THE COMUNICANO for Thursday November 19th 2020

Once the pandemic passes and everyone can stop thinking about relocating to Butte, perhaps we can reconnect with the imaginative spirit that fuels what it means…

Recycled road company TechniSoil uses plastic waste, otherwise destined for landfill or our oceans, as a replacement for bitumen

Apple will pay $113 million to settle an investigation by nearly three dozen states into the tech giant’s past practice of slowing customers’ old iPhones in an attempt to preserve their batteries.

At Halide HQ, we’ve been busily working away on a very deep, technical analysis of what’s new in iPhone 12 cameras this year. All four of ’em. 

With iOS 14.3, the Shortcuts app no longer opens when you launch a shortcut from the home screen, which has major benefits when creating custom app icons.

YouTube’s updated Terms of Service will allow the company to run ads on videos from creators who are not in the Partner Program. That means those smaller creators won’t get a portion of the ad revenue.

With today’s update and redesign, Google is taking the service in a new direction with a strong emphasis on deals and helping you manage your personal finances.

Over the past year, Google has been working with banks and credit unions on co-branded checking and saving accounts. Google Pay Plex Account…

Google is updating Assistant for smart displays with new features to organize your family like Family Notes and the ability to locate family members on Google Maps. Fi is also getting a family-oriented upgrade, so you can better manage your children’s phones with data budgets and the ability to block calls and texts from strangers.

State and federal investigators are preparing to bring antitrust charges against Facebook that will challenge the tech giant’s acquisition of two rivals, Instagram and WhatsApp, alleging that the deals helped create an anti-competitive social networking juggernaut that has left users with few quality alternatives.

Instagram is continuing to develop its standalone messaging app, Threads. Last month, the company modified the app to make it possible for users to message everyone, instead of just “close friends,” as its other messaging app, Direct, once did. 

Restaurant management platform Toast today launched what the company is calling its “contactless payments suite” that includes two new social distancing-friendly ways for customers to pay for their meals: Toast Go 2 and Toast Order & Pay. The products aim to minimize staff-to-customer interactions for both off-premises orders and those that take place in the dining room, according to a press release sent to The Spoon

YouTube claims to be the world’s biggest jukebox — and now it wants to wring more ad dollars from the platform’s music fans.

The new Light Speaker wants to be a portable audio lantern. And while it gets a good flame going, the sound system doesn’t quite match the style of the aesthetic

These hackers are finding security bugs – and getting paid for it. That’s changing the dynamics of cybersecurity.

Elsewhere, US Congress has passed an IoT security Bill.