Technology

San Francisco, Sep 16 (IANS) Popular video-conferencing app Zoom is now back online after it went down for around an hour on Thursday.

Zoom's status page revealed there was a "major outage" for around an hour, preventing many people from attending meetings. Zoom eventually addressed the outage at 11.37 a.m. ET, according to The Verge.

"We have resolved the issue causing users to be unable to start and join Zoom Meetings," Zoom later said in a status message.

Users saw plenty of "an error occurred" messages, and most weren't able to launch meetings. Zoom's main website, zoom.us, even displayed a 502 gateway error for the majority of the outage.

Most reports showed trouble joining a conference and geographically, outage reports were streaming in from across the US and Europe on DownDetector, media reports said.

While the Zoom outage affected most users, some Zoom accounts were still able to connect using personal logins, but work and school accounts were heavily affected.

Zoom last experienced a major outage for two hours in 2020, with users unable to join meetings and webinars. Zoom eventually deployed a fix and got video calls up and running once again, the report said.

--IANS
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New Delhi, Sep 16 (IANS) Samsung India on Friday kicked off the seventh edition of its pan-India campus programme -- Samsung E.D.G.E -- inviting students from the top colleges of the country to work on real-life problem statements.

The company said it will also let them interact with Samsung's top leaders and provide unique solutions to the problem statement at hand.

"At Samsung, innovation is at the heart of everything we do. Over the years, Samsung E.D.G.E. has proved to be an enabler wherein students have the platform to showcase their creative solutions to real life problems," Ken Kang, President and CEO, Samsung SWA, said in a statement.

"As we enter the seventh edition of the program, we are confident that the young talent participating in the program will bring in even more insightful solutions and display their problem-solving skills," Kang added.

This year, students from 27 campuses that include top B-Schools, engineering colleges and design schools will participate in the event, which will be held physically at campuses spread across the country.

The programme consists of three rounds. The first round, which is the campus round, is about ideation, where the team members come together and put up an executive case summary based on their research and analysis.

The top teams that are shortlisted in campus round work on a case study, submit and present their detailed solutions at the regional round.

At the end of the regional round, top 8 teams are selected and mentored by Samsung leaders on their respective solutions. The final eight teams battle it out in the National Round to arrive at the three winning teams.

--IANS
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San Francisco, Sep 16 (IANS) Popular instant messaging platform Snapchat has rolled out new features, including iOS 16 Lock Screen widgets for iPhone users.

The company said it is introducing new features to help keep conversations with friends easy to find.

"Our new Lock Screen Widgets, available now with iOS 16, keeps conversations with your bestie saved right to your lock screen so you can start chats with one tap," the company said in a blogpost.

"With this new tool, you can save yourself the scrolling when you want to start Snapping, keeping visual conversations with the Snapchat Camera right at your fingertips," it added.

Snap chat mentioned that its New Chat Shortcuts at the top of the chat tab will make it easy to do things like spot unread Snaps and Chats from friends, see missed calls, and reply to stories.

"Our Shortcuts will also remind you if you owe a reply and show you when birthdays are coming up, so you never miss someone's special day or leave a friend on read," the company said.

Snapchat is also introducing new tools like Question Stickers.

Last month, the platform introduced a dual camera feature for Snapchatters to capture multiple perspectives and themes at the same time.

The dual camera feature has four layouts, including a vertical, horizontal, picture-in-picture, and cutout.

--IANS
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San Francisco, Sep 16 (IANS) Tech giant Apple is reportedly researching how a future iPhone can save power by automatically pausing playback when you're not paying attention to the media.

Just about every Apple device bar the Apple Pencil can play music or some kind of audio, and most of them have microphones, reports AppleInsider.

The tech giant wants to use those microphones, and very many other sensors, to determine whether you are paying attention.

Newly-revealed patent application, "Proactive Actions Based on Audio and Body Movement," could be applied to any Apple device, but it is specifically about stopping audio.

And that's specifically about stopping it in order to conserve battery power instead of wasting it on something you are no longer interested in, the report said.

There are other possibilities, such as displaying information about an artist when you are detected as being interested.

But as with most patent applications, this one is focused most on determining your lack of attention and less on precisely what actions could follow.

