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Apple Updates iCloud to Fix the Compatibility Issues with Windows

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Apple along with Microsoft had been working on the latest version of iCloud for Windows, and have just released the newest version of iCloud for Windows version 7.8.1. The Apple device users, having a Windows machine, had been complaining about the compatibility issues for a long time, for that Apple and Microsoft came together and started working to solve the issues.

The problem was occurring for most of the Windows 10 users when they were trying to install iCloud on it, they were getting an error message over the screen, with the failed installation. Also, the users who already had the software installed on their Windows machine were also facing problems with the Photos syncing and more.

Having received so many complaints regarding the compatibility issues of iCloud with Windows, earlier this month, Microsoft blocked its users from downloading iCloud for Windows. It had also noticed that the users were having a problem in updating the Shared Albums after they upgraded to Windows 10 version 1809.

Microsoft had earlier confirmed that it was working with Apple together, to resolve the issue, but, there has been no mention about the update of the iCloud for Windows from Apple. Yet it has listed some of the requirements for using the iCloud for windows on its support page: “iCloud for Windows 7.8.1 requires Microsoft Windows 7 or later; Outlook 2007 or later or iCloud.com (for Mail, Contacts, Calendar); and Internet Explorer 10 or later, Firefox 30 or later, or Google Chrome 28 or later (for Bookmarks).” The update on the iCloud support page has ensured that the problems that the users were facing earlier, won’t be there anymore, and they can now use the software on Windows machines without any difficulties.

Nasa’s Mars InSight Probe Successfully Arrives at the Red Planet

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Nasa’s Mars InSight probe has successfully landed on the surface of Mars after a long journey of 300m-mile, that is covered in seven months. InSight – short for “Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport,” is an $830 million robot, that has been sent to Mars to know the planet better.

The robot landed at the quietest place on Mars, Elysium Planitia, a vast, smooth lava plain, also called as “the biggest parking”, shortly before 8 pm GMT on Monday. There were cheers and hugs among the scientists at Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in California, when the InSight robot sent the signals of its successful arrival on the planet.

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Image Source: spaceflightnow.com

“It was intense, and you could feel the emotion,” said NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine, on receiving a congratulatory phone call from Vice President Mike Pence. “What an amazing day for NASA,” he added. The robot also sent a picture of itself, soon after a few minutes of its arrival on the surface. Due to the dust, the picture came out to be a bit blurred, but NASA claims that the next pictures will be more clear.

NASA launched the mission on May 5, this year, from the United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, unlike the other missions, that were launched from the Cape Canaveral. The robot landed on Mars successfully, after it blasted off its heat shield and fired retro-thrusters to slow its descent when it entered into the thin Martian atmosphere and released a parachute.

The robot will accomplish a two years mission and will be studying more about the core, crust and mantle of the planet. The robot is further focused on researching the climate and the formation of the planed more than 4.6bn years ago. The InSight mission is one of the 40% Mars missions that have been successful in the past. The lander is embedded with a seismometer, that will work as an ear listen to the vibrations on the ground. It is capable of recording a dozen to 100 Marsquakes of magnitude 3.5 or greater, during its two years mission on the planet.

It also consists of a heat probe, that will measure the Mars’ heat rate under the ground. The scientists will also calculate the size of the Mars’ core, with the help of the antenna attached to the robot, that will measure the Mars’ wobbles on its axis. There are a lot more enclosed in the mission that will be revealed in steps after the mission moves further.

Bruce Banerdt, the mission’s lead scientist from JPL, said, “When we look at the crust of Mars, that’s a snapshot into the past, of what the crust of the Earth might have looked like 4.5 billion years ago before it got all busy. It will take about two years to collect the data needed to answer the mission’s “deep questions.” depending on how many quakes Mars has in store.”

