Tech Digest daily roundup: WhatsApp could be banned in UK, claims Meta boss
WhatsApp could be banned in the UK, its head has warned. The UK’s upcoming Online Safety Bill could force the app to weaken the end-to-end encryption that currently secures messages on the service, said Will Cathcart, the head of WhatsApp at parent company Meta. If the government forced the company to weaken that security, WhatsApp would refuse, leaving open the possibility that the app would be banned entirely within the country, he confirmed. End-to-end encryption secures messages by ensuring that only those sending and receiving them can read them, and even the services themselves do not have access. Independent
Bing has crossed 100 million daily active users a month after the launch of its chatbot AI, according to Yusuf Mehdi, Microsoft’s VP for Modern Life, Search and Devices. He said the company is fully aware that it’s still just “a small, low, single-digit share player,” but hey, there was a time when Bing wasn’t even a part of the conversation. Now, after the tech giant released its next-gen version, even those who haven’t used it in the past are relying on it for their searches: Mehdi noted that one-third of Bing’s daily active users are new to the search engine. Engadget
A subsidiary of Alphabet, which owns Google, hopes to develop drone delivery-network technology able to handle millions of orders, within 12 months. Operating drones as a network, Wing says, will improve efficiency. The technology is being tested “at scale” in Logan, Australia, where Wing delivers up to 1,000 packages a day. The company has also started trial drone deliveries in the Dublin suburb of Lusk. And it says it and other companies are in talks with the Department for Transport and the Civil Aviation Authority about agreeing regulations to allow drone deliveries in the UK. BBC
ChatGPT might have created the next Wordle in the shape of Sumplete, an engaging online number puzzle game. The rules of Sumplete are pretty simple. You’re given a grid of numbers – with sizes ranging from a three-by-three grid up to one that’s nine-by-nine – and you have to delete numbers such that the ones remaining in the columns and rows add up to specific totals. As the grids get larger there are more possible combinations of numbers in each row and column that add up to the targets, making it progressively more difficult to find a solution. Tech Radar
Apple’s 2024 OLED iPad Pro models could be vastly more expensive than its existing iPad Pros and even more costly than some MacBook Pros currently on sale, claims a new Korean report.
According to industry sources cited by The Elec, Apple is already considering its pricing strategy for next year’s two OLED iPad Pro models, with current estimates starting at $1,500 and $1,800 for the 11-inch and 13-inch models, respectively. That would make the 11-inch device over 80 percent more expensive than the existing 11-inch iPad Pro with LED Liquid Retina display, which starts at $799, and the 13-inch model over 60% more expensive than the current 12.9-inch iPad Pro with mini-LED Liquid Retina XDR display, which starts at $1,099. MacRumors
Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo on Friday banned federal officials from using TikTok on their work phones, making his the latest country to take steps against the Chinese app. A number of national governments in Europe have already restricted TikTok for government employees, over fears the authorities in Beijing could use the video-sharing network to access sensitive user data. The European Union’s governing institutions also told staff in recent weeks to purge the app from smartphones and laptops used for work purposes. Yahoo!
