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Readers weigh in on artificial intelligence driving PC growth, Apple’s services revenue, wisdom from Dan Fuss, and concerns about private equity

Microsoft said on Friday that the outages that affected certain services of the company through some of the

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After the US Supreme Court struck down his administration’s plan to cancel federal student loan debts for millions of Americans, President Joe Biden has unveiled a “new path” for relief, one that he assured is “legally sound” but will “take longer”. In remarks from the White House on 30 June, the president hit out at Republican state officials and legislators who supported the lawsuit which enabled the nation’s highest court to strike down his student debt forgiveness initiative, accusing many of them of hypocrisy for taking money from pandemic-era relief programs while opposing relatively meager relief for student loan borrowers. “Some of the same elected Republicans, members of Congress who strongly opposed relief for students, got hundreds of thousands of dollars themselves ... several members of Congress got over a million dollars — all those loans are forgiven,” he said. “The hypocrisy is stunning,” he said. Accompanied by Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona, Mr Biden opened his remarks by acknowledging that there are likely “millions of Americans” who now “feel disappointed and discouraged or even a little bit angry about the court’s decision today on student debt”. “And I must admit, I do too,” he said. Still, Mr Biden reminded Americans that his administration has previously taken actions to reform student loan repayment programs to make them easier to access, and to keep borrowers from spending more than five per cent of disposable income on monthly repayments, and to strengthen loan forgiveness options for borrowers who take public service jobs. The president has directed Mr Cardona to “find a new way” to grant similar loan relief “as fast as we can” in a way that is “consistent” with the high court’s decision. On Friday, the Education Department issued the first step in the process of issuing new regulations under this so-called “negotiated rulemaking” process. In the mean time, Mr Biden said his administration is creating a temporary year-long “on-ramp repayment programme” under which conditions will remain largely the same as they have during the three-year pandemic-era pause in payments which is set to expire this fall. The department’s 12-month “on ramp” to begin repayments, from 1 October through 30 September, aims to prevent borrowers who miss repayments in that time period from delinquency, credit issues, default and referral to debt collection agencies. “During this period if you can pay your monthly bills you should, but if you cannot, if you miss payments, this on-ramp temporarily removes the threat of default,” he said. “Today’s decision closed one path. Now we’re going to pursue another — I’m never gonna stop fighting,” the president continued, adding that he will use “every tool” at his disposal to get Americans the student debt relief they need so they can “reach [their] dreams”. “It’s good for the economy. It’s good for the country. It’s gonna be good for you,” he said. Asked by reporters whether he’d given borrowers false hope by initiating the now-doomed forgiveness plan last year, Mr Biden angrily chided the GOP for having acted to take away the path to debt relief for millions. “I didn’t give any false hope. The question was whether or not I would do even more than was requested. What I did I felt was appropriate and was able to be done and would get done. I didn’t give borrowers false hope. But the Republicans snatched away the hope that they were given and it’s real, real hope,” he said. The Supreme Court’s 6-3 ruling from the conservative majority argues that the president does not have the authority to implement sweeping relief, and that Congress never authorised the administration to do so. Under the plan unveiled by the Biden administration last year, millions of people who took out federally backed student loans would be eligible for up to $20,000 in relief. Borrowers earning up to $125,000, or $250,000 for married couples, would be eligible for up to $10,000 of their federal student loans to be wiped out. Those borrowers would be eligible to receive up to $20,000 in relief if they received Pell grants. Roughly 43 million federal student loan borrowers would be eligible for that relief, including 20 million people who stand to have their debts cancelled completely, according to the White House. Lawyers for the Biden administration contended that he has the authority to broadly cancel student loan debt under the Higher Education Relief Opportunities for Students Act of 2003, which allows the secretary of education to waive or modify loan provisions following a national emergency – in this case, Covid-19. Since March 2020, with congressional passage of the Cares Act, monthly payments on student loan debt have been frozen with interest rates set at zero per cent. That pandemic-era moratorium, first enacted under Donald Trump and extended several times, was paused a final time late last year. Over the last decade, the student loan debt crisis has exploded to a balance of nearly $2 trillion, most of which is wrapped up in federal loans. The amount of debt taken out to support student loans for higher education costs has surged alongside growing tuition costs, increased private university enrollment, stagnant wages and GOP-led governments stripping investments in higher education and aid, putting the burden of college costs largely on students and their families. Read More Supreme Court strikes down Biden’s plan to cancel student loan debts Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action, banning colleges from factoring race in admissions Biden condemns Supreme Court striking down affirmative action: ‘This is not a normal court’ Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson delivers searing civil rights lesson in dissent to affirmative action ruling

