Apple Watch Series 2 freezing problems make Apple pull watchOS update
Apple has pulled its watchOS 3.1.1 update after reports emerged of the software “bricking” some users’ Apple Watch Series 2 devices.
After downloading and installing the update, which was released alongside iOS 10.2, several Series 2 Watch owners noted that their devices no longer worked. Several posted images online of their Watches displaying a bright red exclamation mark on the screen with a link to Apple’s help website.
Further reports claimed that if a hard reboot didn’t work, they were being advised to head to their nearest Apple Store.
If you do see a similar warning on your Apple Watch follow these steps to force restart your device first:
- Press and hold both the side button and Digital Crown for at least 10 seconds, until you see the Apple logo appear.
- If the Apple logo doesn’t appear, you need to have the Watch serviced.
Force restarting has not worked for all users experiencing freezing after the 3.1.1 update issue, according to online reports.
It is likely that, with the latest version of watchOS being withdrawn for now that Apple is working on a fix. Our advice would be not to install it if you’ve downloaded 3.1.1 already, even if you only have a first generation Watch, just in case.
- Apple Watch Series 2 review: Fitness first
- Apple Watch Series 2 vs Apple Watch Series 1 vs Apple Watch (2015): What’s the difference?
Apple pulls down Watch update that bricked Series 2 devices
You can no longer download the latest update for Apple Watch, and that could be a good thing if you have a Series 2 device. Cupertino has pulled down watchOS 3.1.1 after it bricked several Series 2 watches, displaying a red exclamation mark on their screens along with a URL to the company’s support page for the wearable. The website doesn’t address the current issue, but it does have instructions on what to do in case your watch freezes.
The first course of action is to force restart the device by pressing and holding the side button and the Digital Crown at the same time. If you don’t see the Apple logo replace the exclamation mark after 10 seconds or so, then the next step is going to an Apple Store and having the device looked at. According to AppleInsider, force restarting didn’t work for a lot of affected users — they had to leave their devices with Geniuses, who had to send them in for servicing since they don’t have access to the Watch’s diagnostics port. Other people opted to ask for a device exchange when it became clear that force restarting wouldn’t work.
Cupertino has yet to reveal why watchOS 3.1.1 bricked some devices. But since the update was supposed to fix a bevy of bugs that affected notifications, messages and other features, Apple will most likely release a patched version that doesn’t freeze Watches in the near future.
Source: AppleInsider, MacRumors, Reddit
UK apps and websites that’ll save you time this Christmas
With so much to do around Christmas time, any app or website that can save you time and help you plough through that ‘to do’ list is always welcomed. Fancy outsourcing some of those projects? Here’s a few suggestions.
An app that writes your Christmas cards
Inkly lets you write and send real cards from your smartphone or tablet. Choose your Christmas card design; add a photo, if you choose; and take a photo of your handwritten message or write it straight on to your tablet with a stylus. Then choose the envelope, decide who you’re sending you cards to and Inkly prints it all out and sends it off. The app is free, but there is a charge for the cards and delivery. Still, it’ll save you a trip to the shops to buy the cards and the stamps.
Christmas gift lists
The Christmas Gift List Android app enables you to create gift lists, set a budget for each person you are buying for and mark the gifts as purchased as they are bought. So that you don’t repeat a gift the next year, it archives your gift lists once the new year rolls around. Santa’s Bag does a similar job on iOS devices.
Tree deliveries
No time to pick out your own Norwegian Spruce? Don’t worry, with Pines and Needles you can specify the height and type of tree and have it delivered to your living room. If you’re London-based they will even decorate it for you too. If you’re outside London, you can ask TaskRabbit to dress it for you.
Deck the halls… and the rest of the house
Do you fancy a Christmas light display to rival London’s Regent Street this year? Or, would you just like the interior of your home to look like a magazine Christmas at home spread. It’s time to bring in the professionals. The Christmas Decorators offer a nationwide decorating service and will cover everything from the wreath on the door, to the garland on the stairs. They will create a pretty amazing illuminated display outside your home too.
The Christmas food shop sorted
Don’t fancy negotiating a trolley through the aisles of a heaving supermarket to the piped out tune of Jingle Bells? Not a problem. At Riverford Organic you can order a full Christmas Dinner box for delivery. Their Christmas Dinner Box with Turkey and Trimmings includes festive veg, an organic turkey, pork and cranberry stuffing balls, pigs in blankets, cranberry sauce, mince pies, a Christmas pudding, clementines, oatcakes and a Cropwell Bishop stilton.
Christmas Dinner Under Control
Do you get in a tizz just thinking about all the preparation you need to do for Christmas dinner? The Perfect Christmas Dinner app for iOS provides expert guidance from the professional chefs at the renowned Ashburton Cookery School. There are over 25 video recipes that you can tap into, covering everything from creating canapes to preparing the turkey, delicious desserts and even drinks. Plus, there is a shopping list maker and menu list too.
