Technology
Xbox Series X pre-orders begin, and gamers are eager to buy
It's Microsoft's turn to feed the Xbox Series X shopping frenzy, after retailers opened up Sony's PlayStation 5 preorders last week. Demand for the video game systems is off-the-charts, but ordering either console has been a difficult experience for many gamers.
Facebook removes Chinese accounts active in Philippines and US politics
Philippines|Americas|Companies|: Facebook Inc said Tuesday it had removed a network of inauthentic Chinese accounts that were interfering in Asian and American politics, including some that posted material supporting and opposing US President Donald Trump. The social networking company said it suspended 155 accounts on its main platform along with six Instagram accounts. The most widely followed accounts and pages were in the Philippines, where they shared content supporting China’s actions in the contested South China Sea and President Rodrigo Duterte. See more What's happening in India, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Philippines, Europe? News in pictures from East to West today India-China app war, US marine in Philippines jail, Thai royal consort, Pliscova out of US Open, Facebook grilled – top news in pictures today Suicide bombers strike in Southern Philippines : Aftermath of the attack in Sulu province The US accounts had fewer followers and posted content fueling both sides of the American election that will be held on November 3, the company said. Facebook cybersecurity policy chief Nathaniel Gleicher said that the takedown was the company’s first of Chinese-based accounts on foreign-interference grounds with any engagement in U.S. politics. But he said the American accounts and groups seemed aimed mainly at building an audience. “The volume of content is so low, it’s very hard to assess what their goal is,” Gleicher said. Trump and his intelligence officials have said China was favoring Democratic challenger Joe Biden, while Democrats in Congress have said Russia is being more aggressive. The Chinese embassy in Washington did not respond immediately to an email seeking comment. The network of accounts, pages and groups used virtual private networks and other tools to make it appear they were operated from somewhere other than China, Facebook said. Fewer than 3,000 people followed the fake American pages, while more than 100,000 accounts tracked those in Philippines. The operation’s US assets, added between May and August, included a group called Biden Harris 2020 that had around 1,400 members and one called Trump KAG 2020 that said it supported Trump’s re-election and had just three members, according to analysis firm Graphika, which studied material from Facebook. In Philippines, accounts supported both Duterte and his daughter, who might run to succeed him in 2022. They also criticized Rappler, an independent media group that is a frequent target of the Duterte government.
HMD Global brings 3 new value-for-money Nokia smartphones to the UAE
Technology|: Over the past few years, if someone came to me for a recommendation on a budget or mid-range smartphone, I’ve always recommended Nokia. Their devices are simple yet functional and most importantly get enough updates to last you at least 2 years (a factor extremely crucial in the Android smartphone space). Most Android powered brands barely concentrate on their flagships with updates for a year, the fact that Nokia updates their phones across the range for 2 years (minimum) is amazing. Today HMD Global launches two new budget offerings for customers looking for a wide range of features at a price point affordable to most. Today also brings around the beginning of the global sale of the Nokia 8.3 5G, a flagship 5G smartphone at an affordable price-point. Nokia 2.4 The Nokia 2.4 comes powered by the MediaTek Helio P22 processor and is supported by 2GB/3GB of RAM and has 32/64GB of internal storage. The 