Qualcomm Might Launch the New Snapdragon 8150 in the Upcoming Event in Hawaii

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According to the reports, Qualcomm is all set to launch its next powerful processor the Snapdragon 8150 (earlier called as Snapdragon 855) in its upcoming event on 4 December in Hawaii. The company had launched the Snapdragon 845, one of the most used processors in various flagship smartphones of 2018, at the same time last year. The company is again up to launch its latest processor with better performance.

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Image Source: askifa.ng

As a result of a leaked video, the Chinese media has revealed the news of the launch. In the video, the Qualcomm’s senior manager from the marketing team is talking about an event that will take place on the 4th December this year and is hinting at the forthcoming launch of a ‘Snapdragon 8xx’ processor. The video is an official invite, embedded in Oculus Go headsets, that has been sent to the media by the company itself for the upcoming event.

The new processor is still an octa-core and holds the Oreo Go Edition, combining the power of AR, VR, and HDR. The processor is expected to be based on the 7nm FinFET fabrication technology, that may result in better performance of the processor at a minimal power consumption. There will be a better graphics support with the help of the Adreno 640 GPU, and the processor will also maintain better camera resolution. The processor will still be split between four power-efficient cores and four high-performance cores, among which two will be super large cores, two will be the large cores, and the other four will be the small cores.

According to a tweet from the Ice Universe, the chipset is expected to have a tri-cluster CPU design. There will be four low-power Kryo Silver cores, with 128 KB L2 cache each, running at a maximum frequency of 1.8 GHz in one cluster. The other trio of Kryo Gold will have 256KB L2 cache each, and a maximum frequency of 2.419 GHz in another cluster. And, the single Kryo Gold core is equipped with double the L2 cache, 512 KB, running at a maximum frequency of 2.842 GHz. We can see the 5G support coming with the Qualcomm 8150 processor, and one can also expect an Artificial Intelligence Processing Unit (APU) embedded with the processor.

The processor has already been featured in the Geekbench, ai-benchmark, and AnTuTu, with a single-core score of 3505 and multi-core score of 10608 in the Geekbench. The predictions, until now, have said all about its performance, and all the upcoming smartphones are inclined to adopt this new processor.

Ezetap CEO Abhijit Bose Appointed as the WhatsApp India Head

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WhatsApp is planning to expand its business outside the U.S. and has appointed Abhijit Bose, co-founder and CEO of payment device maker Ezetap, as the head of WhatsApp India, in order to build a bigger team outside California. Facebook-owned WhatsApp confirmed the news on Wednesday and said that Bose will join WhatsApp in early 2019, and will be based in Gurugram. The main operation of Bose will be to constitute a team that will work towards curbing the spread of fake messages.

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Image Source: livemint.com

The Indian government had been putting pressure on the company to take some actions against the spreading of fake news in India, through the WhatsApp messaging app. Less than a month ago, the vice-president of WhatsApp, Chris Daniels, and the IT minister Ravi Shankar Prasad had a meeting, where Danial had discussed regarding the team he had constituted in India, that will start functioning soon against the spread of the fake news. Around two months ago, WhatsApp had also appointed Komal Lahiri as its first Grievance Officer for India.

Matt Idema, the chief operating officer of WhatsApp said, “WhatsApp (the company) is deeply committed to India and is excited to keep building products that help people connect and support India’s fast-growing digital economy. As a successful entrepreneur himself, Abhijit knows what it takes to build meaningful partnerships that can serve businesses across India.” Bose with his team will also help the companies of small to large scale with easy communication with their customers. The company is also focussed on creating and introducing new products for the Indian public.

“WhatsApp is special and can be a major partner for financial inclusion and economic growth in India. It’s not only how so many families stay in touch, but increasingly it’s how businesses are engaging with their customers. WhatsApp can positively impact the lives of hundreds of millions of Indians, allowing them to actively engage and benefit from the new digital economy,” said Bose.

