Friday Tech News Roundup #29

Below are 10 tech news that I found interesting and are related to topics I care about.

Microsoft advances several of its hosted artificial intelligence algorithms – Microsoft Cognitive Services is home to the company’s hosted artificial intelligence algorithms. Today, the company announced advances to several Cognitive Services tools including Microsoft Custom Vision Service, the Face API and Bing Entity Search. Techcrunch

UK and Australian governments now use Have I Been Pwned – Troy Hunt is turning Have I Been Pwned into an essential pwning monitoring service. The service monitors security breaches and password leaks so that you and your users remain secure. And now, the U.K. and Australian governments are monitoring their own domain names using the service. Techcrunch

Uber is the next big tech company getting into the healthcare business – Healthcare is big business, and tech companies don’t want to miss out just because they’re busy building smartphones, apps, and self-driving cars. Mashable

Skiers and snowboarders, the Apple Watch has a treat for you – Skiers and snowboarders, the Apple Watch is your new best friend. Mashable

Microsoft joins forces with Intel to beat Spectre – In a fresh move to further shore up security, Microsoft is providing Intel’s Spectre fix for PCs with Skylake processors running Windows 10 – with further patches to be delivered for older generation CPUs in the future. Techradar

Don’t get your hopes up about seeing Nvidia’s next-gen graphics cards this month – Previous speculation has pointed to Nvidia being set to launch its next-gen graphics cards later this month, but a new rumor is claiming that this won’t happen – and indeed we may not see a hard launch (i.e. products actually becoming available) until July, or possibly even later. Techradar

Alibaba Cloud Launches ‘Bare Metal,’ HPC Instances in Europe – Alibaba, the e-commerce giant from China, is taking a run at AWS in the global public cloud computing market with new offerings aimed at the surging demand for AI and HPC solutions among European enterprises. HPCWire

GitHub falls victim to largest DDoS attack ever recorded – GitHub was hit yesterday by what is reported to be the biggest distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack ever. According to GitHub Engineering, the site was shut down by the attack from 17:21 to 17:26 UTC on February 28. Afterwards, the website maintained intermittent functionality between 17:26 and 17:30 before fully recovering. Techspot

Mobile upgrade cycles will stretch to 33 months by next year – Market saturation and disinterest due to slowed innovation are just a few of the many hurdles plaguing the smartphone industry. As The Wall Street Journal recently highlighted, slumping sales can also be attributed to the fact that older devices are remaining popular for longer than anticipated. Techspot

Microsoft’s Xbox spring update adds 1440p support and new Mixer features – Microsoft today detailed its upcoming Xbox spring update, which is available now for those who are part of the Xbox Insider’s “alpha ring” group. The most notable addition in the update is support for 1440p video output, which is a popular resolution choice for PC gamers who prefer to keep high frame rates instead of prioritizing 4K visuals. With 1440p support on Xbox One S and X, those with compatible monitors should be to make the most out of 2560 x 1440, or “QHD,” displays. The Verge

Friday Tech News Roundup #28

Below are 10 tech news that I found interesting and are related to topics I care about.

1Password bolts on a ‘pwned password’ check – Password management service 1Password has a neat new feature that lets users check whether a password they’re thinking of using has already been breached. At which point it will suggest they pick another. Techcrunch

Snips brings its privacy-focused voice assistant to cars – French startup Snips is announcing two things for its voice assistant SDK. Techcrunch

Tinder vulnerability let hackers take over accounts with just a phone number – A newly published attack let researchers take over Tinder accounts with just a user’s phone number, according to a new report by Appsecure. The Verge

Google Assistant will soon detect what language you’re speaking in – Google Assistant is getting some important language upgrades this year. The Verge

Apple’s AirPower said to be released next month, pricing info still unclear – Alongside the iPhone 8 and iPhone X last September, Apple showcased its wireless charging accessory called AirPower. The charging mat will allow Apple users to charge their iPhone, AirPods, and Apple Watch on the same surface. At the time, Apple teased a 2018 debut, and now it looks like we’re inching closer to that release…. 9to5Mac

New AirPods reportedly coming this year with ‘Hey Siri’ support, water resistant model in development – Apple is working on a new version of the AirPods truly wireless earbuds for release later this year, featuring a new wireless chip and support for ‘Hey Siri’ activation, according to a report from Bloomberg today. 9to5Mac

Nvidia is creating surveillance cameras with built-in face recognition. Uh, great? – Nvidia has partnered with AI developer AnyVision to create facial recognition technology for “smart cities” around the world. Mashable

Fluid HPC: How Extreme-Scale Computing Should Respond to Meltdown and Spectre – The Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities are proving difficult to fix, and initial experiments suggest security patches will cause significant performance penalties to HPC applications. HPCWire

Windows 10 updates could be installed much more quickly in the future –
Microsoft is working to make the major updates for Windows 10 more streamlined, so that these currently twice-yearly upgrades don’t take nearly as long to install and configure. Techradar

Tim Cook Says Apple is Always Focused on ‘Products and People’ Over Wall Street Expectations – Apple’s CEO primarily reflected on the iPhone maker’s culture and approach that has led to products such as the iPhone X, Apple Watch, AirPods, and HomePod, and as to be expected, he talked up the company he runs. Macrumors

Friday Tech News Roundup #26

Below are 10 tech news that I found interesting and are related to topics I care about.