How to save a few pounds buying Christmas gifts online
Before purchasing anything online, it’s worth checking to see if you can knock a few pounds off the final price. It all adds up and you’ll be amazed at how much you could actually slash from your overall Christmas shopping spend. Here are a few tips to help you do just that.
Set off from a cashback site
Instead of going to the retail website you want to buy from direct, start from a cashback website such as TopCashback or Quidco. These sites get rewarded for directing their members on to commercial websites and they pass all, or some of this money, on to their members. If you’re looking to buy a tablet, for example, start out by searching relevant retailers on a cashback site that you’ve joined. When you’ve found an offering with an attractive cash back incentive – 5 percent or more is not uncommon – click through to the site via the cashback site link. Once your purchases have been tracked and confirmed, that money will arrive in your cashback account a few weeks down the line, ready for you to transfer to your bank account.
It’s not an instant price reduction and some cashback deals don’t work with other promotions, so check the terms before committing to purchase, but many people save hundreds of pounds over the course of a year via cashback sites.
Be on the look out for deals
If you don’t have a discount code, don’t just ignore this box on the payment page and go straight to pay. Open another window and search for a discount code for the retailer you are about to buy from. You will be surprised at how often you can find valid codes offering anything from free delivery to a few pounds off at the checkout. Simply copy and paste the code and watch the price fall. To be one of the first to know about online promotions sign up to deal publishing sites MyVoucherCodes or HotUKDeals.
Do a quick price comparison
Before you start off, it’s always best to search for what you want to buy on a price comparison site such as Google Shopping, PriceRunner or Kelkoo. It’ll help you understand what you can expect to pay and possibly uncover retailers you never thought to check. If you do find it cheaper elsewhere, go back through stages one and two again to see if you can find the retailer on a cashback site to reduce the price further (and you might as well do a quick discount code search while you’re at it).
Pay with a cashback card
Finally, some providers will offer payment cards that reward you with cashback on all purchases made. Look for deals paying between 0.5 percent and 1 percent cashback on all card purchases; some cards with an annual fee will pay out more than this and other cards will pay out more during the first few months of membership. Money Saving Expert has a good overview on the most up to date credit card deals, and it’ll help ensure you get it paid off quickly. While the amounts may not seem much, every little helps.
Netgear admits its routers are vulnerable to remote attacks
Several Netgear routers, including some of most popular models on Amazon, have been vulnerable to remote attacks for months. According to Wired, a security researcher named Andrew Rollins discovered the flaw and notified the company about it way back on August 25th but didn’t get a reply. He went public with the information after waiting for over three months, prompting Homeland Security to issue a warning a few days ago. Now, the company has finally admitted that it’s aware of the problem, named all the affected devices and released patches for some of them.
Based on Netgear’s announcement, there are 11 affected devices.
- R6250*
- R6400*
- R6700*
- R6900
- R7000*
- R7100LG
- R7300
- R7900
- R8000*
- D6220
- D7000
The company already issued patches for the R6250, R6400, R6700, R7000 and R8000, but you’ll have to install them manually since Netgear doesn’t have a means to push an over-the-air update. It’s unclear why the company isn’t done putting patches together for the other models — Rollins told Wired that it’s making Netgear look incompetent as the flaw is “not that hard to fix at all.”
In case you’re using any of the models that has yet to be patched, you may want to take Homeland Security’s advice. The flaw is pretty easy to exploit, after all, and a hacker could easily take control of your computers to make them part of a botnet. DHS pointed to a blog post by computer science researcher Bas van Schaik for a temporary fix, though it mentioned a much easier option you can take: stop using your router until a patch is available.
Via: Wired
Source: Netgear, Homeland Security
DaVinci Resolve Video Editing Suite Update Brings Touch Bar Support and More
Blackmagic Design today announced a new update to its professional video editing and color correction software, DaVinci Resolve, featuring Touch Bar support on compatible MacBook Pros.
The 12.5.4 update brings context sensitive tools to the OLED keyboard strip that dynamically change based on the current task. For example, on the Media page, users can instantly add the current clip to a bin, switch between icon and list view, display clip attributes, search media and show metadata simply by tapping on the Touch Bar.
When editing video, the Touch Bar is context sensitive and displays commands based on whether the media pool, source viewer or timeline are selected. Customers can quickly switch between trim modes, navigate the timeline and perform different types of edits without ever having to use the mouse or pull down menus.
Colorists can use the Touch Bar to do everything from adjusting primary sliders and color wheels, to changing mid tone detail, saturation, tint and more. The Touch Bar can be used to save or wipe gallery stills, toggle viewer modes, work with split screen mode to compare shots and even use multi touch gestures to adjust multiple color parameters, such as printer lights, at the same time.
The update also brings support for Rec. 2100, a superset of Rec. 2020 that defines high dynamic range (HDR) formats. New sliders have been added to control Dolby VisionTM analysis data, while support has been added for Grass Valley HQ and HQX codecs on Mac, among other additions.
The DaVinci Resolve and DaVinci Resolve Studio 12.5.4 update is now available for download from the Blackmagic Design website for all current DaVinci Resolve users.