2.4 will be available in the UAE for Dh419 (2/32GB) and Dh469 (3/64GB) starting the second week of October this year. For people who need more storage the device will feature a micro-SD slot which can support storage up to 512GB. Nokia guarantees 2 years of OS updates and 3 years of security updates even at this price range Image Credit: Supplied The Nokia 2.4 also comes with a large 6.5” (1600x720) HD+ screen and a 4500mAh battery capable of providing 2 days of battery-life thanks to the phone’s AI Assisted Battery technology. The phone comes running Android 10 and is ready to be upgraded to Android 11. Like all Nokia phones, the 2.4 will also receive two years of OS updates and three years of security updates. The phone comes with a dual camera (13MP f/2.2 5P lens + 2M depth sensing) on the back and a single camera (5MP FF f/2.4 3P lens) on the front. Even at this price range, Nokia provides ‘AI Imaging’ to customers with features such as Night mode and Portrait Editor. Also, on the back of the device is the fingerprint reader for security. The Nokia 2.4 will only come with a single SIM slot and unfortunately doesn’t come with USB type-C or fast charging. Nokia 3.4 Coming with a more powerful Qualcomm Snapdragon 460 processor supported by 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage, the Nokia 3.4 offers a 70% more performance (compared to previous generations) to customers at a slightly higher price. The 3.4 will be available in Fjord, Dusk and Charcoal colour options in the UAE for Dh529 starting the end of October this year. A dual camera with AI imaging comes on the Nokia 3.4 Image Credit: Supplied The Nokia 3.4 will come with a 6.39” HD+ punch-hole display with a max brightness of 400 nits. In the hole-punch sits the device’s 8MP front camera. On the back of the smartphone we find a better triple camera setup with a 13MP (wide), 2MP (depth) and 5MP (ultra-wide) camera. Here too thanks to ‘AI Imaging’, the camera provides modes such as Night mode and Portrait Editor. The phone comes running Android 10 and is ready to be upgraded to Android 11. Like the Nokia 2.4, the 3.4 will also receive two years of OS updates and three years of security updates. With a 4000mAh battery and AI Assisted Battery technology, the 3.4 too has the capability to run for two days but like the 2.4 comes without fast charging. Nokia 8.3 5G By far Nokia’s most interesting and celebrated device this year, the 8.3 5G, goes on global sale today. Available in the UAE in the Polar Night edition for Dh2099, Nokia aims to make the 8.3 5G one of the most affordable and functional 5G phones on the market right now. The Nokia 8.3 5G will also be featured in the upcoming James Bond movie No Time To Die, premiering this November. The Nokia 8.3 5G, an extremely attractive 5G value-for-money smartphone, makes its way to the UAE next month Image Credit: Supplied The Nokia 8.3 5G will be powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 765G supported by 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage (micro SD expansion up to 512GB). The display on the 8.3 5G is a 6.81” 20:9 FHD+ PureDisplay with a 1080x2400 resolution. On the back of the phone we find the quad camera setup with a Zeiss Optics 64MP (f/1.89), 12MP ultra-wide, 2MP depth sensor and 2MP macro lens. The camera will be able to shoot 4K as well as supports Night mode. Nokia Power Earbuds Lite . Image Credit: Supplied Last but not least, Nokia is also jumping into the audio category with their latest ear buds, the Power Earbuds Lite. The earbuds will provide users with 35h of play time, come with touch controls on the body and have 6mm graphene speaker drivers on the inside. They are also IPX7 certification, so sweat or a bit of rain won’t affect the earbuds during use. The Nokia will be available in the UAE by mid-October and will come in Charcoal, Fjord and Snow colour options starting at a retail price of Dh399.
