Technology Mania

Monday, October 24, 2016

Microsoft enterprise products to get costlier in UK after pound falls

24 Oct 2016 , 10:36

Microsoft Corp said it will be increasing pricing for its enterprise software and cloud services in the UK in the wake of the sterling’s plunge since Britons voted to leave the EU. The price increase, from Jan. 1 2017, will be 13 percent for its enterprise software and 22 percent for its enterprise cloud services, it said.

Pricing changes will not apply to consumer software or consumer cloud services, the company said in a blog post. The vote to leave the EU took many investors and company executives by surprise, triggering the biggest one-day fall in sterling against the dollar. The pound’s fall has affected profitability for many companies, as imported goods have become even more expensive.

Recently, Britain’s biggest grocery chain, Tesco, pulled dozens of Unilever brand products from its website after a disagreement over prices, in the wake of a the slump in the British currency. Unilever had been trying to raise the prices it charges Britain’s big four supermarkets – Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Asda and Morrisons – across a wide range of goods by about 10 percent, saying it needs to offset the higher cost of imported commodities.

Reuters

Xiaomi Mi Note 2 with two-sided curved display to be launched tomorrow

REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon

By tech2 News Staff / 24 Oct 2016 , 10:22

Xiaomi, known to take design cues from Apple, has now decided to turn to its arch-rival Samsung. The company is working on a device with dual curved display, and one may not have to wait later than tomorrow to see the upcoming phablet.

A tweet from its official handle confirms the two-sided curved display that will be launched in Beijing, while the India time for the event will be 11:30AM IST tomorrow. The device is launched at the time when Samsung’s curved display Note 7 has tanked, and the company is trying to push its S7 and S7 edge to its loyal customers instead. A similar option from Xiaomi, and we assume cheaper, may just make it more difficult for Xiaomi. Though the novel design idea comes from Samsung, the edges haven’t really been doing significant. In the case of dual edge displays, it is more about how Xiaomi will put them to use.

But there is catch, who will pay the rumoured CNY 5699 which is approximately Rs 57,000 for the Mi Note 2, thereby making it the most expensive Xiaomi phone ever. People look at Xiaomi to offer superior specs at affordable prices. That price tags puts it in the direct price bracket of Samsung, which is still the most seasoned OEM compared to Xiaomi.

Xiaomi Mi Note 2 has been leaked many times online. According to some leaks, it is also expected to sport a dual rear camera setup, something that was seen in the latest iPhone 7 Plus. Xiaomi is expected to toss in a Snapdragon 821 SoC, also seen in the Google Pixel, and an option of either 4GB RAM and 64GB of storage and 6GB RAM and 128GB of storage.

Big Data could help optimistic tweeters with lower insurance rates

Image Credits: REUTERS

23 Oct 2016 , 15:23

When people take to Twitter to comment on the great evening they enjoyed with good food and wonderful friends, reducing their monthly insurance bill is probably the last thing on their mind. But such tweets could help insurers to price premiums for individuals, with research suggesting a direct link between positive posts and a reduced risk of heart disease. This could lead to future insurance cover based on “sentiment analysis”, in which Big Data and artificial intelligence make predictive models ever more accurate. Swiss Re says technological advances will cut the price of insurance protection and help individuals and firms make better decisions through programmes that offer advice and incentivise improvements in areas such as health and driving.

Swiss Re says technological advances will cut the price of insurance protection and help individuals and firms make better decisions through programmes that offer advice and incentivise improvements in areas such as health and driving. However, detractors fret that such developments could erode customers’ privacy or lead to increasingly personalised pricing, undermining the basic principle of

Massive DDoS Attack Against Dyn DNS Service Knocks Popular Sites Offline

Friday, October 21, 2016 Swati Khandelwal

UPDATE — How an army of million of hacked Internet-connected smart devices almost broke the Internettoday.

Cyber attacks are getting evil and worst nightmare for companies day-by-day, and the Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack is one such attacks that cause a massive damage to any service.

Recently, the Internet witnessed a record-breaking largest DDoS attack of over 1 Tbps against France-based hosting provider OVH, and now the latest victim of the attack is none other than Dyn DNS provider.

A sudden outage of popular sites and services, including Twitter, SoundCloud, Spotify, and Shopify, for many users, is causing uproar online. It's because of a DDoS attack against the popular Domain Name System (DNS) service provider Dyn, according to a post on Ycombinator.

DNS act as the authoritative reference for mapping domain names to IP addresses. In other words, DNS is simply an Internet's phone book that resolves human-readable web addresses, like thehackernews.com, against IP addresses.

