Tuesday, January 31, 2017

Xiaomi Redmi Note Pro 2 leaks, could get improved dual-pixel AF camera and battery

Xiaomi Redmi Note Pro 2 leaks, could get improved dual-pixel AF camera and battery

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Xiaomi announced the Redmi Pro in China last year with a dual-camera setup and an OLED display. The company restricted the handset to its hometown and now it seems that a successor is on its way.
Thanks to a leaked slide, we now have info on what could be the Redmi Pro 2. The smartphone will come with a brushed metal finish at the back and skip the dual-camera for a single lens with improved specs. It will feature a new sensor, the 12MP Sony IMX 362. This is a 1/2.55” sensor with large 1.4µm pixels and Dual Pixel autofocus. On paper it should be better than the 1µm pixels that are on the Mi Note and Mi Mix.
Other features include a larger 4,500mAh battery which is an up from 4,050mAh unit. Expect two storage and RAM variants including one with 6GB of RAM and 128GB of storage which could cost CNY 1,800 (Rs 18,000 approx). The other one would be a 4GB RAM and 64GB storage which would be the base version priced at CNY 1,600 (Rs 16,000 approx). The pricing sounds better than what it was on the original Redmi Pro which retailed at CNY 2,000 (Rs 20,000 approx) for the 128GB variant. There is no info on the chipset but we are assuming a MediaTek chipset, possibly a new Helio SoC.
Expect more leaks and rumours in the near future, so stay tuned.

Trump executive order: Google employees’ protest, sends across a strong point

Trump executive order: Google employees’ protest, sends across a strong point

Image: Reuters
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Google is one of the most influential internet companies in the world and part of a tech conglomerate Alphabet. It is also a company whose employees have been quite vocal in their criticism of the executive order that was passed by Trump targetting immigrants. Sure, a lot of tech CEOs raised their voices against the order. We have a whole list here. But in the case of Google, it is not only the CEO, but also a co-founder, former CEO as well as the Google employees themselves, who have made their stand clear over the last few days.
Walking the talk
Pichai in an email to staff said the US ban on foreign nationals from seven Muslim-majority countries will hit at least 187 Google employees.
“We are upset about the impact of this order and any proposals that could impose restrictions on Googlers and their families, or that could create barriers to bringing great talent to the US,” the Wall Street Journal quoted Pichai as saying in the email. “It is painful to see the personal cost of this executive order on our colleagues,” he said.
Google co-founder Sergey Brin, whose family immigrated to the US in 1979 from the then Soviet Union, took part in the protests taking place at the San Francisco international airport. While protesting in his personal capacity, Brin said that he was protesting because he himself was a refugee.
Recently at a meeting with Google employees, Eric Schmidt, the executive chairman of Alphabet said “that the Trump administration is going to do evil things as they’ve done in the immigration area and perhaps some others.” Schmidt did say that the government is focussed on economic growth in his meeting with employees. He said that these ‘evil things’ will be done while keeping the focus on the growth rate in the US by increasing federal spending.
According to reports, there were about 2000 employees participating in the protest on 30 January, and these included Google top brass like Sundar Pichai and Sergey Brin, both of whom are technically immigrants.
Google has also set up a $4 million fund for immigrants. This fund includes $2 million contributed by Google’s own employees. All things point to the fact that Google employees, while not in the official capacity, are taking a political stand by their actions and gestures.
Wooing the Republicans
It is no secret that Google backed Democrat candidate Hillary Clinton during the Presidential elections. But the company has since been trying its best to get into the good books of the Trump administration as well. According to Bloomberg Google had sought a ‘DC veteran to act as liaison to conservative, libertarian and free market groups’.
Image: Reuters
Image: Reuters
However, Google / Alphabet have made it public whenever it has met with Trump. For instance, when Trump met with the top tech CEOs from Silicon Valley, Larry Page was present. More recently, even Eric Schmidt had met the president at the Trump Tower. According to Buzzfeed, Google states that it was better to work behind the scenes with the administration, rather than making statements which would antagonise people from the administration with whom Google / Alphabet has to work.
Schmidt has also stated to his employees that he did all he could in his power to dissuade the administration from taking an anti-globalisation and discriminatory stand on the immigration order, but nothing has come out of it.
AP
Image: AP
Pichai has also tried to explain why it is counterproductive for Google as a company to take a stand officially. In a statement to Vice News, Pichai said, “If you publicly take a strong position, once they’ve identified you’re completely on one side, you lose the ability to come to a rational position. We get very strong reactions when we try to reach out to the other side. Taking public positions is productive in some cases, and counterproductive in others.” According to a New York Times report, Google also recently organised an event for Republican lawmakers.
Treading a fine line
While on the one hand Google and Alphabet employees are protesting against the controversial executive order, on the other hand, it is trying to be in the good books of the Trump administration as well. In doing so, Google and its parent company Alphabet are trying to find a right balance between its employees putting forth a resistance against unfair orders, at the same time not antagonising the government in the official capacity.
At the end of the day, a lot of Google and Alphabet’s projects require government co-operation. So it is treading a path which any profit-making institute would take.
Targetting immigrants from certain nations based on religious lines, specially when a lot of the top US companies have been built by immigrants, smacks of arrogance. It is then heartening to see employees of the Silicon Valley tech giants taking to the streets to protest against this unfair executive order.
Whether the companies or its employees would be punished for these protests, is something only time will tell. But if there are penalties to be paid, then that would set a wrong precedent.

