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What’s on TV this week: ‘Star Wars: The Clone Wars’

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For fans of Star Wars: The Clone Wars, the wait is almost over. The next big Disney+ exclusive is this animated series, which is kicking off its seventh season after several years on the shelf. Meanwhile, AMC brings back The Walking Dead as well as the season premiere of Better Call Saul. Amazon Prime is also loading up this week, as it debuts the Jordan Peele-produced and Al Pacino-starring series Hunters. Jojo Rabbit and Midway are both available on Ultra HD Blu-ray this week, and for gamers you can check out the remastered Bayonetta release on PS4 and Xbox One.

Look after the break to check out each day’s highlights, including trailers and let us know what you think (or what we missed).

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‘Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate’ will be free on Epic’s game store this week

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The Epic Games Store’s freebies can be hit or miss, but this is one you might want to consider if you’re a stealth action fan. Epic is making Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate available for free between February 20th and February 27th. It’s a 2015-era game (the last before Ubisoft’s ‘reinvented’ Origins), but you’re still getting a modern, generally well-received take on AC‘s mix of sneaking, parkour and one-against-many combat — it’s just set in Victorian London instead of ancient Egypt or Greece.

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Google pulls alleged UAE spying app ToTok from the Play Store, again

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Google confirmed to TechCrunch that it did remove ToTok from the Play Store, but didn’t say why. The company did, however, make it clear that the app wasn’t pulled due to an outside request from, for example, a government agency. TechCrunch speculates that a policy violation is what caused the app to be removed. The updated version of ToTok that appeared in January added a prompt to allow the app to access users’ contact list, according to Vice. Just because ToTok was removed from the Play Store doesn’t mean Android users can’t access it — it’s still available on third-party app stores, and ToTok’s website offers an APK file to install the app directly.

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You can make your own rotary cellphone

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At its heart, the phone is based on a custom ATmega2560v mainboard, Adafruit Fona 3G cellular equipment and a rotary dial from a Western Electric Trimline phone, all stuffed into a 3D-printed casing. You won’t have to endure 1960s-era limitations, though. A flexible 2.1-inch e-paper display can show missed calls and other vital messages, while shortcut buttons let you quickly dial favorite contacts. You can also check the battery life (good for about 24 hours) and signal strength with “near instantaneous” displays.

You’ll have to do some shopping if you’re going have a rotary cellphone of your own. The kit only includes the mainboard and the 3D-printed housing. You’ll have to buy everything else, and that might be tricky when Trimline rotary dials aren’t exactly common. And did we mention that the design is most definitely not waterproof? Still, it might be your best bet if you’re determined to have the tactile feel of a rotary phone and don’t mind giving up data and texting.

Haupt certainly doesn’t mind. For her, this is a passion project and her personal phone. It’s meant to go “as far from having a touchscreen” as possible, eliminating the complexity for someone who just wants to call people with minimal fuss (and, we’d add, a bit of whimsy). Think of it as the handset for those who find even basic flip phones to be too much of a hassle.

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Microsoft releases its unified Office app for Android

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There are some catches. As Android Police warned, the current Android app isn’t optimized for tablets or Chromebooks. You can’t even use it in landscape mode. The iOS equivalent to the app is also nowhere to be seen at this point. We’ve asked Microsoft if it can elaborate on its plans.

This could still be a significant step forward for mobile productivity, so long as you’re willing to invest in Microsoft’s ecosystem. For years, both Microsoft and Google have insisted on separate apps for each task, requiring you to juggle those apps to get things done. This all-in-one approach might save you time if you’re working on both a report and the presentation to sell that report to your boss.

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Apple warns of iPhone ‘supply shortages’ due to coronavirus outbreak

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Apple is expecting a hit to its bottom line as a result of the supply shortages.

On top of this, retail demand is a problem. Many official and third-party stores have closed, and those that are open have reduced schedules and “very low” traffic. Apple is slowly reopening stores, but there’s little doubt that the company is feeling the pinch.

The company stressed that the health of its workers was its “paramount priority,” and that it intended to restore operations as safely as possible. It was also more than doubling its donation toward fighting the coronavirus strain. As a consequence, though, it no longer expects to meet its revenue targets for the quarter ending in March. Apple is far from the only business affected by the outbreak, but it may feel the effects more severely than others.

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Watch the first trailer for Spielberg’s Apple TV+ series ‘Amazing Stories’

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Amazing Stories first aired on NBC in 1985. After just two seasons, it has taken a long and seemingly difficult path to make its way back onto TV screens. Reports that Apple and Spielberg were working together to revive the series first came out in 2017. It seems to have suffered production delays along the way, with showrunner Bryan Fuller (of Star Trek: Discovery and American Gods fame) departing in 2018.

We’ll have to wait to see how the series turns out, but it’s clear Apple needs more interesting content to make TV+ compelling. Besides The Morning Show and For All Mankind, there haven’t been a lot of reasons to revisit the service — even if Apple has been generous about giving out free trials.

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EU won’t let Facebook tell it how to regulate tech giants

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This comes as Facebook is promoting its “Charting a Way Forward: Online Content Regulation” white paper, which offers guidelines for future regulations. Breton dismissed the guidelines proposed in Facebook’s white paper as insufficient. He noted that Facebook didn’t mention its own market dominance or clearly outline its responsibilities.

“It’s not for us to adapt to this company, it’s for this company to adapt to us,” Breton told reporters after a meeting with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

On Wednesday, Breton is expected to announce proposals to regulate US tech giants and state-aided Chinese companies, as well as proposals for governing artificial intelligence. Zuckerberg has called for regulation in the past, but Facebook’s current recommendations propose, for example, giving tech companies flexibility to experiment with content moderation technology. Critics say the company isn’t acting fast enough.

In a statement EU justice chief Vera Jourova said, “Facebook cannot push away all the responsibility. Facebook and Mr. Zuckerberg have to answer themselves a question ‘who do they want to be’ as a company and what values they want to promote.”

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Jeff Bezos pledges $10 billion to combat climate change

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He says the Bezos Earth Fund will support scientists, activists and NGOs, with the first grants slated to go out sometime this summer. Besides that information, Bezos didn’t provide many details on the fund.

While Bezos is likely to get a lot of favorable coverage for the move, it’s worth pointing out that, as the CEO of Amazon, he’s not had the best track record when it comes to climate change. Bezos only announced Amazon’s recent climate pledge after the company was pressured by its employees to take action. Moreover, there are aspects of the plan that come off as self-serving. For instance, Amazon said it would purchase 100,000 electric vans from Rivian, a company in which the retailer lead a $700 million investment round. It’s also worth pointing out that Amazon’s Prime delivery service is likely a contributor to the overall problem.

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RCS messaging comes to Windows 10’s Your Phone app

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According to Microsoft’s Roberto Bojorquez, the new RCS functionality is available “starting with” the Galaxy S20, suggesting the feature will work with other Samsung devices (and perhaps other Android phones) in the future. The integration comes as part of Samsung and Microsoft’s ongoing partnership, which has in the past seen the South Korean company integrate apps like OneDrive into its devices.

If you don’t plan to buy the S20, you can still send RCS messages on your computer by using the Google Messages web client. But as with everything RCS-related, there are a lot of requirements both you and the person you’re texting have to meet before you can see the protocol at work. While it’s a small step, efforts like the one Microsoft is making here help make the platform more useful.



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