Technology

San Francisco, Oct 3 (IANS) Users of Apple iPads with cellular service must either use eSIM or a new physical SIM card in order to activate a data plan for their tablet since they can no longer utilise the Apple SIM that comes with their device.

According to MacRumors, the tech giant included an Apple SIM with its cellular iPads to allow users to quickly get set up with cellular data plans from carriers, without needing to wait for a carrier's physical SIM to be delivered for use.

However, since October 1, Apple SIM can't be used for that task at all, the report said.

An update to an Apple support page explained that from October 1, "Apple SIM technology will no longer be available for activating new cellular data plans on iPad".

Users are told to contact their carrier for details on activating a new plan with their device.

Apple initially included the Apple SIM in 2014, originally as a physical nano-SIM that could be placed in the SIM tray. Later, an Apple SIM was embedded into the hardware itself, along with a SIM card tray.

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San Francisco, Oct 2 (IANS) The Crash Detection feature, which is present in iPhone 14 models and an Apple Watch, has undergone a new test that reveals when it correctly fires and when it does not.

In a video from the Wall Street Journal, a demolition derby driver repeatedly rammed two distinct cars. He had a Google Pixel in the vehicle, which can also detect crashes, and an Apple Watch Ultra with an iPhone 14 model, reports AppleInsider.

Next, an iPhone 14 and Google Pixel were also placed side-by-side in each vehicle.

Testing showed that the Apple Watch worn by the driver was successful at detecting crashes. However, the iPhone didn't detect any of the impacts inside the first car, the report said.

The Google Pixel did detect one crash inside the driver's vehicle, but neither phone went off inside the car that got crashed into.

With car number two, the testers drove it around before crashing to make the smartphones think it was legitimate. But again, the crash did not trigger the smartphones.

When WSJ contacted Apple and Google with the results, Apple said a lack of data could be why the iPhone 14 didn't detect the crashes. Perhaps it was because it wasn't connected to CarPlay, or the tester didn't drive around the vehicle long enough.

--IANS
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New Delhi, Oct 2 (IANS) Encrypted messaging platform Telegram has reduced its monthly subscription fee in India for premium users, down to Rs 179 from Rs 469.

In a message sent to its users in the country, the platform announced the discount in subscription fees, as it focuses on aggressively growing in a country where WhatsApp has nearly 500 million users.

India is one of the key markets for Telegram, which has amassed over 700 million monthly active users globally.

According to third-party data, Telegram has more than 120 million users in India, and aims to fast tap into the ever-growing WhatsApp user base.

According to a recent research by techARC, at least one in five respondents in India prefer Telegram over WhatsApp for varied reasons, including finding it secure and respecting privacy, features like channels, allowance of users in a single group and sharing of large-size files.

Over 32 cent of the respondents said they send critical and secret messages over Telegram.

Globally, Telegram's monthly subscription for premium users is in the range of $4.99 to $6.

Last month, the encrypted messaging app rolled out a new update that gave users more ways to use new emoji to express how they are feeling -- with infinite reactions and emoji statuses.

The company said that Premium users can pick reactions from an infinite selection of custom emoji.

With the new update, group admins can control whether custom reactions may be used in their groups.

Now, premium users can add an animated emoji status displayed next to their name -- to quickly let everyone know how they are feeling or what they are doing.

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New Delhi, Oct 1 (IANS) Facing a massive controversy over the proliferation of child pornography on its platform in India, Twitter said on Saturday that it banned 57,643 accounts in the country for promoting child sexual exploitation, non-consensual nudity and allied content between July 26 and August 25.

Earlier this week, Delhi Commission for Women chairperson Swati Maliwal had said the replies received from Twitter in the child pornography complaints were incomplete and the Commission was not satisfied with them.

Maliwal had on September 20 summoned Twitter India Policy Head and Delhi Police over tweets depicting child pornography and rape videos of women and children on the micro-blogging platform.

Taking suo moto cognisance of several tweets openly depicting videos and photographs of sexual acts involving children, the Commission said that most of the tweets portrayed children completely naked and many of them also depicted brutal rape and other non-consensual sexual activities with children and women.

Twitter, in its monthly report in compliance with the new IT Rules, 2021, also said that it received 1,088 complaints from users in India in the same time-frame through its grievance redressal mechanisms.

Acting on the complaints, the company took action against 41 URLs.

In addition, "we processed 76 grievances which were appealing Twitter account suspensions. These were all resolved and the appropriate responses were sent", said the company.

"We overturned none of these account suspensions after reviewing the specifics of the situation," it added.

Twitter also received 15 requests related to general questions about accounts during this reporting period.

