This is how close LG’s Rollable was to being a real phone

LG was supposed to release another phone with an unusual form factor after The Wing as an answer to Samsung’s foldables. At CES 2021, the company confirmed that it was working on a phone with a rollable display and that it was going to be available later that year. It never got to launch the device before shutting down its mobile business after its newest models, which included the Wing, failed to gain traction. But now, a hands-on video by Korean tech reviewer 뻘짓연구소 (BullsLab) shows just how close LG got to launching the phone that would’ve simply gone by the name “Rollable.”

While the Wing featured a rotatable display on top of a smaller one underneath, the Rollable was designed to have a screen that stretches out until the phone becomes a small tablet. In the video, you’ll see how responsive the device is and how quickly it starts expanding after the YouTuber swipes at the screen with three fingers. Whatever’s displayed on screen — even the animated wallpapers — automatically adjusts itself. At one point, the reviewer places three books beside the phone to show that its motor is strong enough to move the pile as it stretches out.

In addition to the stretchable main display, the phone’s back panel also functions as an extra screen that can house a handful of widgets, including ones for the camera, calendar and music. If you fire up the camera app from that extra screen, you’ll be able to take selfies without powering on the main phone. 

Based on the device BullsLab reviewed, the Rollable would’ve launched with a Snapdragon 888 CPU, up to 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. Those were top-level specs that would’ve put the Rollable in the same category as flagships, such as the Samsung Galaxy S21. 

Since LG’s mobile business no longer exists, there’s little to no chance for the Rollable to, well, roll out. It’s worth noting that Oppo also showed off a rollable phone back in 2021, but it was just a prototype, and we haven’t heard anything about it since then.

Twitch is banning major gambling websites in October

Twitch has announced a significant change to its policy amidst rising concerns about the presence of gambling streams on the platform. On Twitter, Twitch said it will prohibit the streaming of gambling websites that feature slots, roulette and dice games unlicensed in the US and other regions that “provide sufficient consumer protection.” The policy change will take effect on October 18th, and Twitch promises to release the full policy language and more details before that date.

So far, the list of banned sites include some of the most well-known ones out there, including Stake.com, Rollbit.com, Duelbits.com and Roobet.com. Not a surprise, since you could already find plenty of streams on Twitch with gambling content from those domains. Twitch says that it “may identify others” going forward, so the list of banned websites will likely grow longer. The website will continue allowing websites that focus on certain types of gambling content, though, including sports betting, fantasy sports and poker. 

Twitch issued the statement after some of the platform’s most popular streamers, including Pokimane and DevinNash, threatened to boycott it on Christmas week if it doesn’t ban gambling streams and sponsorships. They banded together in response to one streamer’s admission that he had scammed followers and fellow streamers out of around $200,000 to feed his addiction to Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. As Kotaku explains, CS:GO features weapon skins that have real-world monetary value, and gambling websites use them as casino chips. The revelation reopened the discussion of gambling streams on Twitch in a big way, with people pointing out that they could lead to deceitful behavior by streamers and could be damaging to the website’s young users.

Slack’s upcoming ‘canvas’ feature will make it easier for teams to share resources

Slack has introduced a new feature called “canvas,” which it describes as a “surface” where teams can “curate, organize and share mission-critical resources.” When it launches next year, Canvas could replace external apps or programs teams use to colla…

Apple is raising App Store prices across Europe and Asia

Apple has announced that it’s raising the prices of both apps and in-app purchases, not including auto-renewable subscriptions, across several regions starting on October 5th. All territories using the Euro currency are affected, along with Chile, Egypt, Japan, Malaysia, Pakistan, Poland, South Korea, Sweden and Vietnam. Apple says the price increase in Vietman reflects new laws that require the company to collect value added tax (VAT) and corporate income tax.

The amount added to old prices vary, based on the list of updated pricing tier (PDF) the tech giant has published. Apps that currently cost 99 cents will set users back €1.19 in Euro territories, while those that cost €4.99 will cost a Euro more at €5.99. The additional charge gets bigger the higher one goes in the pricing tier — purchases that cost €14.99, for instance, will cost people €17.99 instead.

