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RealSense ID

Intel launches the RealSense ID Facial Recognition System using depth-sensing cameras

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Intel introduced the RealSense ID facial recognition system advancing in the depth-sense technology to help users unlock at a glance. The company introduced the Intel RealSense ID on Wednesday which will be available to most countries at the end of Q1 2021. The active depth sensors used in the RealSense cameras provide a touch-free unlocking solution. Intel claims that this new design will deliver absolutely secure and accurate facial recognition authentication. The Intel RealSense ID can be used in ATMs, smart locks, access control, etc.

How does the RealSense ID work?

RealSense ID is built on the company’s depth-sensing technology. The dept sensors in the camera use a neural network to identify faces. It is a dedicated system-on-a-chip development that has a secure element to encrypt and process user data. The advanced Artificial Intelligence used in these sensors eventually helps the device to learn and adapt to a face over time. It studies all the facial features thoroughly from facial hair to a variety of skin tones. Rigorous testing of the Intel RealSense ID has been done on faces from different nationalities on every continent. This is done to eliminate the chances of false positives or negatives. The camera will also work if the person is putting a mask on which is a common observation since the outbreak of COVID-19.Intel claims that it provides a one-in-a-million false acceptance rate.

RealSense ID
Image Source: theverge.com

Intel RealSense ID is not expected to be used on a laptop or a phone. This module is designed to ensure more safety and security thus can be spotted in places like ATMs or entrance gates. Intel RealSense ID can either be integrated into other products or work as a standalone after plugged into a computer. Intel has made a great attempt to get its camera business on track but this time towards creating a safer and secure environment. Though the company elaborated about where this device can be used but didn’t mention if it can be used in government agencies for tracking and profiling people.

Price and availability of Intel RealSense ID

There is more than one module of RealSense ID that will be launched in the market. The price of Intel RealSense ID F455 Peripheral is $99 whereas the Intel RealSense ID F450 module is priced at $750. You can preorder these modules right now but the products will be shipped during the first week of March. The products will be shipped to India as well as per the official website.

The future of RealSense

Intel is working on the potential of RealSense ID especially as it trained the camera using a diverse sample of faces. Intel told VentureBeat in a press briefing that the device was trained using an extensive data collection as samples belonged to Asia, Europe, and Middle East Africa. Though the false acceptance rate is very low they will now wait for the outside researchers to test it and comment on it.

Apart from the Intel RealSense ID that is designed exclusively for facial recognition, the company has also announced RealSense Touchless Control Software (TCS). This software also used Intel’s RealSense depth camera to allow interaction with a touch screen only by hovering your finger rather than actually touching the screen. This is impressive software especially when we are fighting a pandemic. TCS can be a great deployment in crowded public places like shopping malls, restaurants, automated teller machines, retailers, etc. The software mainly transforms touch-based to touchless interactions in a cost-effective way.

TCS is combined with an Intel RealSense Depth Camera D435 to convert into a touchless system without changing anything in the core software. TCS can be easily incorporated into new and existing systems to establish a safer communication way in public places.

Advancements in the facial recognition system

A facial recognition system is a common development that took place after the advent of AI. But, most of the recognition system shows a higher possibility of false positives. Sometimes the camera is unable to distinguish between genders or fails to identify faces with darker skin tones. One of the reasons for this failure might be that when the device was tested a diverse sample was not used to train the system. For example, Rekognition, the facial recognition software by Amazon faces difficulties identifying faces with dark complexion than a fairer skin tone.

Vaio

Vaio to Make a Come-back to the Indian Laptop Market by 15th January

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With the pandemic, we saw a rise in the prices of electric hardware, including computers and laptops. The demand for these devices was increased due to the new normal work from home culture. Now, as the demand has already risen, we see a few new entrants to the field of laptop manufacturing as well as old laptop manufacturing companies making a come-back too. Recently, the mobile and smartphone company Nokia launched its new series of laptops, and on the same rhythm, the famous laptop manufacturing company Vaio is also making a come-back to the Indian market.

