuk, offer a top speed of 50mph. Autocar
It looks like iOS 17 is going to be a bigger iPhone update than we first thought, but before that lands we have iOS 16.4 to look forward to – and that update has just started rolling out. Naturally, iOS 16.4’s changes are a little more incremental than the bigger ones we saw in iOS 16, which arrived back in September 2022 and delivered an overhauled Home app, new lock screen features, and some fresh fonts and themes. But there are some notable improvements in iOS 16.4, particularly if you’re a fan of Apple’s Podcasts or Shortcuts apps, new emojis, or keeping up with the latest news. Tech Radar
Five planets were visible in the sky last night as they lined up near the moon. Stargazers had the opportunity to spot Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, Uranus and Mars on the horizon. On Monday Jake Foster, an astronomer at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, told Sky News that Venus, Jupiter and Mars would be “easily visible from the naked eye” even from a bright city like London, though a telescope may be needed to spot Mercury and Uranus, he told Sky News.
