All 27 member states voted in favor of granting the UK an adequacy decision – a special status that recognizes that the country’s data laws do as good a job as the European GDPR at protecting personal information. Countries that are granted adequacy gain the right to receive and process the personal data of EU citizens, which many organizations rely on to do business. SEE: Network security policy (TechRepublic Premium) The UK’s departure from the EU has meant that the country has ceased to be protected by the GDPR, and instead relies on domestic laws to manage citizens’ personal data....

The central banks commenced work on the project, Project Dunbar, as a common platform for international settlements using CBDCs in order to theoretically bring about significant improvements to cross-border payments, much like how national payments systems have made domestic payments seamless, instant and low cost in many countries. According to the central banks, Project Dunbar has confirmed that the use of such a platform is technically viable. The financial institutions found, however, that implementing one single global platform was unlikely....

Outgoing ACCC chair Rod Sims, in his annual speech to the Committee for Economic Development Australia, said the ACCC’s compliance and enforcement efforts would focus on these priority items due to their growing prevalence as of late. “Consumers are facing a growing number of manipulative techniques to exploit or pressure them, and other practices that seek to distort or disregard their consumer choice in the digital economy,” Sims said, when explaining the ACCC’s consumer concerns for the 2022/23 financial year....

What is it like to work in an accounting job? From natural resource extraction to manufacturing, accountants serve essential financial roles in organizations across all economic sectors. Every organization needs skilled accounting professionals to keep records, maintain budgets, and monitor financial activities. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, new accountant and auditor jobs are projected to grow by nearly 100,000 from 2020 to 2030. Individuals with an accounting degree who wish to work as cost estimators and budget analysts also have positive job prospects....

AI art generators draw information from what they’re exposed to, as do human artists. But there’s a difference in scale in the way that humans go through input, process it, and attempt to produce something new when compared to AI. When DeviantArt released its AI art generator, DreamUp, there was immediate backlash from its community over community artwork automatically being opted in for use in AI datasets. Also: How to use DALL•E 2 to turn your wildest imaginations into tangible art Creators would have to manually opt out in order to protect their work from future AI image training....

Customers in Australia and Singapore will also no longer pay a surcharge fee to use a Visa credit card under the agreement. Related Coverage It’s all supposed to be very funny. It stars Scarlett Johansson and her husband. But is this really such a chucklefest? The first suburban store will open up outside of Seattle.

“These costs should be going down over time with innovation and technological advancements, which allows merchants to reinvest savings into low prices and shopping enhancements for customers. Yet, despite these advancements, some cards’ cost of payments continue to stay high or even rise.” The spokesperson said as a result of Visa’s “continued high cost of payments”, a surcharge is currently being added to Visa credit card payments in Australia. This has been in place in Singapore since August....

It has already announced great discounts that started going live from Nov. 20. We’ve highlighted those below. You can expect some more rollbacks to be unveiled throughout Cyber Monday Week, too. More Cyber Monday 2020 deals Blink Outdoor Camera Kits are up to $130 offFire 7 Kids Edition Tablet for $59.99 ($40 off) Echo Dot (3rd Generation) for $20 ($30 off) 

It also aims to provide you with a great streaming experience with rich, clean audio from twin 12W speakers and access to thousands of shows and movies. Also: OLED vs QLED: Which is better? However, the biggest strike against the Omni QLED is that a lot of its cool functionality is locked behind Alexa. This means that in order to get cool features like making voice or video calls, playing trivia, or checking the weather, you’ll have to buy an Echo device and set up an Alexa profile if you don’t have one already....

That approach has now netted Agility Robotics, maker of Cassie and, more recently, of commercial robots designed to work alongside people in logistics and warehouse environments, an impressive $150M Series B, which it will use to implement human-robot collaboration in logistics warehouses. The humanoid robots are capable of carrying out a number of potential warehouse tasks previously done by humans and can be deployed flexibly in various environments. “Unprecedented consumer and corporate demand have created an extraordinary need for robots to support people in the workplace,” explained Damion Shelton, CEO of Agility Robotics....