Strange new orange or green dot on your iPhone? It's not a bug
DUBAI: Ever wondered what “cookies” do to your phone? How you can have a better grip on them? What security issue do they cause? First off, cookies are the key to online tracking, which helps advertisers with "geo-targetting". So if you wonder why certain ads pop up on your phone fit your own tastes and interests perfectly, it's down to cookies. They're helpful in some sense. It's how websites remember your preferences from one visit to another, or from one device to another? Cookies, used by apps, help advertisers keep tabs of device fingerprinting and cross-device tracking. That’s how insidious some apps can be. Fortunately, there’s a way to control, or stop, it. Apple’s latest mobile operating system, iOS 14, comes with new security features. Now, you can have a better handle on protecting access to your phone’s camera and mic (will explain this later). What is a cookie? A cookie is information saved by your web browser, the software program you use to visit the web. When you visit a website, the site might store a cookie so it can recognize your device in the future. Later if you return to that site, it can read that cookie to remember you from your last visit. By keeping track of you over time, cookies can be used to customise your browsing experience, or to inject ads targeted to you, based on your preferences or search behaviour. A host of features and security enhancements are now in place, such as: ensuring that screen locking really keeps other people out of your device, turning on (or off) site and Wi-Fi trackers, configuring local network access settings. With iOS 14 now out, dive deep into ways you can have a more secure, safe phone use. The more familiar you are with these features, the better you can put these protections to work. iOS rollout Recently (on September 16, 2020) Apple released its fourteenth-generation operating system (iOS 14) for their iPhone and iPod Touch lines. iOS 14 is the fourteenth major release of the iOS mobile operating system developed by Apple for their iPhone and iPod Touch lines. The “beta” (test) version was originally announced at the company's Worldwide Developers Conference on June 22, 2020 as the successor to iOS 13, while the “alpha” (commercial) was released on September 16, 2020. Design-wise, the new OS also marks the first big change to the home screen since the iPhone’s inception (in 2007), with home screen changes and widgets. Following are the key security updates you need to know and to make full use off: 1. Safari tracking report While browsing using Safari (Apple’s web browser), now you can see who is tracking you. As a result, you can now go to each website you visited and find out which ones are tracking you (with their cookies). You can then pick which site you allow to track you or not. It also draws up a list of all the prevented trackers. How it works: Hit the address field on top of iOS your device. It reveals several options, including “Tracking Report” when you scroll down. On pressing “Tracking Report” it shows the number of known trackers prevented and the percentage of websites that contacted trackers. How online tracking works When you visit a website, your browser sends it a message known as an HTTP request. The website responds to your browser's message with both the content you asked for and any cookies it would like your browser to save. Modern websites use cookies for two main purposes: keeping you logged in and tracking your behavior. Image Credit: Screengrab 2. Recording indicator Whenever the camera or microphone are being used by any app, a recording indicator will appear at the top of your screen. This new security feature in iOS 14 comes without a menu or option screen attached. It’s just little indicator button, up in the top right-hand corner of the display. How it works: Simply check the little dot on the top right of your device (either green or orange). When you see the colored dot on the top of the iPhone screen after updating to iOS 14, that is an alert that the app you're using has started to use either your camera (green) or microphone (orange). Now you know when the camera (green) or the microphone (orange) is activated when using a certain app. The small dot can be seen right above the battery icon in the control centre. A green dot signifies that your camera is being accessed, and a yellow dot signifies that the microphone is being used. How to know? Just go to the Control Centre to know which app recently used the phone's mic or camera. TRA's advice: If you notice that the marks appear even though it is not needed, this may mean that the application is trying to open the camera or microphone without your permission. Image Credit: Gulf News On this particular feature, here’s the advice of the UAE Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA): If you notice that the marks appear even though it is not needed, this may mean that the application is trying to open the camera or microphone without your permission. When this happens, it is recommended that you either contact the application developer for clarification or deleting the application and reporting it to the App store. 3. Another app reads your Clipboard? You also get notified when an app or a widget reads your clipboard. The new iOS14 comes with a pop-up notification that shows when data is copied and pasted. How it works: Copy the site’s URL from Safari to the clipboard. Test this by opening the Chrome browser. If message on top shows “Chrome pasted from Safari”, it shows that, yes, Google Chrome is reading your clipboard. 