Samsung Gear Fit 2 review: For those who like to mix things up

While smartwatch shipments might be down across the world, fitness bands is where most vendors are focussing, according to the research firm IDC. While buyers are still confused on what purpose the smartwatch serves, there seems to be no such question when it comes to a fitness band.

In India, the wearables markets has just started to grow, with players like Xiaomi, Goqii, and Fitbit starting to make inroads. In June 2016, the wearables segment had crossed over 400,000 shipments, which is a modest start at best. The Samsung Gear Fit 2 is another such wearable in the Indian market, designed to challenge bigger players like Fitbit, Jawbone, Misfit, Garmin, etc which offer some solid fitness bands.

Apple's new MacBook Pro compatible with Google Pixel but not iPhone 7

Apple is surely going to some strange waters nowadays. On Thursday it announced the new MacBook Pro laptops. The 3 new MacBooks are quite amazing as far as the design and feature sets are concerned. And although they are expensive, they are also without doubt the best general-purpose laptops the market is scene. But there is one strange bit about them. Out of the box, they are compatible with Google's Pixel phones, or for that matter many other Android phones. But not with the iPhone 7 and the iPhone 7 Plus.

Reason? This has to do with Apple's strange decision to use only the USB C ports in the new MecBook Pro laptops. There are just no USB ports to which an iPhone 7 or the iPhone 7 Plus user can connect the phone. So if you have an iPhone 7 and get the MacBook Pro, you will also have to buy an adapter so that you can connect the phone to the laptop using a cable. Although, if both the MacBook Pro and the iPhone 7 are on the same Wi-Fi network, you will be able sync them. Similarly, iCloud will also help you transfer data from one device to other.

On the other hand, if you have the Google Pixel phone, you will be able to connect that phone to the new MacBook Pro because the Pixel also uses the same USB C port. This creates an unsavoury situation for Apple where two of its latest gadgets don't play nice with each other even as the product from its arch enemy in the market is fully compatible with the latest and greatest laptop it has ever made.

But it also seems that this is a temporary problem. Or at least that will get fixed next year. The latest MacBooks from Apple hint the company has decided that the USB C is the port of the future and it is possible that in the next iPhone the Lightning Port may get the boot and get replaced by the USB C. If that happens, it will also be a big help for the iPhone users as it will mean that for the first time the iPhone will have the same port that most other Android phones will also be using. And this means, finally there will be standard port for charging, which would be super useful because people will be able to charge laptops, MacBooks, iPhones and Androids with possibly single charger

Smartphone shipments in India up 23 per cent in Q3 2016, Samsung leads

Smartphone shipments in India grew 23 per cent annually in the third quarter of 2016 as compared to the global smartphone market which grew at five per cent, market research firm Counterpoint Research said on Thursday.

The feature phone shipments grew two per cent year-on-year and 23 per cent quarter-on-quarter as feature phone to smartphone transition slowed down in recent quarters.

Also Read: Samsung Galaxy S8 will focus on better hardware, may come with 6GB RAM

Further, eight out of every 10 LTE-capable smartphones were VoLTE-ready which is becoming a key feature from marketing perspective for OEMs and carriers, the report said.

"The demand for smartphones is being fuelled by growing importance of being uber-connected which is further catalysed by rollout of LTE networks," said Karn Chauhan, Research Analyst at Counterpoint Research.

Samsung still dominates the feature phone and smartphone market but its overall market share declined sequentially by four percentage points even though it registered a record quarter in shipment volumes in the country.

Micromax maintained the second spot in smartphone space though closely followed by Lenovo.

Intex slipped to the fourth spot in mobile phone market and in smartphone segment Intex was surpassed by LYF and Xiaomi.

"Oppo and Vivo, the star performers in their domestic market continue to exercise their strategy of expanding offline distribution, aggressive promotions and attractive retail margins, saw their shipments grew 272 per cent year-on-year and 437 per cent year-on-year respectively during third quarter of 2016," the report added

Uber orders 100 self-driving vehicles from Volvo

Month after Uber said its self-driving Volvos were still under development, the ride-hailing giant Uber has already ordered 100 self-driving vehicles from the Swedish company, Volvo said on Wednesday.

The news came as an 18-wheeler self-driving Volvo trailer drove from Fort Collins, Colorado, to Colorado Springs, bearing 50,000 cans of Budweiser beer. The Volvo truck, equipped with cameras and sensors, was owned by Otto, a self-driving truck company acquired by Uber recently.

Uber inked a deal with Volvo in August to purchase 100 cars by the end of the year, with the goal of outfitting them with the ride-hail company's autonomous hardware.

The cars are built on Volvo's Scalable Product Architecture, the same platform as its XC90, S90, and V90 cars.

Uber's small fleet of self-driving Ford Fusion cars has been shepherding a select number of passengers around Pittsburgh since early September, but so far Uber has declined to discuss the progress.