Bose has been responsibly operating a huge business from past seven years, and he knows the technicalities of how to handle a big team. Appointing him as India’s head, WhatsApp has taken the first step to sustain its presence in India, as it was slammed by two notices from the Indian government for not taking any actions against the fake news spreading on WhatsApp. The second notice even stated that if WhatsApp will not put adequate checks in place, the govt will consider the messaging app as the supporter of rumour distribution and legal consequences will follow against the company.

Microsoft Initiates the Password-less Authentication Using FIDO2 Security Keys

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How many times it has happened that you forgot your account password while logging into it, and you have to recreate a new one. Well, the problem is going to vanish for the Microsoft accounts soon, as it is going to introduce the standards-based FIDO2 security key devices to let its users sign into their account without a username and password. Using the FIDO2 WebAuthn and the CTAP2 standards, Microsoft will enable the hardware security keys or Windows Hello support, to authenticate the users, through its Edge browser.

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Image Source: itsagadget.com

The users who are using Windows 10 can start using the new authentication technique, either by using Windows Hello, a biometrics-based authentication platform built into Windows 10, with a FIDO2-compatible device from Yubico or Feitian, an authenticator or with a fingerprint reader.

Vice president of program management at Microsoft Identity Division, Alex Simons, said, “Microsoft is the first company to support password-less authentication using the FIDO2 WebAuthn and CTAP2 specifications, and Microsoft Edge supports the widest array of authenticators compared to other major browsers.”

To use a hardware authentication key, one needs to plug it into the USB port of the system. For logging into a Microsoft account over a phone, one need to use the Bluetooth or NFC wireless communications. The users can also login into the Microsoft apps, on a smartphone, using the Microsoft Authenticator app. The Microsoft platforms that support the FIDO2 security key includes Outlook.com, Office 365, Skype, OneDrive, Cortana, Microsoft Edge, Xbox Live on the PC, Mixer, the Microsoft Store, Bing and the MSN portal site.

Microsoft had already introduced its Authenticator app, for the iOS and Android users and as of now, Microsoft is the only company to provide such security devices to its users. Soon, we can see other companies adopting the same technology as the regular username and passwords have already been vulnerable to the security breaches. It may be a drastic change in the authentication procedure, but adopting the new one can be more beneficial for the security of the important data stored on the web.

Berners-Lee Wants A New Contract to Fix the Broken Internet

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The 63 years old founder of the World Wide Web (www), Tim Berners-Lee, has shown concerns about the manner the internet is being used, for the past ten years. According to Berners-Lee, the internet was created for the people, for quick exchange of information across the world. But, the goal that its founders had, have been got off the course.

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Image Source: home.bt.com

He said, “For a long time, 20 years, I thought all I had to do was just keep it free and open, and people will do wonderful things. Then in fact, if you look and talk to people on the street now, there’s been a big change. I think this has been a tipping point.”

Berners-Lee is bothered about the situations that the internet is facing these days. The threats like data breaches, hate speech, fake news, tech monopolies, and other things have deviated the internet from its initial goal. Berners-Lee, on Monday, called for a contract for the web, that includes guidelines for corporations, governments, and citizens, to make it safe and accessible for everyone. He said that the in 1989, when the internet came into being, it was assumed as the biggest breakthrough, as it connected the technology and humanity. But, it has caused a digital divide between the richer and the poorer countries. Also, half of the world’s population, including billions of women and girls, are still to get access to it.

“The web is for everybody, and so if the web is for everyone the contract has got to be for everyone,” said Berners-Berners-Lee, at Europe’s largest technology conference.

The biggest issue with today’s internet is that the negative content on the web is getting more attention and there is a flood of fake news and hate speeches. Also, the most used apps like Instagram and Youtube are the products of tech giants like Facebook and Google, leading to a monopoly.

The contract will be released by May 2019, at the same time 50 per cent of the world will be online for the first time. More than 50 organisations have already signed the contract, which is published by the World Wide Web Foundation. The contract includes the mention of the requirement for all the governments to treat privacy as a fundamental human right and has published a report that calls for urgent action.