Apple even said "various actions may be performed proactively based on the identifying the interest in the content" of the music or other audio being played.

--IANS
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Seoul, Sep 16 (IANS) South Korean tech giant Samsung's upcoming flagship phone Galaxy S23 will reportedly come with slightly thicker bezels than the Galaxy S22.

Samsung will be widening all four bezels for the Galaxy S23 by 0.15mm. This will not make a huge difference, but it could make the device look slightly bulkier than its predecessor, citing a tipster, GizmoChina reported.

Recently, the tipster also revealed that the Galaxy S23 will have the same 6.1-inch display, but it will be slightly longer and wider than the existing model and the extra 0.15mm bezels explain how.

The upcoming Galaxy S23 series is said to feature no upgrades in terms of display size. However, they may feature better specs, like supporting a higher peak brightness level, lower power consumption, and more.

The S23 series may have three models -- Galaxy S23, Galaxy S23+, and Galaxy S23 Ultra. The top-tier S23 Ultra is said to feature some serious upgrades.

A recent report suggests the device will feature a 200MP primary sensor on the back having a size of 1/1.3 inches and 0.6Im sized pixels and a larger aperture of f/1.7 for getting in more light.

All the models in the series are expected to be powered by Qualcomm's upcoming Snapdragon 8+ Gen 2 Soc and will focus on battery efficiency.

The galaxy S23 series will launch in 2023.

--IANS
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New Delhi, Sep 15 (IANS) Popular games like Roblox, FIFA, PUBG and Minecraft are among 28 games that were exploited by malware between July 2021 and June this year, affecting more than 384,000 users via nearly 92,000 malicious files.

Other big series of games released during the last year -- Elden Ring, Halo, and Resident Evil -- were also actively abused by attackers who spread 'RedLine' malware under their guise, according to Kaspersky researchers.

RedLine is a password-stealing software, which extracts sensitive data from the victim's device such as passwords, saved bank card details, cryptocurrency wallets and credentials for VPN services.

"Cybercriminals are creating more and more new schemes and tools to attack players and steal their credit card data and even game accounts, which can contain expensive skins that can later be sold. For example, strikes on e-sports, which are now gaining huge popularity around the world," said Anton V. Ivanov, senior security researcher at Kaspersky.

In addition to the large number of downloaders that are able to install other unwanted programmes and adware, researchers also detected Trojan Spies - a category of spyware capable of tracking any data entered on the keyboard and taking screenshots.

Mimicking the whole interface of in-game stores for "CS:GO, PUBG and Warface", scammers create fraudulent pages, offering potential victims a decent arsenal of various weapons and artifacts for free.

To receive the gift, players need to enter login data for their social network accounts, such as Facebook or Twitter.

After taking over accounts, attackers are likely to search through personal messages for card details, or ask various friends of the victim for money, preying on their trust and carelessness, said researchers.

The number of users attacked by malicious software, which gathers sensitive data and spreads under the guise of some of the most popular gaming titles, has increased by 13 per cent compared to the first half of 2021.

In attempts to download new games from untrustworthy resources for free, players actually received malicious software, losing their gaming accounts and even money.

--IANS
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San Francisco, Sep 15 (IANS) Meta-owned messaging platform WhatsApp is likely working on a new update that will allow users to create polls in chat.

With this feature, which is under development, group participants will be able to share polls with other members of the group. It will be possible to add up to 12 options but this value may change before the release of the feature, reports WABetaInfo.

This feature is under development so it is not ready to be released to beta testers.

As per the report, an entry point for the feature will be available within the usual chat action sheet where you can find all other media sharing options and it opens the section that we spotted during the development of WhatsApp beta for Android 2.22.10.11.

A recent report said that WhatsApp is likely working on a feature that will add a new camera shortcut for iPhone users on their app.

A screenshot showed that the camera shortcut is placed within the navigation bar and it will show up for those users that can already create a community in the future.

It looks exactly like the one implemented on WhatsApp beta for Android (but since there was a bug, it has temporarily been removed in another update), the report had said.

--IANS
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San Francisco, Sep 15 (IANS) More people are using tech giant Apple's iOS 16 in the first two days compared to iOS 15, says a new report.