4. Wi-Fi private address Set your Wi-Fi address to private. This allows you to keep your Wi-Fi access private. How it works: Go to “Settings”, and click “Wi-Fi, there’s a blue “i” inside a circle. When you click that, it shows “Use Private Address”. Turn that on, to enable private address. This will prevent phone companies from tracking your device. 5. Privacy for Photos Now, you can have more granular permissions for access to your photos. When an app would like to access your photos, you can allow access to all photos, to only selected photos, or not allow photo access at all. How it works: When you open an app and states “[So and so] App Would Like to Access Your Photos”, you can now select only specific photos, or all photos, or no photos at all (when you hit “Don’t Allow”). Allowing only selected photos means the app gets to access only those specific pictures, instead of your entire photo library). You must pick the photos and hit “Done”. Next time you open the app, it will you to “Select More Photos” or “Keep Current Selection”. What is “private browsing”? Many browsers offer private browsing settings that are meant to let you keep your web activities hidden from other people who use the same computer. With private browsing turned on, your browser won’t retain cookies, your browsing history, search records, or the files you downloaded. Privacy modes aren’t uniform, though; it’s a good idea to check your browser to see what types of data it stores. 6. Tracking Now, with the new security enhancements on iOS 14, the decision to allow an app to track your behaviour — or not — depends entirely on you. How it works: Go to phone Setttings > Privacy > Tracking options section. You can then allow which apps can track you. Alternatively, you can keep this “On” in order for you to know which apps want to track you. Set it “Off” and no apps can track you. 7. Password monitoring A new feature in the new iOS 14 as well as macOS is a password monitoring system. This will alert you if any of your credentials are spotted in a data breach, which means access to your accounts could be compromised. How it works: Go to Settings > Apple ID > Password & Security. The very top option on the iOS Settings menu leads to your Apple ID profile, and you can access account-level password and security options here. Within Password & Security, click “Change Password” if you think it’s leaked out somewhere, and make sure Two-Factor Authentication is turned on (it’s much safer, adding an extra level of verification on top of your username and password). It’s also worth checking out Apps Using Apple ID — these are third-party apps (email, fitness, banking) connected to your account. From a security standpoint, you should keep this list as short as possible, and remove apps you’re no longer using. You may do this via the Edit button and the red “delete” icon. 8. Manage your face ID and Fingerprints This allows you to set up faces and fingerprints that control access to your iPhone. It allows you control which apps and features these biometric security features control access ( (provided, of course, the face and fingerprints are your, and not somebody else’s). How it works: Go to Settings > Face ID & Passcode (or Touch ID & Passcode) Now, you can control which apps and features these biometric security features control access to (from Apple Pay to Password AutoFill). If you prefer to use a passcode, instead, you can change that in this field. From the same menu, you can also control the information that shows up on the lock screen, including the Notification Center, Siri, and the Reply with Message feature (replying to an incoming text with a preset response). Most important, you can turn off anything you don’t want to be accessible without unlocking the phone. 9. Local network privacy A new iOS 14 feature allows you to grant permission to apps when they need to connect with devices on your local network. How it works: In Settings > Privacy > Local Network. Local network privacy provides added transparency when apps connect to devices on a person's home network. If your app interacts with devices using Bonjour or other local networking protocols, you must add support for local network privacy permissions in iOS 14. 10. Proximate location access control Image Credit: Apple This feature allows you to have a finer-grained control over location access. In the past, iOS users could either grant or deny location access to an app, and that location was precise right down to the physical address. Now, there’s a new option to give access to the "proximate location”. How it works: Go to Settings > Privacy > Location Services. Then tap on an app you like to change location access, from precise to approximate. For example, with Chrome, you can set Precise Location “Off”. If you use the star-gazing app, for example, you will get the right information, by giving it a general idea of where you are (exact location is not necessary). (Sources: Apple, US Fair Trade Commission) 
2,500-year-old sarcophagi unearthed at Egypt's oldest pyramids
News/Technology & Science: Archaeologists in Egypt have discovered 27 coffins at the ancient necropolis of Saqqara, a burial ground that is also home to one of the world's oldest pyramids, the ministry of tourism and antiquities said.