Apple didn’t explain the reason behind the price hike for most territories aside from Vietnam. For Euro-using countries, it could be partly because of the fact that the Euro is weak against the dollar and even fell below parity for the first time in almost two decades. Perhaps this price hike shouldn’t come as a surprise because of that, seeing as people are also expected to pay much, much more for the iPhone 14 in Europe than in the US. The iPhone 14 Pro, for instance, will set buyers back $999 in the US. Converted, that’s only €997, but the model is priced at €1,299 in Germany, €1,319 in Spain and €1,339 in Italy.

South Korean prosecutors ask Interpol for help in locating TerraUSD developer Do Kwon

Over the weekend, Terraform Labs’ CEO and co-founder Do Kwon took to Twitter to say that he was not “on the run” or “anything similar.” He made the statement after South Korean authorities issued an arrest warrant for him and five other people connected to Terraform Labs for violating the country’s capital markets laws last week. But Korean prosecutors aren’t convinced, especially since authorities in Singapore, where Kwon flew to back in April, said he was no longer in the country. Now, the Seoul Southern District Prosecutors’ Office is asking the Interpol to place him in the agency’s red notice list and to revoke his passport, according to The Financial Times. 

According to the Interpol’s website, a red notice entails seeking “the location and arrest of wanted persons wanted for prosecution or to serve a sentence” and is commonly issued for fugitives. As Yonhap News notes, Kwon flew to Singapore in late April around the time he dissolved his company’s office in Korea. His family members and other key Terraform Labs personnel reportedly followed him to the city-state in May. 

The executive and other Terraform Labs’ personnel are under investigation for financial fraud and tax evasion following the collapse of the company’s stablecoins, TerraUSD and Luna. $40 billion of investor money was wiped out from the even. And those investors, who lost their life savings to the crash, filed complaints that accuse him of running a Ponzi scheme. 

Prosecutors believe he left Korea to “evade investigation,” seeing as Kwon also apparently told them through his lawyers that he didn’t intend to appear before them for questioning. A spokesperson for the Seoul prosecutors’ office told The Times that they’re doing their best to locate and arrest him. “He is clearly on the run as his company’s key finance people also left for the same country during that time,” they added. 

Kwon has yet to respond to the prosecutors enlisting the Interpol for help in finding him. On Twitter, his location is still set to Singapore, and his latest tweets were still from the weekend, denying that he was trying to avoid being captured by law enforcement. 

EVGA is exiting the GPU market and parting ways with NVIDIA

The next time you build a gaming PC, you probably won’t be adding an EVGA GPU to your list of possible components. The company, which is best known for manufacturing NVIDIA GeForce-based video cards, is getting out of the GPU-making business. As Tom’s Hardware and Ars Technica report, company CEO Andrew Han sat down with YouTubers JayZTwoCents and Gamers Nexus in a closed-door interview to reveal EVGA’s decision. He also talked about his grievances with NVIDIA.

Han told the YouTubers that NVIDIA had stopped treating EVGA as a true partner over the years despite their history. NVIDIA had allegedly stopped informing EVGA about new product announcements and important information, such as suggested retail pricing and availability. That left add-in board partners like EVGA to find out details about the latest products on stage, the same time we all do. Further, NVIDIA’s first-party Founders Edition cards undercut the prices of their counterparts from EVGA and other partners, forcing the vendors to mark down their prices. 

EVGA, Han said, will continue selling cards based on older GeForce GPUs like the RTX 3000 series. After it runs out of stock, though, that’s it — the company has no plans to team up with NVIDIA rivals AMD or Intel. EVGA has been selling other computer components and accessories, such as power supplies and gaming mice, for a while now. But according to Gamers Nexus, 80 percent of the company’s revenue comes from GeForce sales, so this decision could put the company’s very existence in jeopardy. When the YouTuber commented that this must have been a difficult decision to make, the CEO reportedly replied that this was easy and it was working with NVIDIA that was hard.