Apple AirPods are the latest tech product that can allegedly explode – Another tech product, another explosive allegation. Mashable

Some iPhone source code just hit GitHub, and Apple isn’t pleased – Apple’s legal team has been busy. Mashable

10 things you (probably) didn’t know about Apple’s HomePod – Apple HomePod sounds really great, works with Apple Music, Siri is still meh, and it requires an iOS device to set up. The end, right? Mashable

Microsoft is testing authenticator logins for Windows 10 S users – It seems Microsoft may be aiming to ditch passwords sooner than some may have thought. The company first made their anti-password goals clear back in 2015 with the release of Windows 10 which launched with the “Windows Hello” facial recognition system for logins. Techspot

Intel rolls out random reboot-free Spectre microcode updates for Skylake chips – Back in January, we covered Google Project Zero’s disclosure of massive CPU security flaws Spectre and Meltdown. If you’ve never heard of these vulnerabilities before, here’s the gist: Spectre and Meltdown are two serious CPU security vulnerabilities that allow hackers to steal personal data from computers, mobile devices and servers without a given machine’s owner ever realizing it. Techspot

Hacker group manages to run Linux on a Nintendo Switch – Hacker group fail0verflow shared a photo of a Nintendo Switch running Debian, a distribution of Linux (via Nintendo Life). The group claims that Nintendo can’t fix the vulnerability with future firmware patches. Techcrunch

Nvidia up 10% after Q4 earnings beat, says cryptocurrency demand ‘exceeded expectations’ – Nvidia’s successes are continuing to pile on as the company’s gaming and data center businesses drove revenues up 34 percent year-over-year. Techcrunch

From July, Chrome will flag all unencrypted websites as ‘not secure’ – Google’s fight for a more secure internet continues with the announcement that its Chrome 68 update – to be released in July this year – will see all unencrypted websites (HTTP sites) marked with a ‘not secure’ label. Techradar

Surface Pro 5 release date, news and rumors – You might suspect that the Surface Pro (2017) is the closest we’ll ever get to the Surface Pro 5, but if Microsoft itself is anything to go by, you would be dead wrong. The Surface Pro 5 doesn’t exist right now, as Microsoft Surface leader Panos Panay confirmed last May, but it will when more meaningful changes erupt from the geniuses at Microsoft’s hardware design lab. Techradar

Microsoft is reportedly shifting its Windows strategy as it tries to outmaneuver Apple and Google – Last weekend, long-time Microsoft blogger Brad Sams reported that Windows 10 S – the latest version of the operating system, launched in mid-2017 – is, for all intents and purposes, dead. Business Insider

10 Tech News Roundup #17

Here are 10 tech news that I found interesting.

Zero-day iOS HomeKit vulnerability allowed remote access to smart accessories including locks, fix rolling out – A HomeKit vulnerability in the current version of iOS 11.2 has been demonstrated to 9to5Mac that allows unauthorized control of accessories including smart locks and garage door openers. Our understanding is Apple has rolled out a server-side fix that now prevent unauthorized access from occurring while limiting some functionality, and an update to iOS 11.2 coming next week will restore that full functionality. 9to5Mac

Apple hires yet another veteran TV programming exec for its original content efforts – As part of its growing original content efforts, Apple has hired programming veteran Michelle Lee to join its worldwide video department, as reported by Variety. Lee has previously worked on popular shows for several major networks as a producing partner at Universal Television’s True Jack Productions… 9to5Mac

Nvidia’s $2,999 Titan V is a 110 teraflop GPU for AI processing – Nvidia cards are the de facto standard for running machine learning workloads and today, the company added yet another high-end compute-centric card to its line-up: the Titan V. This card, which is based on Nvidia’s Volta architecture, features 21.1 billion transistors on a 815 mm2 chip that can produce a full 110 teraflops of compute power. Techcrunch

Uber lands investment from Singapore’s largest taxi operator in blow to rival Grab – Uber has struck a major deal in Southeast Asia after ComfortDelGro, Singapore’s largest taxi operator, announced [PDF] it has agreed to buy a majority share of the ride-hailing giant’s Singapore-based car rental business. Techcrunch