India's Ambani prepares for a $50 handset and domination of country's telecom market
Retail|Technology|: Mumbai: Reliance Industries Ltd. has asked local suppliers to ramp up production capacity in India so they can make as many as 200 million smartphones over the next two years - a potentially enormous boost for the country's technology ambitions and a warning shot to rivals such as Xiaomi Corp. India's most valuable company is in talks with domestic assemblers to make a version of its Jio phone that would run on Google's Android and cost about 4,000 rupees ($54). The inexpensive phones will be marketed with low-cost wireless plans from Reliance Jio. See More Photos: Schools reopen in parts of India after 6 months In Pictures: Pandemic dampens Kashmiri weddings, lavish feasts From the editors: Dubai Safari all set to throw open its doors Photos: Rescue under way to save 180 stranded whales in Australia Reliance Chairman Mukesh Ambani is aiming to remake the country's smartphone industry much like he did in wireless services, where his aggressive prices and simple plans quickly made him the dominant force. The billionaire is also aligning himself with the Indian government's plans to build more domestic manufacturing, a possible boost for local assemblers like Dixon Technologies India, Lava International and Karbonn Mobiles. Can make it happen "We are of course trying to build our domestic companies. We have a sweet spot in entry level phones," said Pankaj Mohindroo, chairman of the India Cellular & Electronic Association, said. "The world has realized that India is a great place to do business and a great place to do manufacturing also." Reliance's target of selling 150 million to 200 million phones over two years would represent a massive boost for local factories. India assembled an estimated 165 million smartphones in the year ended March, and about an equal number of basic feature phones, according to Mohindroo's association. About a fifth of the smartphones cost less than 7,000 rupees, or about $100. Reliance rival Bharti Airtel is also in talks with assemblers to build its own 4G device, local media has reported. The Business Standard reported earlier that Ambani was considering outsourcing phone-making. What Ambani is aiming for If Reliance succeeds in popularizing the new gadget, it could lift the prospects for Jio Platforms, accelerating Mukesh Ambani's efforts to build an empire spanning e-commerce, social media and games. Many of Jio's nearly 400 million users use no-frills second-generation devices, paying $2 monthly for voice and data - a large potential market for the new device. It could eventually erode the market share of Chinese phonemakers such as Xiaomi. "Jio has an opportunity to target more than half billion Indians who don't own a smartphone and trigger a blue ocean market opportunity," said Neil Shah, research director at Counterpoint Research. "With Reliance expected to work with Indian vendors, Chinese brands will lose out on a potential opportunity and market share."
All of UAE's inhabited areas will have 5G coverage by end 2025
Business|Technology|: Dubai: All inhabited areas of the UAE will come under 5G network coverage by end 2025, benefiting from the recent allocation of additional frequency. “The introduction of this category of frequencies will enhance the country's position among the indicators related to the readiness of the telecom sector and provide necessary resources for international mobile communications application,” said Tariq Al-Awadi, Executive Director at Telecommunications Regulatory Authority’s Frequency Spectrum Department. See More Midas touch: Singapore exchange touts gold to the masses Photos: As Rome boosts micro-mobility, some complain of electric scooters gone wild Assembling a solar powered future in China Why Dubai is a ‘rising giant’ of global hotel industry The frequencies will allow operators and device manufacturers to experiment with other capabilities provided by 5G technology compared to the previously assigned bands. These frequencies in the millimeter wave range between 24.25-27.5 GHz, and the UAE was the first in the Middle East and North Africa to allocate this range. How different is 5G? In addition to reducing the response time to less than 10 times the time spent in 4G, the new frequencies will allow communication between the largest possible number of devices for the highest possible period of time within this wide frequency range. The frequencies will also enable a large number of interconnected devices, allowing apps such as those for smart cities and the Internet of Things (IoT), which require thousands of devices to communicate with each other. The second phase of the plan will start in the third-quarter of 2021, through which 1 GHz will be allocated per operator in the (25.5-27.5 GHz) range.
Already battered, Alberta braces for the energy transition — can it also embrace it?
News/Canada/Calgary: What does a low-carbon future look like? Making the transition won't be easy for a fossil-fuel-producing region like Alberta, but various groups are sketching out a rough map of the terrain the province will have to navigate.