Google has warned billions of WhatsApp users that backup storage for old chats, photos and videos will soon no longer be free. Messages and media on the hugely popular messaging app will now count towards a user’s Google Account cloud storage limit if they use an Android device. Personal Google Accounts come with 15GB of free storage, however that is shared across Google Drive, Gmail and Google Photos. This means any additional photos, videos and audio files from WhatsApp may force many users to pay for additional storage space. “As an important heads up, WhatsApp backups on Android will soon start counting toward your Google Account cloud storage limit, similar to how WhatsApp backups are handled on other mobile platforms,” a Google community manager wrote in a blog post on Tuesday. “WhatsApp backups on Android will continue to work, as long as you have available space within your Google Account storage. If you hit your storage limit, you’ll need to free up space to resume backups by removing items you do not need.” The change will begin rolling out to WhatsApp Beta users next month, before coming to all WhatsApp users on Android in early 2024. Of the roughly 3 billion WhatsApp users around the world, an estimated 73 per cent of them access the app on Android. There are several price options for additional Google storage, with the cheapest monthly plan for 100GB of data starting at $1.99. This would cover all but the most data intensive WhatsApp users. The update comes amid a major overhaul of how Google manages online accounts and data, with all personal accounts that have been inactive for more than two years set to be deleted in December. The move is intended to improve security for active users, though some have noted that it may inadvertently impact people who have set up accounts for young children in order to share memories and milestones, as well as users who are in control of the accounts of deceased relatives. Read More Gmail: Google issues three-week warning to account holders

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) is nearing a decision on whether to challenge private equity firm Thoma

The new iPhone 15 is widely rumoured to have a mysterious button on its side – and we might finally know what it does. Apple rumours have long suggested that the new iPhone 15 could swap the current mute switch on the side of the phone for a single button. But it was unclear what the button would actually do. The Apple Watch Ultra has a very similar feature, named the action button, which can be programmed for a variety of features. It can be used to open a workout or turn on the torch, for instance. The iPhone 15’s button appears to be designed to do the same, according to the latest leak, but with features that are more aimed at how people use their phone. That is according to Macrumors, which reported that it had found new code in the latest iOS 17 beta that included a list of names that seem to indicate what the button could be used for. The features are: accessibility, shortcuts, silent mode, camera, flashlight, focus, magnifier, translate and voice memos, Macrumors reported. Many of them appear to refer to individual apps that would presumably be opened with a press of the button. The camera and voice memos already have their own apps, and flashlight and magnifier are features that can be opened from other parts of the iPhone already. Accessibility would presumably open shortcuts that are currently available to allow people to adjust the iPhone to their needs. That would most likely allow people to switch on tools such as VoiceOver, which narrates what is happening on the screen, for instance. Silent mode would seem to replicate the mute switch that is currently in the place of the action button. And shortcuts and focus would presumably allow for users to open the quick programmable shortcuts and focus modes that currently allow users to streamline the software experience on the iPhone. Apple is rumoured to be preparing four new iPhones for release in September, though recent reports have suggested that the release of at least some of them could be pushed into October. The company is once again planning two sizes of both the Pro and normal models of the iPhone 15, but only the Pro version is expected to have the new button. Read More iPhone users urged to check their photo library amid fears they could be deleted Rumours are growing about some bad iPhone news Apple ‘secretly working on its own AI chatbot’

The White House has announced new efforts to guide federally backed research on artificial intelligence

Thousands Cash App and Square customers were unable to access their accounts or send money Thursday and early Friday due to system outages impacting both payment services