Apple shuts Activation Lock checker tool, makes buying used iOS devices risky

Apple shuts Activation Lock checker tool, makes buying used iOS devices risky

Image Credit: Amazon
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Apple is said to have removed the Activation Lock tool on the iPhone, iPad and the iPod. With this feature, users could check the ownership status of any of the above mentioned devices.
This tool allowed users to enter the serial number or IMEI of an iOS device to find out if the activation lock was active or not. This helped consumers who were interested in purchasing used devices avoid stolen ones. It has been removed from the iCloud web page as well which now leads you to a ‘404 Not Found’ page.
Apple hasn’t mentioned as to why exactly it is shutting down the Check Activation Lock Status feature. There is a possibility that the company took the decision due to some security or privacy risk, or maybe there aren’t enough people who are actually using this feature.
Last year, a Kerala based security researcher had identified a bug running in iOS 10.1 that allowed him to bypass the activation lock on an iPad. Hemanth Joseph bypassed the activation lock in a locked iPad by finding a weakness in the device setup process running on iOS 10.1. The bug which was discovered by Joseph was reportedly fixed in an iOS update later.

Anonymous issues guide to hacking Trump’s beloved Android phone, and it’s easier than you might think

Anonymous issues guide to hacking Trump’s beloved Android phone, and it’s easier than you might think

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US President Donald Trump is yet to give up his beloved Samsung Galaxy S3, his tweet machine. We’re sure that the S3 is causing sleepless nights for the CIA and they’re desperately trying to get him to give it up.
Why? The Samsung Galaxy S3 is an ancient device by today’s standards, and, horror of horrors, it only supports Android 4.4. We’re on version 7.1.1 now.
The most ‘powerful’ man in the world is using a phone that is out of date and has received no security updates for at least two years. Security experts are already worried that the phone will be used to spy on Trump and to make matters worse, hacker collective Anonymous has just issued a simple guide to hacking Trump’s phone. A guide that literally anyone can follow.
As Anonymous so graciously points out, hacking Trump’s S3 is child’s play; the type of project they would “assign as homework to an advanced undergraduate class.”
The stagefright reference alludes to a famous group of Android bugs that allowed hackers to take full control of a phone with nothing more than a malicious MMS. The targeted user doesn’t even need to do anything for the bug to take effect. The moment the MMS is downloaded, the phone is compromised.
A hacker only needs a phone number to make it work.

Twitter’s Periscope adds ‘Proudly made in America by immigrants’ to app loading screen

Twitter’s Periscope adds ‘Proudly made in America by immigrants’ to app loading screen

As a mark of protest against the US President Donald Trump’s recent executive order banning immigrants from seven Muslim-majority nations, Twitter’s live-streaming app Periscope has updated its loading screen with a small text that reads “Proudly made in America by immigrants”. In a statement, Periscope said on Tuesday that the recent executive order to halt immigration from seven countries in the Middle East and Africa forced them to consider a disturbing alternate reality in which the Periscope team is irreparably changed.
“Periscope is built, maintained, and operated by people from many faiths and countries. Without immigrants and refugees, Periscope would not exist. For this reason, we are updating the Periscope loading screen to make a simple true statement: ‘Proudly made in America by immigrants’,” the statement read. According to a report in VentureBeat, messaging giant Viber revealed it would be offering free calls from the US to the seven countries affected by the executive order.
Google has pledged $4 million to four organisations that support immigrants, while Uber will help drivers with their immigration defence by contributing a $3 million pot. Airbnb has announced free temporary housing to those affected by the order. Earlier, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey in his support to the immigrants termed the executive order’s impact as upsetting.
“The Executive Order’s humanitarian and economic impact is real and upsetting. We benefit from what refugees and immigrants bring to the US,” @jack tweeted. The executive order bans immigration from Iraq, Syria, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia and Yemen under measures to “keep radical Islamic terrorists out”. “I am establishing new vetting measures to keep radical Islamic terrorists out of the US,” Trump said during the signing at the Pentagon after the swearing-in of Defence Secretary James Mattis.
IANS