The Vaio brand

Vaio Corporation is a Japanese laptop manufacturing company, where Vaio stands for Visual Audio Intelligent Organizer. It was originally the subsidiary of Sony, founded in 1996, but later, was acquired by Japan Industrial Partners (an investment firm based in Japan), in 2014.

Vaio
Image Source: zeebiz.com

The Vaio laptops were known for their spectacular designs and outstanding performance. In fact, Steve Jobs from Apple also had made an offer to Sony president, Kunitake Ando, to manufacture new MacOs based Vaio laptops. But the deal between the two wasn’t successful, and Sony came up with Vaio laptops having the Windows Operating System. The Vaio laptops have been popular in the high-end laptop category. Even, when Steve Jobs launched Apple’s first MacBook Air, he mentioned the Vaio laptop to compare the MacBook Air’s performance.

But the Vaio laptops began to lose their popularity when people started to realize that the Vaio laptops are too expensive for the specifications they were getting. In fact, they could get similar specifications in other brands’ laptops at cheaper prices. Not only the prices were too high, but the laptops were also underperforming. On the top, the laptops showed signs of overheating, causing burns to some of the users. The company had to spend $250 million to replace the Lithium-ion batteries of its around 10 million existing users in 2006.

As a result, after around a decade, Sony started seeing a downfall in sales. At that time, Sony was also focusing on its smartphone manufacturing, and rumors about Sony selling its laptop manufacturing unit started to speculate. Though the company did not confirm the news then, after a year of that, in 2014, it sold its laptop manufacturing unit to Japan Industrial Partners. The company admitted that it was facing a lot of loss in its laptop business.

Sony used to sell its products worldwide before the acquisition, but after that, the laptops were particularly available in Japan only. And, later, the company started to sell the laptops in America and Brazil, too. Despite the company is sold, Sony still has got a 5 percent stake in the company.

Coming Back to Asia

Now, the people who have always loved the Sony products, and the Vaio laptops, it is good news for them, as the Vaio laptops are coming back to Asia. The company has a new partner now, i.e., Nexstgo. The company has signed a licensing agreement with the Hong Kong-based company Nexstgo, so it will be the latter’s responsibility to manufacture, sell, and market the Vaio laptops in Asia.

Nexstgo has already started to market and sell the Vaio laptops in countries like Hong Kong, Macau, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, and the Middle East countries. And now with the start of 2021, the company is all set to target the Indian market. Note that, Nexstgo is the same company that introduced the Avita laptops in India. In India, the company has partnered with Flipkart for marketing and selling the products. Flipkart has already started the marketing for the Vaio products on their specifically designed microsite for Vaio.

Announcing the relaunch of the Vaio laptops in India, the Regional Business Director of South Asia, Vaio, Seema Bhatnagar, stated in a press conference, “We are enthused to relaunch VAIO and associate with names that have made it big in the e-commerce industry. Introducing the finest-quality laptops in India, the brand focuses on reclaiming its space in the market while having an unrivaled demand by the customers. We are all set to present a futuristic laptop range to the country’s burgeoning tech-enthusiasts and young business professionals. We are looking forward to becoming the top choice for laptop buyers across the country.”

Though India is already aware of the quality and performance of the Vaio laptops, Nexstgo is looking for new methods to woo Indian customers. The company has said that the new Vaio laptops are “premium, intelligently-crafted” and are designed to deliver “exceptional” quality.

According to Vaio, the new laptops will be introduced in the Indian market by January 15th. Though there is a rise in the demand for laptops, it will be tough for new companies like Vaio and Nokia to make their place in the Indian market, when it is already dominated by the big players like HP, Dell, and Apple.

Chinese Apps

Trump signs executive order banning U.S. transactions with Alipay and other Chinese apps

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Tension escalates between the White House and Beijing as the former hits China by banning U.S. transactions with eight Chinese apps. Yesterday, former U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order that bars any citizens of the U.S. from carrying out transactions with eight Chinese software applications. One of this Chinese software is Ant Group’s Alipay which is one of the broadly used payment services in China. The news is first reported by Reuters.

One of the senior administration officials has reported to Reuters that the executive order has been signed to protect the U.S. citizens. The U.S. government officials believe that the sensitive data of American citizens are at risk of getting exposed to this Chinese software. Due to their large user bases, it is easier for the Chinese applications to gather crucial data of the Americans.