The company said it "does not tolerate any material that features or promotes child sexual exploitation -- whether in Direct Messages or elsewhere throughout the service".

In India, the users complained the most about online abuse and harassment (544) and hateful conduct (502), among other categories.

Meanwhile, Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk this week expressed grave concerns over reports about the presence of tweets soliciting child pornography on Twitter.

Reacting to a report on how major advertising brands have pulled out from Twitter as their promotion posts appeared alongside child porn tweets, Musk said: "Extremely concerning."

--IANS
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New Delhi, Oct 1 (IANS) Google received 37,282 complaints from Indian users in the month of August in compliance with the new IT Rules, 2021. The tech giant also removed a total of 551,659 pieces of bad content, as a result of user complaints in the country.

The complaints Google received in India consisted of various categories including infringement of intellectual property rights and violation of local laws prohibiting types of content on grounds such as defamation.

Most of the complaints it received from Indian users were related to copyright violations (35,649), while other categories included trademark, court order, graphic sexual content, circumvention, and others.
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"In addition to reports from our users, we invest heavily in fighting harmful content online and use technology to detect and remove it from our platforms," it said in its monthly compliance report.

The company said that as part of its automated detection processes, it removed 551,659 accounts in the country.

"We invest heavily in fighting harmful content online and use technology to detect and remove it from our platforms. This includes using automated detection processes for some of our products to prevent the dissemination of harmful content such as child sexual abuse material and violent extremist content," said Google.

In accordance with the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021 (IT Rules), Google, along with other social media platforms, is mandated to publish monthly transparency reports with details of complaints received from users in India and the actions taken, as well as removal actions taken as a result of automated detection.

Under the new IT rules 2021, big digital and social media platforms -- with more than 5 million users -- have to publish monthly compliance reports.

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New Delhi, Oct 1 (IANS) Meta-owned WhatsApp on Saturday said it banned over 23 lakh accounts in India in the month of August in compliance with the new IT Rules, 2021.

The messaging platform, which has nearly 500 million users (according to third-party data) in the country, received 598 complaint reports in the month of August in India, and the records "actioned" were 27.

"Over the years, we have consistently invested in Artificial Intelligence and other state-of-the-art technology, data scientists and experts and in processes, in order to keep our users safe on our platform. In accordance with the IT Rules 2021, WhatsApp banned over 2.3 million (2,328,000) accounts in the month of August," said a company spokesperson.

The platform had banned nearly a similar number of bad accounts in India in July.

Under the upgraded IT Rules 2021, major digital and social media platforms, with in excess of five million users, have to publish monthly compliance reports.

Meanwhile, during a hearing challenging the instant messaging app WhatsApp's privacy policy, the Centre told the Supreme Court this week that the contentious Personal Data Protection (PDP) Bill 2019 has been withdrawn and a comprehensive data protection Bill is being prepared.

In August, the Centre withdrew the Bill that has seen 81 amendments in the past three years, aiming to introduce a new, sharper Bill that fits into the comprehensive legal framework and protects the data of billions of citizens.

The new draft of the data protection Bill is being prepared to augment efficient usage of data since it would largely be used by the industry.

--IANS
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New Delhi, Oct 1 (IANS) Leading smartphone players on Saturday said that the 5G launch by Prime Minister Narendra Modi will unleash new economic opportunities and societal benefits for millions, especially in remote areas.

India is home to more than 500 million smartphone users and more than 100 million users with 5G-ready smartphones wish to upgrade to a 5G subscription in 2023, according to a latest Ericsson report.

Madhav Sheth, CEO realme India, VP, realme and President, realme International Business Group, told IANS that as the first brand to launch a 5G-enabled phone, "we believe that 5G has the potential to bring together the entire ecosystem".

"This is why realme has dedicated 90 per cent of its research and development efforts to 5G technologies and devices. We have partnered with the leading telcos in India and have curated a host of bundle offers for our users," Sheth informed.

"We are also rolling out OTA updates for our devices to ensure that all our users can make the most of 5G," he added.

The Indian smartphone users are even willing to pay a 45 per cent premium for a plan bundled with novel experiences, the findings showed, which could be a delight for internet service providers ready with 5G, according to the Ericsson study.

Tasleem Arif, VP and R&D Head, OPPO India, said that after years of intense preparation, the launch of 5G will "serve as a transformational force for Indian society".

"Supreme data download rates, three times greater spectrum efficiency, and super low latency will empower India to experience use cases like seamless video calls, instant downloads and uploads and seamless gaming on the cloud," he mentioned.

