safety

Electromagnetism fears mean Apple can no longer sell the iPhone 12 in France. The company rejects government claims that the phone exceeds safe emission limits. The government agency which made the ruling stands by its claims. Officials say that if ... Apple doesn't fully withdraw the handset from sale, the country may demand a recall of handsets from customers, a costly and embarrassing outcome for Apple. The move has proven particularly controversial as its disputed whether exposure to electromagnetic fields at the levels a phone could put out cause any risk to humans. Close Range Emissions Too ... (view more)

If you use an Android phone, there's a good chance you use the mobile edition of Chrome to access web pages. If so, that experience is about to get a little safer and easier. Google has unveiled a range of changes to Chrome for Android including ... enhances security checks, a display tweak that could extend battery life, and an easier "autofill" tool for online forms. Safety Check Tools Added The first change is the addition of Safety Check, a feature that's currently only available on desktop versions of Chrome. It makes it easy to carry out three basic checks: Making sure ... (view more)

Facebook has announced four changes to its Safety Check feature for dealing with local crises. The changes will offer more detail about what's currently happening, coordinate local help, and help make fundraising easier. Safety Check is a feature ... that lets people in the geographic area of a natural disaster, terror attack or other crisis quickly mark themselves as "safe." The idea is that this saves people exchanging a plethora of messages in order to check if somebody is OK. That's particularly important with voice calls and text messages, which can easily overload local ... (view more)

Facebook is to make it easier for people to offer practical help after a crisis or natural disaster. It's an update to an existing tool for people to check up on loved ones. When triggered, the "Safety Check" feature will check which Facebook users ... are in the relevant physical area, based on their IP address or the location information on their mobile device. They'll then be asked to choose options of "I'm safe" or "I'm not in the area." Their Facebook friends will then see them listed as safe. The idea is that publicizing somebody as being " ... (view more)

What's worse than a bunch of smartphones catching fire? A company that recalls them, reissues them, and the reissued ones also going up in flames. That's what's happened to Samsung with its Galaxy Note 7 handset, which ultimately led the company to ... permanently discontinue and abandon the model altogether. Launched in August, 2016, the Samsung Note 7 originally received great reviews and was listed by some as not only among the best Samsung phones, but also the best of any phones running the Android operating system. Like previous Samsung Note models, it has a huge screen that ... (view more)

Elon Musk, the man behind the Tesla electric cars, says that the "Autopilot" and other self-driving systems will never be perfectly safe. Instead, he insists that safety for such features is improving, and the latest changes would have prevented a ... recent death. In the case of Tesla models, the autopilot cars are not fully autonomous in the same way as self-driving cars, such as Google's test vehicles . Instead, the technology is pitched somewhere between such cars and the far more common 'cruise control' feature. The Autopilot feature on the Tesla Model S combines a windshield camera, a radar ... (view more)

Facebook says more than four million Parisians used its "Safety Check" feature to reassure friends they were safe after last weeks terrorist attacks in Paris . But the company has been forced to explain why it did not activate the feature for ... bombings in Beirut. The Safety Check feature was introduced to help people quickly and easily let others know they are safe during a disaster situation. The idea is to help cut down the number of phone calls and text messages sent asking if somebody is OK, or to let others know they are OK. That in turn is designed to reduce the pressures on ... (view more)

Is Google Glass a threat to privacy and safety? A recent survey seems to suggest exactly that. Google Glass , which remains in the development stage, is a special headset that allows users to access emails, text messages, navigation data, and more. ... The device can also be used to snap pictures and record video, which can then be uploaded to social media sites like Twitter and Facebook. Currently, Google is testing Google Glass using "explorers" -- or freelance agents who were given an early build of the device in exchange for their feedback on its overall functionality. Privacy, ... (view more)