According to data shared by analytics company Mixpanel, iOS 16, released this week, is installed on an estimated 11.6 per cent of iPhones two days after it launched.

When iOS 15 was released last year, it was installed on just 8.5 per cent of devices at the two-day mark, which means people are installing iOS 16 at a more rapid pace this year, reports MacRumors.

iOS 16 is perhaps a more appealing update because of the visual changes it brings to the iPhone with the customisable Lock Screen and widget options. It also brings Messages features that include iMessage editing, undo send, and more.

At the current time, Apple is also giving people the option to stay on iOS 15.7, a move that can also keep people from installing the iOS 16 update.

Mixpanel measures iOS adoption rates based on visits to apps and websites where its analytics metrics are used, and this is not official data from Apple, the report said.

Apple may not provide updated iOS installation numbers for some time as it has not updated iOS 15 information since May 31.

The data from Mixpanel suggests that 78.41 per cent of people continue to run iOS 15, and nearly 10 per cent have an older version of iOS.

--IANS
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New Delhi, Sep 14 (IANS) US-based action camera manufacturer GoPro on Wednesday unveiled three versions of its all-new HERO11 Black camera -- HERO11 Black, HERO11 Black Creator Edition and HERO11 Black Mini -- in India.

HERO11 Black is available in India for Rs 51,500. HERO11 Black Creator Edition will be available starting mid-October at Rs 71,500 and HERO11 Black Mini starting November, at Rs 41,500 on offline and online channels.

"All three cameras feature a new, larger sensor that delivers the highest resolution, highest 10-bit colour depth, the highest level of video stabilisation and widest field of view ever featured natively in a HERO camera," the company said in a statement.

"Each of the three new HERO11 Black cameras are designed to appeal to consumers in different ways, meeting the needs of their particular use cases," it added.

The new 1/1.9-inch sensor delivers over 1 billion colours in the 10-bit colour video at up to 5.3K resolution at 60 frames per second in both HERO11 Black and HERO11 Black Mini and 27MP photos in HERO11 Black for images that are truer to how your eyes perceive them in the real world.

The company touts HERO11 Black as the world's most versatile, powerful, and convenient camera.

HERO11 Black Creator Edition features all HERO11 Black's performance plus a long-lasting battery grip with built-in buttons for one-handed camera control and over four hours of 4K recording per charge.

It also includes an optional directional microphone, external mic input, HDMI port for connecting to external displays, a high-output LED light and two cold shoe mounts for mounting additional accessories.

HERO11 Black Mini is a smaller and lighter version of HERO11 Black that features all of the performance of its bigger sibling. The company said its smaller size and simple one-button design make it the perfect choice for people who want maximum simplicity without sacrificing even a hint of performance or quality.

--IANS
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New Delhi, Sep 14 (IANS) Apple has fixed fresh vulnerabilities in iOS and macOS, including a zero-day flaw being actively exploited by hackers.

The zero-day flaw, known as CVE-2022-32917, allows a malicious app to run arbitrary code on an affected device with kernel privileges, Apple said in a security update.

Apple fixed the bug in updates for iOS 15.7 and iPadOS 15.7, macOS Monterey 12.6 and macOS Big Sur 11.7.

Apple warned that it is aware that this flaw "may have been actively exploited".

According to TechCrunch, this is the eighth zero-day vulnerability fixed by Apple this year.

In addition to these fixes, Apple also released a fix for a Safari browser flaw that could lead to address bar spoofing.

The security fixes were released along with iOS 16, which brings several security and privacy features, including support for Apple Passkeys and Lockdown Mode.

"Keeping your software up to date is one of the most important things you can do to maintain your Apple product's security," said the company.

After a software update is installed for iOS, iPadOS, tvOS, and watchOS, it cannot be downgraded to the previous version.

Last month, Apple released new software updates for iPhones, iPads and Macs to fix two security vulnerabilities known by the tech giant to be actively exploited by attackers.

The two vulnerabilities were found in WebKit, the browser engine that powers Safari and other apps, and the kernel, essentially the operating system's core.

The tech giant had said the WebKit bug could be exploited if a vulnerable device accessed or processed "maliciously crafted web content (that) may lead to arbitrary code execution".

--IANS
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