In its forums, EVGA has posted the following statement:

EVGA will not carry the next generation graphics cards. EVGA will continue to support the existing current generation products. EVGA will continue to provide the current generation products. EVGA is committed to our customers and will continue to offer sales and support on the current lineup. Also, EVGA would like to say thank you to our great community for the many years of support and enthusiasm for EVGA graphics cards.

As for NVIDIA, Bryan Del Rizzo, the director of global public relations for GeForce, told Tom’s Hardware:

We’ve had a great partnership with EVGA over the years and will continue to support them on our current generation of products. We wish Andrew and our friends at EVGA all the best.

LastPass was hacked, but it says no user data was compromised

In August, LastPass had admitted that an “unauthorized party” gained entry into its system. Any news about a password manager getting hacked can be alarming, but the company is now reassuring its users that their logins and other information weren’t compromised in the event.

In his latest update about the incident, LastPass CEO Karim Toubba said that the company’s investigation with cybersecurity firm Mandiant has revealed that the bad actor had internal access to its systems for four days. They were able to steal some of the password manager’s source code and technical information, but their access was limited to the service’s development environment that isn’t connected to customers’ data and encrypted vaults. Further, Toubba pointed out that LastPass has no access to users’ master passwords, which are needed to decrypt their vaults.

The CEO said there’s no evidence that this incident “involved any access to customer data or encrypted password vaults.” They also found no evidence of unauthorized access beyond those four days and of any traces that the hacker injected the systems with malicious code. Toubba explained that the bad actor was able to infiltrate the service’s systems by compromising a developer’s endpoint. The hacker then impersonated the developer “once the developer had successfully authenticated using multi-factor authentication.” 

Back in 2015, LastPass suffered a security breach that compromised users’ email addresses, authentication hashes, password reminders and other information. A similar breach would be more devastating today, now that the service supposedly has over 33 million registered customers. While, LastPass isn’t asking users to do anything to keep their data safe this time, it’s always good practice not to reuse passwords and to switch on multi-factor authentication.

Google’s Pixel Buds Pro fall back to an all-time low at Amazon

If you missed the chance to grab Google’s Pixel Buds Pro when they went on sale in August, don’t worry: The tech giant is giving you another shot at buying the wireless earbuds at a discount. Google’s Pixel Buds Pro (in Charcoal and Lemongrass) are currently on sale for $175, or $25 less than their retail price. That’s the same price they were listed for the first time they went on sale, and that’s also a record low for the model on the website. Seeing as the earbuds only came out a couple of months ago — and they’re the first in the line with active noise cancellation (ANC) — that’s already a great deal if you’ve been thinking of getting them in the first place.

Buy Google Pixel Buds Pro at Amazon – $175

We gave the Pixel Buds Pro a score of 87 in our review, where we praised them for having reliable touch controls and a solid ANC. They use a six-core audio chip powered by Google’s algorithms for active noise cancellation, and they also have a feature called “Silent Seal” to ensure that they can keep as much ambient noise out as possible. This Silent Seal tool uses sensors to adapt the buds to your ear shape when ANC is on, thereby minimizing sound leaks, as well. 

We also praised the earbuds for delivering a pleasantly punchy bass. And if Volume EQ, which adapts tuning when you adjust loudness, is on, the bass stays punchy even in low volumes. Another thing we liked about the Pixel Buds Pro is that they support wireless charging unlike their predecessors, and they have a quick-charge feature that gives you an hour of ANC listening after just five minutes.

Bottom line, we found the Pixel Buds Pro to be Google’s best earbuds to date. They’re also the tech giant’s most expensive model to date, so you probably wouldn’t want to miss this chance to grab them at a lower price. 

