The Tribune

• THE Cuban government says it will make five miles of Havana’s iconic seafront boulevard, the Malecon, into the largest WiFi hotspot in one of the world’s least-connected nations.

State media announced that WiFi will be installed along the most popular stretch of the Malecon by the end of the year. The seafront is a favoured spot for Cubans to gather at night to talk, drink and listen to music.

Home internet remains illegal for most Cubans. Since last year, the government has installed dozens of WiFi spots in public areas, charging $2 an hour in a country where the average state salary remains about $25 a month.

Cuba said last year that it had 65 WiFi spots in service and expected 80 more to open in 2016.

• GERMAN data protection authorities yesterday ordered Facebook to delete data, such as phone numbers, it has received from its subsidiary WhatsApp.

Facebook acquired the global messaging service two years ago and announced this summer that WhatsApp would begin sharing the phone numbers of its users with the social network as part of a program to synchronise the two businesses.

But Hamburg’s Commissioner for Data Protection ruled that Facebook “neither has obtained an effective approval from the WhatsApp users, nor does a legal basis for the data reception exist”.

“After the acquisition of WhatsApp by Facebook two years ago, both parties have publicly assured that data will not be shared between them,” the agency said in a statement. “The fact that this is now happening is not only a misleading of their users and the public, but also constitutes an infringement of national data protection law.”

• THE popular navigation app Waze is putting a new twist on the phrase “tunnel vision”. It’s trying to ensure drivers relying on digital maps don’t lose their way when their GPS signal disappears in tunnels.

Waze plans to keep drivers connected in those GPS-less situations by installing low-cost, battery-powered beacons that will transmit to smartphones and tablets in tunnels that the company has in its database, covering about 7,500 miles around the world. The beacons can maintain map connections, as long as the drivers turn on their Bluetooth signal. The beacons were turned on last week in two Pittsburgh tunnels, Fort Pitt and Liberty, and another in Israel, where Waze was founded before Google bought it in 2013 for $969 million.

It costs about $1,200 for the 42 beacons required to provide coverage for every mile within a tunnel.

• THE “Pokemon Go” craze has cooled.

The mobile phone app was an instant hit when it debuted in July. Crowds stampeded after a Vaporeon in Central Park and people fell off cliffs playing it in California.

Earlier this month, Niantic CEO John Hanke said 500 million people had downloaded the game in just two months but last Tuesday, the game ended its reign as the top-grossing US iPhone app after 74 days on top, replaced by “Clash Royale”, a popular battling game, according to research firm Sensor Tower.

Twitter mentions of the game peaked at 1.7 million on July 11, five days after its launch, according to Adobe Digital Insights. That number had fallen to 131,000 by September 7.