The executive order on banning Chinese Apps

According to the order signed by Trump, it suggests the United States take “aggressive actions” against these Chinese software applications. The steps will be taken for the sake of national security. The Commerce Department is responsible for deciding which transactions will be barred under this directive within 45 days from now. The U.S. is targeting Tencent Holdings Ltd’s QQ Wallet and WeChat Pay apart from Alipay. Some of the other names mentioned in the order are CamScanner, SHAREit, and VMate. The sudden ban on transactions between these apps and America will have a huge impact on the economic stature of China.

In response to this order, Kingsoft Corporation, a Chinese software company said that it did not expect to have a huge impact on its business in such a short term due to Trump’s executive order. No other company made any comment related to this statement. Apart from this listed Chinese software, the Chinese Embassy also didn’t comment after a response was requested.

Why is this ban important?

Any kind of software used for payment purposes is linked to our bank accounts. Moreover, we are connecting these software applications from my electronic devices thus giving the Chinese software access to our personal information. The order says that this Chinese software can capture our sensitive personally identifiable information and private information. Having such a broad swath of data would allow China to locate the federal employees and contractors and build dossiers of personal information.

Chinese apps
Image Source: rappler.com

The relationship between China and the U.S. is going through turmoil for quite some time. In August, Trump ordered a ban on Chinese apps like TikTok and WeChat and gave the same reason that the government is concerned about data theft. But, amidst this bitter-growing relationship, the newly elected U.S. president, Joe Biden made very few comments. He didn’t clearly specify yet how he plans to address the cyber or tech threats from China.

Though Trump has signed this order, Biden can revoke it while he begins officially as the president of the U.S. But, Biden’s transition team has declined to comment on this matter. This order might bring out casualties on both sides even before the dispute regarding the origin of COVID-19 is settled. It seems like Trump is ready for a big battle with China striking time and again at the same wound.

If Trump’s order passed in August had gone into effect, the Chinese apps would have already been banned from the U.S. It couldn’t have been possible due to the court restrictions mainly on the ground of freedom of speech. One of the senior administration officials said that the White House is confident about the order this time. The new rules and restrictions of this order cannot stand against judicial scrutiny as software like Alipay will struggle to bring a First Amendment case.

Impact on Ant Group

In November 2020, Reuters reported that the U.S. The State Department submitted a proposal to add Ant Group to a trade blacklist. This would prevent U.S. investors from taking part in the world’s potential biggest IPO. But, for some reason, the Chinese government made Ant Group pull off the IPO resulting in a huge loss for both the company and the investors. Currently, Ant Group is suffering from the judgments of both America and China itself. Recently, China ordered an anti-monopoly investigation on Alipay which is owned by the Ant Group. It is difficult for a company to operate is in the crosshairs of both its home country and another powerful nation.

Slack

Slack Faces an Outage With the Start of 2021, Disrupting Thousands of Users

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Ending 2020, after the holiday week, people in the United States went on to work again on Monday. But the Monday did not go very smoothly for the office messaging company Slack, as it faced an outage on the very day.

What is Slack and Why it is used

Slack is an office messaging and communication platform, developed by an American software company Slack Technologies. The app is used for sharing information, chatting, voice and video calls, transferring documents by thousands of users and companies. It has been providing its services since 2013 and has become the first choice of many companies for establishing a private network of communication for their office staff and clients. The company has also seen a hike in the number of users during the Pandemic.

The Full-Blown Outage

Slack went down at around 10 AM ET on Monday, and the users started reporting about the problem. There were issues with sending messages, loading the channel, making calls, transferring files, and many of the users even reported that they could not log in to their slack accounts. During the outage, the calendar on Slack as well as the notifications was also not working.

