Now back to personalized digital experiences. Take it away Alex. You’ve seen the headlines about Google removing support for third-party cookies. While the timeline continues to shift, the writing has been in the sand for a while now. And for good reason. According to a study by Pew Research Center, 72% of people feel that almost all of what they do online is being tracked by advertisers, technology firms or other companies, and 81% say that the potential risks they face because of data collection outweigh the benefits....

Also: Live blog: The best early Cyber Monday deals 2022 in real time This JBL FLIP 6 speaker is IPX7 waterproof certified, so even a quick dip in the pool won’t stop your party. Additionally, with 12 hours of battery life, you don’t have to worry about this speaker running out of battery life. Have multiple JBL speakers and thinking about getting another one? This JBL FLIP 6 speaker can pair with other JBL speakers to provide louder music – perfect for the summer....

Also read: Databricks, champion of data “lakehouse” model, closes $1B series G funding round On golden lake ZDNet spoke with Databricks CEO, Ali Ghodsi, who explained the money will fund research and development around the company’s data lakehouse concept, which involves uniting the performance characteristics of a data warehouse with the open formats used in data lake storage. In addition, the pure data lake and ML capabilities deriving from technologies like Apache Spark, Delta Lake and MLflow mean that data scientists, data engineers and software engineers, each using their preferred programming languages, can have direct file access to the lake, benefitting from its open architecture....

Also: Best Chromebook for students: Grade A picks Interested in more tech deals and reviews? Subscribe to the ZDNet Recommends newsletter and let our expert reviewers scour the internet for only the top products, services, and deals for you. The $109 deal ends this Friday, January 21, according to Best Buy’s website. With a potential 2022 model on the horizon, we expect this offer to be one of the last, as an attempt to make room for the new....

It’s not the same as many other pains. It enjoys a more refined quality, one that seeps into well-washed pores and hovers over already-strained nerves. Over recent months, one of these first-world pains has recently been plaguing regular flyers. Most of all, regular flyers on Delta Air Lines. Also: These are my 5 must-have devices for work travel now Since the pandemic began to ebb and customers began flying regularly for business and leisure – sometimes at the same time – Delta experienced an ever more exasperating problem....

Reps. Anna Eshoo of California and Jan Schakowsky of Illinois introduced the bill in the US House of Representatives, while Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey introduced it in the Senate. It expressly prohibits advertising based on personal information – defined as data linked or reasonably linkable to an individual or connected device, including inferred and derived data, contents of communications, internet browsing history, and advertising identifiers. It also prohibits advertisers from targeting ads based on protected class information (such as race or religion) and any information they purchase....

“[Didi Global] today announced that its board of directors has authorized and supports the company to undertake the necessary procedures and file the relevant application(s) for the delisting of the company’s ADSs [American Depositary Shares] from the New York Stock Exchange, while ensuring that ADSs will be convertible into freely tradable shares of the Company on another internationally recognized stock exchange at the election of ADS holders,” it said....

Here at ZDNET, we’ve taken you through many deep dives into the technologies driving digital transformation. Most of our coverage has been technology-focused, ranging from AI to cloud to mobile to the edge, and more. In this article, we’re going to take a slightly different approach. Rather than start with the technology and what you can do with it, we’re going to visit a prototypical business and look at all the technologies it might need to integrate in order to meet its growth and profitability goals....

DJI is set to make an official unveiling of the drone later this week, but an early review by ColorBee Photography Life Channel on YouTube seemed to have gone live a bit too early. The only problem was that the video was in Mandarin. While the original video was quickly pulled down, it wasn’t before it was copied and reuploaded to YouTube. These copies have since vanished. Fortunately, a clip still exists on Twitter....

Regardless of your credit score, Credit Karma can help you improve your credit and even help you find the right credit card for your credit score. Here’s what you need to know about Credit Karma. The service works with two of the three major credit reporting agencies, Equifax and TransUnion, so that you can be sure that you are receiving the latest information about your credit record. Unlike some of the other credit sites, Credit Karma provides actual credit scores instead of just providing an estimate....