Tags: Touch Bar, DaVinci Resolve
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Recording industry writes Trump on the eve of tech CEO visit
According to multiple reports, on Wednesday a number of high-profile tech execs will visit President-elect Donald Trump. The list includes Larry Page and Eric Schmidt, Tim Cook, Sheryl Sandberg, Jeff Bezos, Brian Krzanich and a number of others. Before that meeting goes down, however, the “music community” consisting of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and friends decided this was the time to speak up. In a letter (PDF) to Trump, the industry made its case for how valuable music is, and how that value (for their member companies) is being siphoned away by tech companies that don’t do enough to make sure every note is paid for.
What they may have forgotten to mention is how common these letters are. This isn’t even the first letter from the industry to Trump, after members of the RIAA’s National Advocacy Committee wrote him at the end of November insisting that he take a look at the state of copyright. That’s not special treatment either, as the RIAA wrote Obama frequently, to congratulate him on appointing some of its lawyers to positions in the Justice Department in 2009, and in 2010 in favor of the (later rejected by the EU) Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement.
This time, as Billboard explains, instead of just piracy, it’s also focusing things like the consent decrees that govern industry licensing through ASCAP and BMI, and the “value gap” between what different services like Spotify and YouTube pay for music.
While there are many with concerns they’d like to have addressed by the Trump administration, it seems like this letter was really for publicly addressing those tech execs. If the RIAA wanted Trump to read its letter, they could’ve just had Kanye hand it to him when they had their meeting today.
Source: RIAA
Wall Street wants algorithms that trade based on Trump’s tweets
President elect Donald Trump’s ability to move the stock market with a tweet became readily apparent yesterday after an early morning tweet about Lockheed Martin’s F-35 fighter jet program caused the company to lose $4 billion in market value. While that’s a major loss for the company, it actually presents an opportunity for traders on Wall Street, some of whom have already started looking for ways to easily cash in on the volatility Trump brings to the market.
The F-35 program and cost is out of control. Billions of dollars can and will be saved on military (and other) purchases after January 20th.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 12, 2016
As Politico reports today some traders and hedge funds are not only keeping a close eye on Trump’s twitter feed — they are already working on ways to plug that feed directly into their computer trading models.
“There are people diligently working to create algorithms for Trump’s tweets,” Zachary David, a senior analyst with consulting firm KOR Group told Politico. “And if he continues to increase the size of the data set then we’ll likely see full automation sooner than later.” But having an algorithm interpret natural language is a complex task (just ask Apple’s Siri engineers), further complicated by Trump’s use of irony and sarcasm that can be difficult to parse for meaning. (Take his frequent usage of “Sad!” for example.) And a wrong call from the algorithm could lead to a big hit in some fund manager’s portfolio.
On the other hand, the market also tends to correct itself, as it did after Boeing’s stock took a dive following Trump’s tweet about the high cost of Air Force One. In that case, Boeing’s stock bounced back to a new high, but if that pattern holds it will present another clear opportunity for savvy traders to swoop in, buy Trump-depressed stock at a discount and then profit off of the correction.
Source: Politico, The Guardian
Slack now has built-in video calling
Slack’s quest to become a do-it-all chat app continues. The company is trotting out video calling support in the Mac, Windows and Chrome versions of its client, making it easy to see a coworker or catch up with a friend. Anyone can start a one-on-one chat, while those on paid plans can have calls with as many as 15 people at once — handy for virtual meetings where your voice isn’t enough. This isn’t exactly a revolutionary feature by itself, but Slack adds its signature emoji responses to let you raise your hand or offer approval without interrupting the discussion.
You can still tell the app to default to using third-party video services like Google Hangouts, so you’re not locked into Slack’s software.
The feature should reach desktop users in the “next few days.” Mobile users aren’t left completely in the lurch, but they won’t get the full experience, unfortunately. They can join an active video call, but only on the audio side. There’s no mention of whether or not video calls are coming to mobile, but that’s likely given Slack’s tendency to mirror features across platforms whenever it can.
The upgrade isn’t exactly coming out of left field. Facebook already has a Slack competitor in Workplace, and Microsoft has been signalling that it’s eager to take on Slack with a Skype upgrade. Video calling could keep you from considering rival apps, whether it’s just for video chats or for a wholesale switch.
Via: The Next Web
Source: Slack
Tesla is working on a fix for jerks parking at Superchargers
What’s a Tesla owner to do when they roll up to a Supercharger station and every terminal is occupied by a fully-charged car? That’s a question CEO Elon Musk needs to find an answer to. He recently acknowledged the issue on Twitter and said that the company “will take action,” as spotted by Autoblog. What that will look like isn’t clear at the moment.
Tesla has already announced that starting January 1st, customers won’t get free unlimited charging with a new vehicle purchase — a decision that’s also helping the forthcoming Model 3 hit a lower price point. It might also keep charging stations from getting even more crowded. If Musk can figure out a way to get reusable rockets to Mars, coming up with a way to stop jerks from treating charging stations like parking meters should be comparatively easy.
Via: Autoblog
Source: Elon Musk (Twitter)
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