Slack
Image Source: slack.com

By 10:14 AM, the company also confirmed that the app was facing some issues, and later, it also acknowledged that an outage had occurred. “Customers may have trouble loading channels or connect to Slack at this time. Our team is investigating and we will follow up with more information as soon as we have it. We apologize for any disruption caused”, the company updated, “The problem remained for about more than two hours, and after that, the platform started working fine for some of the users at about 12:20 PM. But many of the users were still facing the interruption. The company also continued to update its official Twitter account with information regarding the problem. “

All hands are on deck on our end to further investigate,” one of its tweets said.”At 3:10 PM, the company tweeted, “We’re truly sorry for the disruption today. We’ll be back with a summary of this issue.”

Cause of the Problem

In the pandemic, the companies were heavily relying on the various messaging and video conferencing apps, including Slack, Zoom, Google, etc. This might also be a reason that those platforms were facing such issues. Last year, in the mid of December, Gmail from Google also faced a similar blackout for some time, where users were continuously getting some error messages. This outage encouraged users to shift from one platform to the other so that they could complete their work on time. But since these apps recovered in a few hours, users could use them again.

The Salesforce Deal

But those issues are not permanent, as these companies are continuously working towards improving their tools for the users. Recently, the American cloud-based software company Salesforce announced to buy Slack for an amount of $27.7 billion (roughly Rs. 2,03,400 crores) and adding more features and tools to the platform. The company also revealed that it will be merging the Slack messaging technology to its platform so that users can manage the marketing and sales teams from a single platform.

Back to Normal

After the big-blown outage, reportedly, Slack is working perfectly smooth now. “Seeing improvements with error rates on our site, and we believe affected customers should be able to access Slack,” said a spokesperson of Slack. Though thousands of people reported the issue with the platform, the company hasn’t given any figures or number of how many users faced the disruption. 

data leaked

Tension grows as over 100 million Credit, Debit Cardholders’ data leaked on the dark web

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Tension grows among civilians as a security researcher discovers that the personal data of millions of cardholders’ have been compromised. According to this recent discovery, personal information like full name, email address, phone numbers, and the first and last four digits of the card has been revealed on the dark web. Due to this glitch, the bank account and other sensitive data of 100 million debit and credit cardholders are at stake.

The leakage of sensitive information on the dark web seems to have been caused by the platform of Juspay. Just pay is a digital payment service that processes transactions for many Indian and global multinational companies like Swiggy, Amazon, etc. With India getting accustomed to the digital payment system, there is a huge potential for phishing attacks if proper security is not established.

Nature of data leaked

It was cybersecurity researcher, Rajshekhar Rajaharia, who discovered the data leak last week on the dark web. He informed Gadgets 360 about the leaked data and that it was up for sale on the dark web by some hacker. According to the files shared with Gadgets 360, the data of the cardholders’ that has been leaked is between the time frame of March 2017 to August 2020. The data surfaced on the dark web included personal details of Indian cardholders. From customer IDs to the expiry date of the cards were fully visible on the site.

Apparently, the transaction details have not been leaked on the dark web. But, the information leaked is enough to cause phishing attacks by the hackers after combining the personal details available in the dump. Since the hacker put the information on the sale, Rajaharia also informed that the hacker was contacting buyers in Telegram for negotiation. The payment was demanded in Bitcoin.

Research on the data leak

Rajaharia on further research found that the hacker was selling the information on the dark web in the name of Juspay. The company on being contacted confirmed that there was a data leak in the month of August but didn’t provide any further details. Rajaharia continued his investigation and further verified the direct link of leaked data with Juspay. He received some of the dump sample files from the hacker which he compared with a Juspay API Document file. He said, “both were exactly the same.”

data leak

Juspay’s founder acknowledges the data leak

Vima Kumar, the founder of Juspay, informed Gadgets 360 that the company detected an unauthorized attempt on 18th August of this year. He further mentioned that it was terminated in progress. Kumar, in an email, claims that no personal data like card number, financial credentials, or transaction data was compromised. But he also accepted that data “Data records containing non-anonymized email, phone numbers and masked cards used for display purposes (contains first four and last four digits of the card, which is not considered sensitive), were compromised.”

Kumar mentioned that the masked card data which is non-sensible data for display leaked has two crore records. And the card vault is connected to a different PCI compliant system and it was never accessed. In response to this comment, Rajaharia said that the masked card numbers can be decrypted if a hacker figures out the algorithm used for the card fingerprints. Kumar defended his statement saying that Juspay does hundreds of rounds of hashing with multiple algorithms. These algorithms are not possible to reverse engineer even if given enough computing assets.

