News

WhatsApp Decides Not To Limit Users Who Don’t Accept Its New Privacy Policy

It seems that the backlash has been strong enough to make executives at Facebook reconsider their decisions because the latest announcement from the company contradicts the previous one.

Published

8 months ago

June 4, 2021

Joanna

whatsapp decides not to limit users who don't accept its new privacy policy

This year in February, Facebook-owned WhatsApp stated in an FAQ on its website that users who didn’t accept its new privacy policy by May 15^th would lose access to certain features, such as the ability to send or read messages from the app.

The announcement sparked a wave of protests on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms, with some users threatening to leave the messaging and voice-over-IP service app for more privacy-oriented alternatives, such as Signal, Telegram, or Threema.

It seems that the backlash has been strong enough to make executives at Facebook reconsider their decisions because the latest announcement from the company contradicts the previous one.

“Given recent discussions with various authorities and privacy experts, we want to make clear that we will not limit the functionality of how WhatsApp works for those who have not yet accepted the update,” said a WhatsApp spokesperson in a statement to The Verge.

WhatsApp

One reason why the new policy caused so much outrage was that many WhatsApp users believed that they would be required to share their phone numbers and other sensitive information with various third parties.

In reality, the policy update affects mainly businesses using the platform to sell their goods and services using the messaging app, allowing them to see what you’re saying and use this information for their own marketing purposes.

“We will continue to remind users from time to time and let them accept the update, including when they choose to use relevant optional features like communicating with a business that is receiving support from Facebook,” the WhatsApp spokesperson added.

The entire rollout of the policy update has been mishandled, to say the least, with WhatsApp seemingly not fully realizing how much more security and privacy-oriented have its users become since the messaging app started sharing user data with Facebook in 2016.

News

Samsung’s New Exynos 2200 Smartphone Chip Comes With AMD Xclipse GPU

The new GPU will enable next-level mobile gaming experiences, support 200 MP camera sensors, and ensure smooth performance under all circumstances.

Published

1 day ago

January 21, 2022

David

samsung's new exynos 2200 smartphone chip comes with amd xclipse gpu

Samsung’s Exynos smartphone series of ARM-based system-on-chips (SoCs) traditionally comes with Mali GPUs, but the company’s new premium SoC is breaking this tradition by featuring an Xclipse GPU with AMD’s RDNA 2 graphics architecture.

The new GPU, together with 8 Armv9 CPU cores (1 powerful Cortex-X2 core, 3 balanced Cortex-A710 cores, and 4 efficient Cortex-A510 cores) and an upgraded neural processing unit (NPU), are supposed to enable next-level mobile gaming experiences, support camera sensors with a resolution of up to 200 MP, and generally ensure smooth performance under all circumstances.

“Built on the most advanced 4-nanometer (nm) EUV (extreme ultraviolet lithography) process, and combined with cutting-edge mobile, GPU and NPU technology, Samsung has crafted the Exynos 2200 to provide the finest experience for smartphone users” said Yongin Park, President of System LSI Business at Samsung Electronics.

Samsung named its new GPU “Xclipse” to reflect the fact that it’s positioned between console and traditional mobile graphic processors. The South Korean conglomerate believes that the GPU will bring an end to the old era of mobile gaming and usher in a new era characterized by features that have until now been associated primarily with PC gaming, such as hardware-accelerated ray tracing and variable rate shading.

Also Read: BlackBerry Has Officially Pulled The Plug On Older Devices

According to David Wang, Senior Vice President of Radeon Technologies Group at AMD, the Xclipse GPU is the first result of multiple planned generations of AMD RDNA graphics in Exynos SoCs, so fans of Samsung smartphones have a lot to look forward to in the future.

In addition to the already mentioned performance-oriented improvements, the Exynos 2200 integrates a better 5G modem capable of achieving speeds of up to 10 Gbps by utilizing both 4G LTE and 5G NR signals at the same time. The SoC’s Integrated Secure Element (iSE) can safely store cryptographic information for enhanced data security and privacy.

The Exynos 2200 is currently being mass-produced, and it’s expected that it will be one of the main selling points of the upcoming Galaxy S22 smartphone.