Dyn DNS is used by many websites and services as their upstream DNS provider, including Twitter, Spotify, SaneBox, Reddit, Box, Github, Zoho CRM, PayPal, Airbnb, Freshbooks, Wired.com, Pinterest, Heroku and Vox Media properties.

All of these sites and services are reportedly experiencing outages and downtime, either completely or partially.

Here's an internet outage map from Level3:

According to Dyn DNS, the DDOS started at 11:10 UTC and is mostly affecting its customers in the East Coast of the United States, specifically Managed DNS customers.

"We are aware of the ongoing service interruption of our Managed DNS network. For more information visit our status page," Dyn tweeted.

At the time, it's not clear who is behind this DDoS attack, but the company said its engineers are working on "mitigating" the issue.

Here's the statement posted by Dyn on its website:

"This attack is mainly impacting US East and is impacting Managed DNS customers in this region. Our Engineers are continuing to work on mitigating this issue.

Starting at 11:10 UTC on October 21th-Friday 2016 we began monitoring and mitigating a DDoS attack against our Dyn Managed DNS infrastructure. Some customers may experience increased DNS query latency and delayed zone propagation during this time. Updates will be posted as information becomes available.

Customers with questions or concerns are encouraged to reach out to our Technical Support Team."

What websites are down for you? Let us know in the comments below.

We'll update the story as soon as we get to hear more about the attack. Stay Tuned!

Apple’s Eddy Cue talks future of TV; calls them ‘Glorified VCRs’ that need a reinvention

Image: Reuters

By tech2 News Staff / 21 Oct 2016 , 18:07

Apple’s senior VP of software and services Eddy Cue clearly does not like the current state of TV. At Vanity Fair’s New Establishment Summit, in a conversation with HBO CEO Richard Plepler, Cue called TVs nothing more than glorified VCRs.

Pressing on the need to for TVs to be reinvented, Cue said, “You live with a glorified VCR. You’re still setting things to record. There are 900 channels, but there’s nothing to watch.” While Cue acknowledged that there was great stuff to watch, the TV interface is what was making it more difficult, specially when it came to finding content.

“The ways you interface with TV are pretty brain dead,” said Cue. Of course he maintained that Apple TV with its App Store and Siri provide a better solution. He mentioned the example of HBO Now, which has around 1 million subscribers on Apple devices. He said that HBO Now provides a better navigational experience than cable box or satellite.

Cue hinted that Apple and HBO were two companies that were ‘at the beginning’ of their relationship. He suggested that TV will continue to evolve over the years.

Talking on competition from rivals such as Amazon and Netflix, Cue said that Apple was in a very competitive position in both music and video streaming as it hosts these services on its own platform.

Apple isn’t getting all the love in the TV streaming arena from all the major players though, thanks to Cue’s hard nosed tactics. Time Warner, Disney are just some of the TV networks which aren’t bowing down to Apple’s demands.

Geely launches new Car brand Lynk & Co and the first car is a connected SUV called 01

By tech2 News Staff / 21 Oct 2016 , 18:15

Volvo owner Geely launched a new car brand called Lynk & Co. The first car by this new brand is called the 01, and it totally re-imagines what a car should be. The car company is not centered around getting users to buy cars.

Instead, there are various payment models. You can subscribe to a car, and the company takes care of the insurance, service and maintenance for a monthly fee. You can hire a car, or rent yours out when not in use. You can lease a car or even just buy the car, if you really want to.

The technology for implementing these features have been available for some time. However, Lynk & Co is the first company to go ahead and implement it in a car. The intent is to break the expensive cycle of

TRAI fines Airtel, Vodafone, Idea for denial of interconnection to Jio

22 Oct 2016 , 11:09

The Indian telecom regulator on Friday slapped heavy penalties on three telecom players — Bharti Airtel, Vodafone India and Idea Cellular — for not providing sufficient points of interconnections (PoI) to Reliance Jio.

It also said the action of the three operators showed “ulterior motive to stifle competition”.

In three similar letters to the three players, the watchdog — Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) — said it has recommended a penal action of Rs 50 crore per licence service area (LSA) (except Jammu & Kashmir) where PoI congestion exceeded the allowable limit of 0.5 per cent as reported by Airtel/Vodafone/Idea Cellular through emails in September 23.

In the case of Airtel and Vodafone, the fines imposed were for 21 LSAs, amounting to Rs 1050 crore each while in the case of Idea, the fine was Rs 950 crore for