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US border forces are seizing Americans’ phone data and storing it for 15 years

If a traveler’s phone, tablet or computer ever gets searched at an airport, American border authorities could add data from their device to a massive database that can be accessed by thousands of government officials. US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) leaders have admitted to lawmakers in a briefing that its officials are adding information to a database from as many as 10,000 devices every year, The Washington Post reports. 

Further, 2,700 CBP officers can access the database without a warrant and without having to record the purpose of their search. These details were revealed in a letter Senator Ron Wyden wrote to CBP Commissioner Chris Magnus, where the lawmaker also said that CBP keeps any information it takes from people’s devices for 15 years. 

In the letter, Wyden urged the commissioner to update CBP’s practices so that device searches at borders are focused on suspected criminals and security threats instead of allowing “indiscriminate rifling through Americans’ private records without suspicion of a crime.” Wyden said CBP takes sensitive information from people’s devices, including text messages, call logs, contact lists and even photos and other private information in some cases. 

While law enforcement agencies are typically required to secure a warrant if they want to access the contents of a phone or any other electronic device, border authorities are exempted from having to do the same. Wyden also pointed out that travelers searched at airports, seaports and border crossings aren’t informed of their rights before their devices are searched. And if they refuse to unlock their electronics, authorities could confiscate and keep them for five days.

As The Post notes, a CBP official previously went on record to say that the agency’s directive gives its officers the authority to scroll through any traveler’s device in a “basic search.” If they find any “reasonable suspicion” that a traveler is breaking the law or doing something that poses a threat to national security, they can run a more advanced search. That’s when they can plug in the traveler’s phone, tablet or PC to a device that copies their information, which is then stored in the Automated Targeting System database.

CBP director of office of field operations Aaron Bowker told the publication that the agency only copies people’s data when “absolutely necessary.” Bowker didn’t deny that the agency’s officers can access the database, though — he even said that the number was bigger than what CBP officials told Wyden. Five percent of CBP’s 60,000 personnel have access to the database, he said, which translates to 3,000 officers and not 2,700.

Wyden wrote in his letter:

“Innocent Americans should not be tricked into unlocking their phones and laptops. CBP should not dump data obtained through thousands of warrantless phone searches into a central database, retain the data for fifteen years, and allow thousands of DHS employees to search through Americans’ personal data whenever they want.”

Two years ago, the Senator also called for an investigation into the CBP’s use of commercially available location data to track people’s phones without a warrant. CBP had admitted back then that it spent $500,000 to access a commercial database containing “location data mined from applications on millions of Americans’ mobile phones.”

Uber says it’s investigating a ‘cybersecurity incident’

Uber was hacked, and it had to take its internal messaging service and engineering systems offline to investigate the incident, according to The New York Times. Sources who talked to the publication said employees were instructed not to go on Slack, where the bad actor had posted a message that read “I announce I am a hacker and Uber has suffered a data breach” (along with a bunch of emoji) before it was pulled offline. In a tweet confirming the breach, the company said that it’s currently responding to a cybersecurity incident and that it’s now in touch with law enforcement. 

The company didn’t say what exactly the hacker was able to access and if user data was compromised. The Times says the hacker’s Slack message also listed databases they claim they were able to infiltrate, though. And based on screenshots seen by The Washington Post, the bad actor boasted about being able to gather internal code and messaging data. An Uber spokesperson explained that the bad actor was able to post on the company Slack after compromising a worker’s account. They then gained access to Uber’s other internal systems and posted an explicit photo on an internal page.

Bug bounty hunter and security researcher Sam Curry tweeted information reportedly from an Uber employee that could be about that explicit photo:

Uber admitting the incident and getting in touch with authorities shortly after it happened is a massive departure from how it handled the data breach it suffered back in 2016. The company hid that attack for a year and instead of reporting the incident, it paid the hackers $100,000 to delete the information they stole. Former Uber security chief Joseph Sullivan was fired and eventually charged with obstruction of justice for the role he played in the coverup, though his lawyers argued that he was used as a scapegoat. Uber settled with the Justice Department for failing to disclose the breach in July this year.