The cars have "Uber" stenciled on the sides and an array of cameras and sensors on the roof like a jaunty hat.

Ola rolls out two new features, 'Just in Time' and 'Rich Notifications'

Ola launches two brand new tech features to facilitate cab booking on the app. The 'Just in Time' feature sends real-time smart notifications to users, at the instant when a cab becomes available or when peak pricing for user's desired cab category ends. Ola has also rolled out 'Rich Notifications' on its app, which help users track their booked ride through real-time Push Notifications.

Ankit Bhati, Co-Founder and CTO, Ola, said, "Ola has always focused on ensuring adequate supply to match growing demand, but there are occasions when demand completely outstrips supply. To enable customers to do more while they wait to book or board a cab, Ola has developed 'Just in Time' and 'Rich Notifications', to provide real time cab updates. These features work on predictive analysis of data to provide smart real-time push notifications to its customers."

He further added, "An average Indian customer stores up to 32 apps, and spends over 169 minutes on their device, every day. It can sometimes get overwhelming to manage and shuffle between multiple apps on the phone at the same time. These two features are set to transform the cab booking and boarding experience for our customers, as they multitask between work and entertainment. We are confident of scaling it up to solve for other unique needs of local markets and make our customers commute experience even more comprehensive, as we advance on our mission of building mobility for a billion Indians.

Indian banks use insecure ATM machines, still cling to outdated Windows XP: Report

Here is still some time before we get a clear picture of the data breach that has affected over 32 lakh debit cards in India. But cyber security firm Kaspersky has done some quick analysis of it with a more detailed one still in the process. Although for now the company is neither denying nor confirming the State Bank of India debit cards breach, it is quite blunt in saying that the banking industry in India is very cavalier about the cyber security and that is not good for consumers.

The company says that it had revealed a few months ago that "ATM machines' outdated communication standard leaves them open to attacks" in India.

Earlier last week, reports said that a massive data breach may have resulted in data of over 32 lakh debit cards stolen in India. A number of banks have been named as the possible victims of the data breach but except SBI none has cleared the air on it. Earlier SBI had said that around 6 lakh of its customers were affected by the breach.

Altaf Halde, managing director (south Asia) Kaspersky Lab India, said that Kaspersky Lab "cannot confirm or deny breach at SBI". However, the security firm suggests that usually cyber criminals spearphish emails with malicious attachment. A spearphishing email appears to be a genuine email from a firm you may trust, but it is in fact a hack attempt

Once the target system has been affected, the attackers upload additional tools to the victim and start lateral functioning inside bank's network.

"It takes few weeks for them to gain access to bank servers and system administrators account. After that, they can make a money transfer - and cashing out via different ways - SWIFT transfers, from ATM, etc," said Halde.

Kaspersky says that Indian banks are just not paying enough attention to the cyber security. According to the firm most ATMs are running Windows XP, an operating system which is no longer supported by Microsoft, thus they don't have security updates suitable to fight cyber attacks at present.

Since the security on ATMs running Windows XP is not up to date, it is easier to install malicious software in them without too much effort.

A research by Kaspersky Lab had revealed that due to the out date communication standard on ATM machines they "can be easily hacked, malware can be installed & funds could be stolen. Almost any ATM in the world could be illegally accessed and jack potted with or without the help of malware".

The company has found that although vendors are trying to switch to better ATMs with strong security features, most of them are still using old models.

"This makes them unprepared for criminals actively challenging the security of these devices. This is today's reality that causes banks and their customers huge financial losses," says a Kaspersky spokesperson.

Hacked emails show Hillary Clinton aides suggesting jokes about private server

Hacked emails from the personal account of Hillary Clinton’s top campaign official show her aides considered inserting jokes about her private email server into her speeches at several events and at least one joke made it into her remarks. “I love it,” she told a dinner in Iowa on August 14, 2015, noting she had opened an online account with Snapchat, which deletes posts automatically. “Those messages disappear all by themselves.”

Hi-Tech city: The new hub for hospitals

 HYDERABAD: From being home to a hand ful of hospitals until recently both multi-speciality and mid-sized the Cyberabad region is fast turning into a hub of medical institutions. Hospitals of all sizes and specialities have been mushrooming across the city's IT corridor with market insiders pegging the total number of `upcoming' hospitals over the next five years at a whopping 100.


Reason for the sudden boom?

A growing population of insured individuals in the swank pockets of the city's IT hub that's made setting up operations there a profitable venture, say analysts.

"The growth of this side of the city and the expansion of all commercial activities towards Cyberabad region is reason why so many major players have decided to set up base here in the last two years. Even those in other parts of the city are slowly opening up branches here. In addition to Yashoda Hospitals and Asian Institute of Gastroenterology soon setting up their branches here, Sunshine Hospitals will also make a foray into the Cyberabad area," said Harish Manian, chief operating officer of Continental Hospitals, located in the financial district.

