PAKISTAN NEWS:
PTA approaches whatsapp, demands explanation on hacking incidents:
With reference to media reports regarding WhatsApp users being targeted worldwide including users from Pakistan with a hacking software, Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) has taken up the matter with WhatsApp management not only to get the details of users targeted in Pakistan but also to have an update on the remedial measures taken by Whatsapp to prevent the occurrence of such hacking attempts in future. It maybe recalled that it emerged last month about possible ways through which hackers could install Spyware on smartphones. Media reports then said that a Whatsapp bug was responsible for the hack.
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Arslan Ash becomes ESPN’s esports player of the year:
Arslan Ash has undoubtedly been in the spotlight in Esports this year. For those who don’t know, the Tekken star went on to win both the Japanese and the US-based Evo Championship Series tournaments in the same year, prevailing over elite players from all over the world.He became the first Pakistani player to win in a large scale international fighting game tournament, and also became the country’s first Red Bull athlete. The Pakistani Esports star made quite a name for himself and his country, which has now earned him ESPN’s Esports Player of the Year Award.
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Pakistani CIOs get global recognition at the world cio 200 summit:
Through technology, businesses can now reach millions of users in far lesser time periods compared to before. Government’s throughout the world are also investing in digital transformation to improve their efficiency, accountability, better citizen engagement, and provision of better public service delivery. Therefore, in this context, the role of Chief Information Officers (CIOs) has become even more important to champion the cause of a sustainable and successful digital transformation within their respective organizations. The journey that the CIOs take is not easy and there are many challenges they face when focusing on people, process and technology which are the key enabling components to ensure a successful transformation.
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Honor 9x is now available for pre-booking in Pakistan:
With 2019 ending in just a few weeks, Honor Pakistan has thrown in a big announcement, unveiling the Honor 9X in Pakistan. Honor 9X has already launched in many countries around the world where the smartphone has managed to impress buyers with its specs. Honor 9X features a 16MP pop-up selfie camera, a first for Honor phones in Pakistan. This change has allowed the screen to body ratio to be 91% which gives you a seamless viewing due to no cutout or notch on the screen. Honor 9X will be available for pre-booking from the 20th of December 2019 on their official e-commerce website Daraz.pk with pre-booking gifts and free delivery.
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Huawei p40 to feature a new camera with 10x optical zoom:
Camera upgrades appear to be the next big thing for flagship smartphones in 2020. The Samsung Galaxy S11 is expected to bring a 108MP main camera sensor and a 48MP telephoto lens with a 5x optical zoom. Huawei is also looking to make a grand entrance by bringing the company’s first 10x optical zoom camera on the Huawei P40 Pro.
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You can now earn up to $7,000 if you find bugs in oneplus smartphones:
OnePlus, in order to improve the security of its products and services, has announced a bounty program called the OnePlus Security Response Center (OneSRC).Under this program, the company will pay you $50 to $7,000, if you discover and report bugs in OnePlus devices. The amount of reward depends on the type of bug you discover. Overall, bugs have been divided into five categories.
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Samsung Galaxy s10 lite leaks days before launch:
Samsung Galaxy S10 Lite and Note 10 Lite have been in the limelight over the past few weeks due to the constant leaks and rumors. Both the devices are going to launch soon and just ahead of the launch, Samsung Galaxy S10 Lite’s specifications have been leaked in Germany.The smartphone, as the name suggests, is positioned to be a cheaper variant of Samsung’s Galaxy S10. According to the leak, the S10 Lite will be unveiled officially in the coming days.
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INTERNATIONAL NEWS:
Facebook organizes its first ever APAC press day:
Last week, Facebook invited journalists from over a dozen countries to its Marina Bay offices in Singapore for the first-ever APAC Press Day. They met with executives from Business, Marketing, Commerce and other operational areas to find out how Facebook is bringing the world closer together and how it plans to extend that mission into 2020.
In the wake of reports about foreign powers using social media to interfere in presidential elections in the US and the Brexit vote in the UK among others, Facebook has made significant investments to protect the integrity of elections.