As an innovator, this also brings a great opportunity, as "this will open gates for innovating for next-gen experience from India", Arif noted.

According to a report by Opensignal, 5G-enabled smartphone users in 30 Indian cities in India are getting 39.2 per cent to 59.3 per cent faster download speeds than those on non-5G phones.

Muralikrishnan B, President, Xiaomi India, said the market is constantly evolving and becoming digitally savvy by the day, and "5G has the power to transform, upgrade and uplift our nation".

"We have been working closely with various telecom operators for over two years and have extensively tested most of our models for usability. Having a strong understanding of SA and NSA network bands, we have rolled out devices that support some of the most anticipated bands," informed Muralikrishnan.

Online gaming, AR and VR experience along with content creation will take centre-stage with the launch of 5G services.

"In India, we have launched over 20 5G enabled models to date and currently have 7.5 million Xiaomi 5G users," he said.

--IANS
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New Delhi, Oct 1 (IANS) Twitter has rolled out a new and improved user interface for direct message (DM) feature on Android devices that makes it impressive compared to iOS.

Android Twitter users can update their app to get the revamped DM experience.

Twitter said it realised the need to improve how people use DMs on Twitter on Android devices.

The refresh also brings an improved composer, as well as better tweet forwarding, context for message requests and clearer read receipts, reports TechCrunch.

The micro-blogging platform has also introduced improvements to the user interface's scrolling performance and responsiveness.

Now, when Android users open their DMs, they will no longer see the boxy design they're used to.

Twitter recently made changes to DMs, including the ability to DM a tweet to multiple people at once in individual chats.

In February, Twitter announced it was testing a new feature to let people send a DM straight from a tweet.

The test, however, alerted civil servants and public safety experts.

According to New York City public defender Eliza Orlins, offering a shortcut to your DMs could make users even more susceptible to harassment.

"Please don't do this. One extra step of having to go to someone's profile to send a DM cuts back on harassment," she reacted on Twitter.

This is almost never about "starting a conversation", when people are sending unsolicited DMs.

According to Twitter, the experiment is not changing the current settings of anyone's DMs.

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San Francisco, Oct 1 (IANS) Google has disabled its online translation service in mainland China owing to "low usage", and redirected people to the Hong Kong domain which isn't accessible for users from within the country.

Several users reported on Reddit and other social media platforms that Google China Translate service became inaccessible, hampering their work.

"Today, at least 10 hours ago, translate.google.cn became inaccessible, I found this based on an automated test accessing it failing. It redirects to a normal Google search. translate.google.hk still accessible," one user posted on Reddit late on Friday.

A Google spokesperson told TechCrunch that the company has discontinued Google Translate in mainland China "due to low usage".

Another affected user posted: "Yes. Google is shutting down translate CN. It will redirect to the HK site permanently."

Earlier, Google had terminated its controversial China search engine project, named Dragonfly.

The controversial Chinese search engine raised privacy, censorship, and human rights concerns.

Google's offices in the US, UK, Canada, India, Mexico, Chile, Argentina, Sweden, Switzerland, and Denmark witnessed protests by human rights groups over its plan to re-enter China through "Project Dragonfly".

The search engine giant had launched a search engine in China in 2006 but pulled the service out of the country in 2010, citing Chinese government efforts to limit free speech and block websites.

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New Delhi, Oct 1 (IANS) Microsoft has revealed it is investigating two new zero-day vulnerabilities affectingAthe company's Exchange Server which is actively being exploited by hackers.

Microsoft said it is aware of limited targeted attacks using these two vulnerabilities.

The company said an attacker would need authenticated access to the vulnerable Exchange Server, such as stolen credentials, to successfully exploit either of the two vulnerabilities.

"In these attacks, CVE-2022-41040 can enable an authenticated attacker to remotely trigger CVE-2022-41082. It should be noted that authenticated access to the vulnerable Exchange Server is necessary to successfully exploit either vulnerability," Microsoft said in a security update.

The company was working on an accelerated timeline to release a fix.

"Until then, we're providing mitigations and the detection guidance below to help customers protect themselves from these attacks," it added.

Last year, Microsoft released an emergency security update for its Exchange email and communications software as at least 30,000 organisations across the US were hit by hackers who stole email communications from their systems.

US President Joe Biden's administration had blamed China for the Microsoft Exchange email server software hacking.

The cyber attacks hit defence contractors, higher education institutions and nongovernmental organisations around the world.

Microsoft said that it was monitoring new zero-day "detections for malicious activity and we'll respond accordingly if necessary to protect customers".

"Exchange Online customers do not need to take any action," it added.

--IANS
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