Uber reportedly paid a 20-year-old man to keep silent about security breach – A 20-year-old man was responsible for the massive data breach at Uber last year, and the company paid him to destroy the data through its bug bounty program, reports Reuters. In November, Uber revealed it suffered from a cyberattack in October 2016 that exposed the private data of 57 million drivers and customers, which it then covered up. Uber allegedly paid hackers a $100,000 ransom to delete the data and not disclose what had happened to the media and public. The company didn’t say how the hacker was paid, or who he was. The Verge

Bitcoin value tops $16,000 and shows no signs of slowing down – Bitcoin’s track record is a lot like a manic-depressive illness, defined by extremely high peaks and incredibly deep valleys. Judging by its latest rally, the popular cryptocurrency’s volatility isn’t going to normalize anytime soon. Techspot

Intel Nervana processor goes beyond terabit bandwidth with refined architecture – Earlier this year, Intel showed off its research and development efforts to build the Intel Nervana Neural Network Processor. The newly designed chip will far surpass any general-purpose processors for machine learning and artificial intelligence applications. Best yet, it is a product that actually is going to make it to market. Techspot

AirPods will be even more ubiquitous in 2018, says report – Get ready to see even more of those distinctive AirPod stems sticking out of ears everywhere you go next year. Mashable

Windows 7 users are officially dropping like flies – For the first time in a long time, Windows 7 is now being run by less than half of PC users. Only 43.12% still use the eight-year-old operating system, reports TechRadar. Mashable

Every 2018 iPhone model could get a battery boost thanks to this new tech – Hands up who wants more battery life from their smartphone? The good news is that noted mobile analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, of KGI Securities fame, reckons that all three of the 2018 iPhones are going to get a boost in capacity across the board, thanks partly to a new L-shaped battery design. Techradar

10 Tech News Roundup #13

Here are 10 tech news that I found interesting.

Twitter fixes another important problem with support for 50-character usernames – Twitter has followed up its move to double the character limit of tweets to 280 by increasing the length of a username to 50 characters. Techcrunch

China’s Toutiao is buying Musical.ly in a deal worth $800M-$1B – Musical.ly, the lip-syncing app popular with teens and young people, has been sold to Chinese social media giant Toutiao, according to an announcement made today. Techcrunch

Apple expands its ‘Everyone Can Code’ initiative to over 20 colleges outside the U.S. – Apple wants to teach people all around the world to code, so the company is making the move to colleges worldwide. Mashable

Nvidia’s huge run continues as its data center business surges – Nvidia continues to ride the wave of a myriad of huge success stories for the company, like the rapid adoption of the Nintendo Switch and demand for technology to power AI computation within data centers, as it saw yet another quarter where its business continued to expand significantly. Techcrunch

Vulnerability in hundreds of messaging apps leaves user data exposed – Mobile threat protection firm Appthority discovered an exploit in almost 700 iOS and Android apps that could expose the private messages and calls of users. The company said that up to 180 million Android devices could be affected, along with an unknown number of iOS devices. Techspot

Windows 10 Insider Build shows off AirDrop-style sharing feature, mutable tabs, more – Microsoft has made the Windows 10 Insider Preview Build (17035) available to Insiders in the Fast Ring, revealing a handful of new features and fixes, including what looks like the company’s own version of Apple’s AirDrop system. Techspot

Co-Design Center Develops Next-Gen Simulation Tools – The exascale architectures on the horizon for supercomputing pose intricate challenges to the developers of large-scale scientific applications. Running efficiently at exascale will not only require porting and optimizing code but also rethinking the design of core algorithms to take advantage of the greater parallelism and more efficient calculation capabilities that exascale systems will offer.HPCWire

Apple has acquired imaging sensor startup InVisage Technologies – As Apple continues to work on ever-smaller but more powerful computing devices, it has acquired a startup focusing on nanotechnology, and specifically as it relates to image sensors. TechCrunch has learned and confirmed that Apple has picked up InVisage Technologies, a startup that develops solutions to improve imaging capabilities on space-constrained devices, like smartphones. Techcrunch

MyInfo extended to private sector, allowing businesses to tap citizen data for digital services – SINGAPORE: From next year, consumers can expect a hassle-free experience when it comes to applying for a credit card across different banks, or even a new mobile phone SIM card. Channel Newsasia

IBM makes 20 qubit quantum computing machine available as a cloud service – IBM has been offering quantum computing as a cloud service since last year when it came out with a 5 qubit version of the advanced computers. Today, the company announced that it’s releasing 20-qubit quantum computers, quite a leap in just 18 months. A qubit is a single unit of quantum information. Techcrunch