Analysis by cybersecurity researchers at Digital Shadows found that there’s been a 65% increase in usernames and passwords sold, traded or dumped in cyber-criminal forums and underground marketplaces. Of the usernames and passwords available across hundreds of underground marketplaces, 6.7 billion were unique – up by a third when compared with previous analysis in 2020 – indicating that many usernames and passwords are being accessed and stolen multiple times, likely without the victim even being aware....

The Starlink and Tesla chief was responding to a news story about how the European Union and the US with its Five Eyes partners were blaming the Russian military for a cyberattack on Viasat’s KA-SAT network earlier this year. The attack occurred on February 24, one hour before Russian military invaded Ukraine. It caused communication outages across public authorities, businesses and users in Ukraine, and also affected users in several EU member states, the EU said in its statement....

Musk replied, saying he’d make the Starlink service active in Ukraine and send Starlink terminals. Some said this was just a PR stunt. These naysayers have been proven wrong. On February 28th, Fedorov tweeted, “Starlink – here. Thanks, @elonmusk,” along with a photograph of what appears to be a military truck filled with Starlink terminals. Musk replied, “You are most welcome.” Russia is continuing to interfere with Ukraine’s landline internet....

As a result, the rules will enter into force before the end of the year. That means by the end of 2024, all mobile devices sold in the EU will have a USB Type-C charging port – including Apple devices. Also: Don’t waste your money on these Apple products: December 2022 edition Under the common charger rules, all small and medium-sized devices, such as mobile phones, tablets, speakers and cameras, will require the same charger, making it easier to find the right cable and reducing the amount of chargers you need to purchase and carry around....

Over the past few years, F5 has expanded its services with software and cloud services designed to tackle the disparity between the enterprise push toward digital transformation and an existing reliance on legacy systems. According to an F5 survey, 88% of organizations say they operate both legacy and modern architectures today. When these systems, as well as Internet of Things (IoT), edge devices, cloud, remote collaborative tools, and mobile all, have to be considered by IT teams when considering potential attack vectors, managing such complexity and risk can be a challenge....

Still, blaming Apple’s iOS 14 changes, the social media giant gave light fourth-quarter guidance. The company also said it expects its “metaverse” investments will reduce operating profits by $10B for FY 2021, as it begins breaking out Facebook Reality Labs as its own business segment. Facebook expects fourth-quarter 2021 total revenue to be in a range of $31.5 billion to $34 billion, the company said. Analysts are expecting on-average revenue of $34....

Also: How to use public Wi-Fi safely: 5 tips you need to know A recent tweet from Denver FBI advises travelers, commuters, and civilians alike to avoid using free charging stations because of juice jacking. That is, with a few illegal modifications, criminals can introduce malware and surveillance software to steal your phone data as soon as you connect your device to an open port. The number one solution to the problem is to not charge your devices through a public outlet....

Back in September 2021, ZDNet’s Matthew Miller reviewed the Fitbit Charge 5 and pronounced it “easily the best fitness band that Fitbit has ever released”, giving it a 9.5 (Spectacular) rating. I’ve been using the Charge 5, which costs £169.99 in the UK ($179.95 in the US, A$269.95 in Australia), for four months and can add a long-term perspective. Although my running days are over (I’ve put my knees through far too many miles of pounding tarmac, running up hill and down dale, squelching through bogs and clambering up crags), I still want to keep track of my general activity and the Charge 5 suits me well....

Still, it has to be done each year, and the time to do so is nearly upon us. Here are a few steps to take before actually filing your taxes that make the filing process that much easier. Tax Preparation Tips Securely save each and every tax form that arrives in your mailbox. Designate a specific place to put all of those W-2s, 1099s and other statements as they arrive....

King is a former CIO with 30 years of consulting and executive experience, both in the US and internationally, with expertise in innovation, design thinking, and information technology. King also teaches innovation and design topics at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Institute of Design. Henry and I first met when we were tasked with the implementation of Salesforce’s first distributed ledger (blockchain) project at a large university in 2016....