Others couldn't agree more. "The region is on everybody's radar. The high number of insured population is the primary reason for large multi-speciality hospitals taking their operations there. In the next five years, nearly 100 hospitals with a 50 to 100-bed capacity, will come up in the city's IT corridor particularly in areas such as Gachibowli, Narsingi, Nanakramguda and Chandanagar," said Myana Srinivas, executive director of Virinchi Hospitals. What's further fuelling this trend, experts say, is the `reverse migration' of doctors previously employed in the US and UK. With them now migrating back to the city, it has become easier for hospitals to rope in talented hands. Such is the rush towards the western corridor that doctors working in areas like the Old City and Secunderabad too are now moving from there and heading for `new age' Hyderabad.

jio sim support 3g mobile Also

What is it?
Xposed is a module designed for 2G/3G/4G Xorware Interface PRO application, which allows the phone mode automatically exchanged between 2G, 3G and 4G network based on a configuration indicate.

What are the requirements?
You must have a ROM with Xposed roteada Framework installed.

How it works?
After this module installed and enabled in the Framework of Xposed, you must restart the phone and go.

Acknowledgements
Especially to:
> Manuelmagix the magnificent videos and hard testing period.
> Axel11, by testing and prompt replies.
> A EvilRom entire team for their advice, encouragement and more ... and more ...

Skype Learns New Languages, Opens Door to More Microsoft Services

Microsoft has added six new Austronesian languages to its text translation API, the company announced this week.

Now, users of the Skype desktop apps for Windows, trade instant messages with native Fijian, Filipino, Malagasy, Samoan, Tahitian and Tongan speakers. The languages are also available in the iOS and Android Microsoft Translator apps and Bing's Translator feature. On the business front, Microsoft's Translator is integrated into SharePoint and Yammer.

"Austronesian languages are spoken as far west as Madagascar and as far east as the Polynesian Islands; south to New Zealand and north to South China," the Microsoft Translator team wrote in an Oct. 19 blog post. "Introducing these 6 Austronesian languages to Microsoft Translators, unlocks new communication opportunities for approximately 119 million Austronesian speakers across the globe."

Today, Microsoft's Translator tech supports more than 50 languages. Meanwhile, Skype Translator, the company's real-time audio translation technology, supports a total of nine languages. Last week, the company added Russian to the roster of languages Skype can interpret during voice and video calls.

Microsoft AI Beats Humans at Speech Recognition

Microsoft's Artificial Intelligence and Research Unit earlier this week reported that its speech recognition technology had surpassed the performance of human transcriptionists.

The team last month published a paper describing its system's accuracy, said to be superior to that of IBM's famed Watson artificial intelligence.

The error rate for humans on the widely used NIST 2000 test set is 5.9 percent for the Switchboard portion of the data, and 11.3 percent for the CallHome portion, the team said.

The team improved on the conversational recognition system that outperformed IBM's by about 0.4 percent, it reported.

That improvement is important, noted Anne Moxie, senior analyst at Nucleus Research.

While speech recognition provides an easier way for humans to interact with technology, "it won't see adoption until it has extremely low error rates," she told TechNewsWorld.

Google, IBM and Microsoft are among the companies working on speech recognition systems, but Microsoft is the closest to overcoming the error rate issue, Moxie said. "Therefore, its technology's the most likely to see adoption."

New 'Artificial Synapses' Pave Way for Brain-Like Computers

A brain-inspired computing component provides the most faithful emulation yet of connections among neurons in the human brain, researchers say.

The so-called memristor, an electrical component whose resistance relies on how much charge has passed through it in the past, mimics the way calcium ions behave at the junction between two neurons in the human brain, the study said. That junction is known as a synapse. The researchers said the new device could lead to significant advances in brain-inspired — or neuromorphic — computers, which could be much better at perceptual and learning tasks than traditional computers, as well as far more energy efficient.

"In the past, people have used devices like transistors and capacitors tosimulate synaptic dynamics, which can work, but those devices have very little resemblance to real biological systems. So it's not efficient to do it that way, and it results in a larger device area, larger energy consumption and less fidelity," said study leader Joshua Yang, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Send Passwords Securely Through Your Body Instead of Wi-Fi

Rather than rely on easy-to-hack Wi-Fi or Bluetooth signals, researchers have developed a system that uses the human body to securely transmit passwords.

Computer scientists and electrical engineers have devised a way to relay the signal from a fingerprint scanner or touchpad through the body to a receiving device that is also in contact with the user. These "on-body" transmissions offer a secure option for authentication that does not require a password, the researchers said.

"Let’s say I want to open a door using an electronic smart lock," said study co-lead author Merhdad Hessar, an electrical engineering doctoral student at the University of Washington. "I can touch the doorknob and touch the fingerprint sensor on my phone and transmit my secret credentials through my body to open the door, without leaking that personal information over the air.