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Samsung Galaxy S11 series to have a 48mp telephoto sensor:
Smartphone photography has seen constant improvements over the years and it has gotten to a point where the latest flagship devices, namely the iPhone 11 Pro, Huawei Mate 30, Pixel 4 XL, and the Galaxy Note 10 are now competing against modern-day DSLR cameras.
It is common news by now that Samsung’s next big smartphone, the Galaxy S11 will feature a 108-megapixel camera sensor. However, according to a recent leak, it has also been revealed that the telephoto cameras on each Galaxy S11 device will be no less than a whopping 48MP.
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Star citizen: is this £200m game becoming too ambitious?:
Video game Star Citizen is one of the biggest crowdfunded projects ever, raising nearly £200m ($250m).It is a game with ambitions to build an entire universe to act as its users’ playground, but it has been in development since 2012 and still is nowhere near finished. So what is going on? Media has been in search of the brains behind Star Citizen.
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Farewell from Dave Lee – the bbc’s man in Silicon Valley:
Today, I end what has been four and a half years as the Media North America technology reporter. Or, as our presenters mostly put it: “The Media’s man in Silicon Valley.”When I started, I predicted my time here would be spent witnessing the arrival of the next big thing, whatever on Earth (or beyond) that happened to be.It was a time of peak unicorn: a flurry of companies reaching that all-important — though arbitrary — $1bn valuation.
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Uber promises changes to avoid Germany ban:
Uber says it will make changes to avoid being banned in Germany, after a court ruled some of its processes did not respect local law.In Germany, the app connects passengers to private hire vehicle and taxi firms, rather than independent drivers.But trade body Taxi Deutschland complained that some of Uber’s processes broke Germany’s rules on passenger transport.
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UK approves £4bn US takeover of defence company Cobham:
The government has approved a US private equity firm’s takeover of UK defence and aerospace company Cobham.Advent International made a £4bn offer to buy Cobham in July and shareholders approved the deal in August.A government report found the merger caused some national security risks, but said on Friday concerns had been mitigated to an “acceptable level”.The founding family of the firm said the announcement on Friday evening was “cynically timed to avoid scrutiny”. Cobham, which employs 10,000 people, has extensive contracts with the British military and is seen as a world leader in air-to-air refuelling technology.
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Facebook to stop using phone numbers to recommend ‘friends’:
Facebook is to stop using members’ phone numbers in its friends recommendation system in 2020 following concern about privacy implications. Users can choose to have a code sent to their mobile phones when logging in to make access harder for hackers.But Facebook admitted it also fed the numbers into targeted advertising and friend recommendation systems.
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Facial recognition fails on race:
A US government study suggests facial recognition algorithms are far less accurate at identifying African-American and Asian faces compared to Caucasian faces.African-American females were even more likely to be misidentified, it indicated.It throws fresh doubt on whether such technology should be used by law enforcement agencies.
One critic called the results “shocking”.The National Institute of Standards and Technology (Nist) tested 189 algorithms from 99 developers, including Intel, Microsoft, Toshiba, and Chinese firms Tencent and DiDiChuxing.
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Robert Downey Jr launches youtube doc featuring AI baby:
YouTube has premiered a Robert Downey Jr-fronted series that seeks to demystify artificial intelligence.The documentary – produced by the actor in partnership with his wife Susan – is one of the platform’s highest profile and biggest-budgeted factual commissions to date.The Avengers star is expected to give the Age of AI mass appeal.One AI expert said there was “lots of eye candy for viewers with short attention spans”. Calum Chace, author of four books on the subject, added that artificial intelligence is a “large, complex, and important” subject.
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Google goes offline after fibre cables cut:
Severed fibre optic cables disrupted internet access in parts of eastern Europe, Iran and Turkey on Thursday. The issue, which lasted for about two hours, was caused by multiple fibre cables being physically cut at the same time, a highly unusual thing to happen.Google said its services were among those unavailable in the region for about 30 minutes.The company told internet service providers to connect to its other servers to “route around the problem”.In a statement, the company blamed “multiple simultaneous fibre cuts”, which are very rare.