To prevent such attacks again Juspay has identified the security gaps in the company and made two-factor authentication (2FA) compulsory for all the tools accessed by the team members. However, it is hard to predict the capabilities of hackers these days after the recent data breach in the American government system that shook the internet.

Not even cybersecurity

Rajaharia is convinced that the security system of Juspay is still not strong enough. He said that there still exists a configuration issue on the company’s site that redirects its users to malicious websites. A company as big as Juspay which has around 50 million daily users including major clients like Swiggy, Airtel, Flipkart, Uber, etc should be more vigilant. The company holds the highest level of compliance given by the PCI Security Standards Council to such payment merchants. So now it is their responsibility to ensure the safety of its users.

Amazon

Amazon plans to launch computer science program for Indian students in 2021

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India is the second-largest internet market in the world. Within the past few years, the number of citizens getting access to the internet has sky-rocketed. This opens up a huge opportunity for new business, creating new jobs, and developing new skills in the world of technology. We are witnessing how students from a young age are motivated to take up computer classes and most importantly learn to code. This gives the students immense opportunity to get used to any coding environment which is necessary for the 21st century. And, to help out the students learn and launch their careers the tech giants are very interested to invest in the Indian market. India is a pool of young talents where every year millions of computer science students are offered lucrative jobs in and outside the country.

Seizing this opportunity, Amazon has decided to extend its computer science program Future Engineer in India. Amazon, via a job recruitment post, has said that the primary aim for launching Amazon Future Engineer in India is to provide computer science education to the underprivileged and underrepresented youth of India. The news was first conveyed by TechCrunch that Amazon is planning to launch the computer science program sometime next year.

Amazon plan for the Indian students

In the job posting, Amazon mentioned that this childhood-to-career program of Amazon Future Engineer will launch in India in 2021. The post-announcement also mentioned that the candidate they are looking for has to work with local non-profit organizations and government officials to educate the children and young students. Currently, the childhood-to-career program is operational only in the United States connecting more than 5,000 schools and teaching computer science to 550,000 students. Amazon also mentioned that computer science education in India is “currently underway” and the company wants to invest in the development of such coursework and extend the learning hand.

The hype for coding is increasing among young students especially in this pandemic where everyone is finding opportunities to learn new skills. We have also seen that social media is crawling with the advertisements of White Hat Jr. helping students to learn and do coding. The increasing demand for coders proves that soon every individual needs to learn a bit of coding to secure a good job. So, isn’t it better to start learning from a young age?

Amazon
Image Source: amazon.com

Amazon has already invested $6.5billion in India and is currently exploring opportunities in the education field. Every young student has the right to proper education. So, this time Amazon is inclined towards reaching out to those who don’t get the opportunity to get a lavish education. The main target of this program launching in India is to equip the students of neglected communities with proper computer science education.

Last year, Amazon launched an app called JEE Ready to help JEE aspirants get ready to compete in one of the most participated entrance exams for engineering. Currently, the app has been rebranded as Amazon Academy which is like any other preparation app for engineering entrance exams.

Amazon Future Engineer Program

There was a time when getting a chance to study computer science was a dream come true. But, the advent of technology in every field has made us realize it has become a necessity rather than an extravaganza. So, Amazon decided to release a childhood-to-career program to educate and train students from economically backward communities.

Amazon Future Engineer Program provided lots of course materials to the students, abundant resources, partnerships with schools to educate the unprivileged youth. The program has released many scholarship and internship opportunities for students from elementary to high schools.

Other tech giants investing in education

You can find endless opportunities to learn if you genuinely want to develop new skills. It is not only Amazon that is striving to make a change in the lives of young students. Facebook, earlier this year partnered with CBSE (Central Board of Secondary Education) to launch a certified course on digital safety and online well-being and augmented reality for both students and teachers. Google and Microsoft have also partnered with many Indian governmental bodies and invested in ed-tech start-ups to train the educators. Training and educating the educators itself is helpful as educating one teacher means educating an entire class.