“Using the same launch vehicle for our prototype mission gives us a chance to practice payload integration, processing, and mission management procedures ahead of those full-scale commercial launches,” Project Kuiper VP Rajeev Badyal said in a statement. Also: Starlink speeds have slowed as more people sign up, report shows

Let it out, let it go, let it wash over others, and see the reaction. Somehow, releasing your inner contradictions, imperfections, and torment can make you feel free. Or, at least, a little lighter. I was moved to an exalted plane of empathy, therefore, upon discovering that an American Airlines executive told it the way (he truly feels) it is. Brian Znotins is the airline’s vice president of network planning....

Thanks to social media, we get plenty of practice, and we’ve honed our whiny skills to near-perfection. We need to talk about all this. Please lie down on my purple chaise-longue and think of all the things that fill you with distaste, disaffection and even downright loathing. Now narrow those feelings in the direction of gadgets. Which ones fill you with despair? Which ones force you to scream at them?...

The concept vehicle was displayed on stage at CES and boasts an ultra-modern, sleek, and futuristic design. The Inception Concept can wake up as you approach the car, recognize you, greet you, and then automatically adjust the car to your preferred driving settings. Also: Samsung’s Ready Care smart-car system is straight from a Sci-Fi movie The biggest departure from a typical vehicle is the elimination of a cabin. Instead of a cabin, which would traditionally hold a driver and a passenger, this vehicle has a “lounge,” which Peugeot CEO Linda Jackson referred to as a living space during the presentation....

As for user-facing features, today’s update adds scrollable screenshots, allowing you to capture an entire conversation thread or webpage in one screenshot. Google also improved auto-rotation on Android phones by using the front-facing camera to determine which direction the screen should be rotated at any given moment. Additionally, Android 12 improved on-device search by allowing third-party developers to make data buried deep inside their app available to the device search feature....

Instead, Google says that we can expect to see Android 12 released for Pixel phones first “in the next few weeks.” As for other devices, the post on the Android Developers Blog says to expect the likes of Samsung, and OnePlus, among others, to roll out Android 12 later this year. Google revealed that the Android 12 beta program had over 225,000 participants who filed almost 50,000 issue reports. Google will hold its Android Dev Summit on Oct....

So why is that? Am I being paid by Apple to say that? Pffft, no. The flow of money there goes in one direction, and one direction only. And it’s not like I don’t have Android manufacturers trying to throw phones at me pretty much daily. I could literally have a dozen new Android handsets every month to play with if I so desired. The problem, as my esteemed ZDNet colleague Jason Perlow pointed out, is support....

The Crash Detection feature will be available on the all new Apple Watches and iPhones announced at the event, including the iPhone 14, iPhone 14 Pro, Apple Watch Series 8, Apple Watch Ultra and Apple Watch SE. Both the watches and the phones are able to detect the crash by feeling, hearing and measuring the crash. To do this, the devices utilize the latest technology such as gyroscopes, accelerometers, microphones, barometers and real-world data....

According to Patently Apple, the patent covers an Apple-designed dual-display laptop that swaps out the keyboard for a virtual one that’s not unlike the keyboard on an iPad, but with multiple possible layouts to support different use cases, such as work and gaming. It depicts a device featuring biometric sensors, a fingerprint sensor, and a wireless charger. While it’s just a patent and doesn’t necessarily suggest Apple will manufacture such a product, it raises the possibility of touch features from the iPhone and iPad, or even the expensive camera setup in the iPhone 12 that supports Face ID, being brought across to the MacBook....

Up until now, preview versions of both operating systems were only made available to those with a paid developer account. However, now that the updates are part of Apple’s public beta program, anyone with a compatible iPhone or iPad can install an early version of iOS 15 and iPadOS 15. Apple also released the first public beta of WatchOS 8 for the Apple Watch. The operating systems will be finished and officially released this fall, so anyone who decides to take part in the beta will have to deal with some bugs and issues....