Microsoft launches Microsoft Teams, a chat-based workspace for Office 365 users

Microsoft launches Microsoft Teams, a chat-based workspace for Office 365 users

Image Credit: Microsoft
With am aim to bring together people, conversations, content and the tools that teams need to collaborate in offices, Microsoft on Tuesday demostrated a new chat-based workspace called “Microsoft Teams”. “Microsoft Teams” provides persistent, threaded chat to keep everyone engaged and informed and packs a library of emojis, GIFs, custom stickers and memes that gives people a fun way to express personality within their digital workspace.
Image Credit: Microsoft
Image Credit: Microsoft
“People can start voice and video meeting as well as work with Microsoft Office documents directly within the ‘Microsoft Teams’ experience,” Alok B Lall, Director, Office Business Group, Microsoft India, told reporters here. “Microsoft Teams” is also built on Office 365 Groups, the cross-application membership service that makes it easy for people to move naturally from one collaboration tool to another.
The workspace offers the ability for teams to customise the experience to meet their specific needs and team members can create channels to organise conversations by topic. As part of Office 365, “Microsoft Teams” offers the global scale and advanced security and compliance capabilities provided by the Microsoft Cloud.
Data is encrypted at all times and covered by a transparent operational model with no standing access to customer data, the company said. “Microsoft Teams” is available to all Office 365 commercial customers and will run on Windows, Mac, Android, iOS and web platforms.
IANS

Leak suggests that Google is building a water resistant Pixel 2 and a cheaper Pixel 2B smartphone

#Leak suggests that Google is building a water resistant Pixel 2 and a cheaper Pixel 2B smartphone

The Google Pixel XL
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Rumours suggest that a Google Pixel 2 with water resistance, better camera and more powerful hardware is already being tested.
The Google Pixel lineup is meant to be a departure from the norm for Google. A phone that sheds Google’s developer and search giant connotations to one that manufactures premium, high-end smartphones.
When Google did finally unveil the Pixel and Pixel XL smartphones in a rather low-key event, we were unimpressed with the design. The hardware, however, was top-notch and in later testing we found the performance, particularly that of the camera, to be stellar.
Google Pixel XL
The high asking price was disappointing, however.
Since then, the Pixel programme has been beset with issues, notably one that involves a crackling speaker, which has turned out to be a hardware issue with no quick fix.
As good as the device might be, sales remain unaffected. As we’ve mentioned in the past, Pixel sales have been tepid at best. Google has only sold around 2.5 million Pixel devices compared to the 70 million Apple and 80 million Samsung smartphones that were sold in the same period.
Will the Pixel 2 change all that?
A source has apparently told 9to5Google that Google is already testing prototypes of a Pixel 2 smartphone. Notably, the source suggests that the Pixel 2 will be waterproof (the original Pixel is only dust and splash resistant) and that a lot of work is being put into the camera.
The Pixel’s camera is already exceptional, but Google is apparently hoping to better that, particularly in the low-light department.
Apparently, Pixel 2 phones with Snapdragon, Intel and MediaTek chips were also being tested. It’s not clear as to the winner of said tests, but the source does tell 9to5Google that MediaTek has been dropped from the running.
In an interesting development, it seems that Google might also be working on a more budget-friendly Pixel 2B smartphone. This makes sense, especially in developing markets like India. While the upcoming Pixel 2 will have a hard time battling it out with rivals Samsung and Apple in the high-end space, a mid-range or budget-friendly Pixel 2B might not struggle so much.

Facebook introduces delegated recovery to secure accounts for third party services

Facebook introduces delegated recovery to secure accounts for third party services

Image: Which.co.uk
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Facebook has introduced a new method for recovering lost accounts for third party services through a method known as delegated recovery. The new feature is being introduced first for GitHub, and is planned to be rolled out to other third party services based on how well the process works for GitHub. Users can recover their lost GitHub accounts through Facebook verification, instead of using an e-mail address or phone numbers.
The new method is called delegated recovery, and Facebook has published the protocols on its open source site at GitHub. Both Facebook and GitHub intend to publish open source implementations of the security protocol in various programming languages as references for developers. Facebook plans to eventually open up the authentication and account recovery mechanism for any third party service. Facebook also wants to allow users with accounts in third party services, such as GitHub, the ability to recover their lost Facebook accounts.
This is how delegated recovery works. Users have to set up the account recovery process in advance. Users have to save a recovery token that is generated by Facebook on request. The recovery token is encrypted, and Facebook or GitHub does not read any personal information, but only confirm that the person trying to access the accounts is the same. If a GitHub account is lost, users can re-authenticate on Facebook, and Facebook sends the recovery token to GitHub with a timestamped counter-signature. The entire process takes place through a browser, over https, and requires only a few mouse clicks.
Security questions are risky as they expose accounts to compromise by those who personally know the individual. If fake answers are given, the recovery questions are inconvenient. Re-using the same security questions and answers across accounts also exposes the users to more malicious attacks. Using recovery emails and SMS are dated, and do not guarantee end to end security, and are getting less reliable with an influx of the next wave of internet users. Facebook hopes to address these problems with the delegated recovery protocol. Facebook and GitHub will jointly reward those who find security issues with the delegated recovery protocol.
The announcement follows close on the heels of Facebook improving the security of its own accounts by allowing authentication of accounts through physical USB keys. GitHub already supports a login process that authenticates accounts through physical USB keys. The physical USB keys use the U2F standard developed by Google and Yubico.

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