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Today’s topics include Apple looking into buying cellular phone services directly from major carriers, Intel marketing its latest processors to gamers, Windows 10 privacy concerns and an FTC-sponsored contest to combat robocalls.
Apple is apparently testing the waters to buy cellular phone services directly from major carriers in the United States and Europe so it can then offer mobile services to its own customers without a middleman.
This practice is not new, but it would be the first time that Apple got into this market, according to an Aug. 3 story by The Consumerist. By acquiring and reselling mobile services, Apple would become a so-called mobile virtual network operator, which would give it a new revenue stream for buyers of its iPhones and other mobile devices who would want Apple phone plans.
Intel is targeting the first of its 14-nanometer “Skylake” processors at gamers and PC enthusiasts. At the Gamescon 2015 show in Germany Aug. 5, Intel officials unveiled the company’s Core i7-6700K and i5-6600K desktop processors—and the supporting Z170 chipset—saying the chips offer a high-end gaming experience.
The chips come with up to four cores, a base frequency of 4.0GHz and a 10 percent performance boost over current high-end PC chips.
Privacy concerns are having an effect on how Windows 10 is being perceived on social media, according to data from Abode’s Digital Index.
Two days after the July 29 launch of the OS, sentiment began to sour, with 35 percent of mentions on Twitter, Instagram and other social networks relating to “sadness.”
Those bruised feeling were caused, in part, by features like the controversial WiFi Sense. WiFi Sense crowd sources WiFi hotspot access by sharing log-in details with Facebook, Skype and Outlook.com contacts.
The Federal Trade Commission has embarked on a number of initiatives over the years to combat annoying robocalls, even enlisting the support of the DefCon hacker conference community.
For this year’s DefCon event, which starts on Aug. 6 in Las Vegas, the FTC is back with a new contest called “Robocalls: Humanity Strikes Back.”
The contest is “a challenge to the security community to create a solution to identify robocalls received on landlines and on mobile phones and then forward them to a honeypot,” Patty Hsue, staff attorney in the Division of Marketing Practices at the FTC, told eWEEK.