Technology

New Delhi: Global smartphone shipments grew by 13.2 percent year-on-year in Q2 2021 with a total of 313.2 million shipments during the quarter, according to the International Data Corporation’s Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker. Samsung maintained its position as the market leader, followed by China’s Xiaomi, that overtook Apple to come at number two in terms of the number of smartphones shipped. IDC said that Huawei’s persistent decline and LG’s exit from the smartphone market caused a slight shift in market positions in Q2 2021. The 13.2 percent growth in the smartphone market beats IDC’s estimate of a 12.5 percent growth.

New Delhi: An infamous crypto mining malware that was prominently noted a couple of years ago is on the rise again, targeting Windows PCs (and Linux ones too) by focusing on older vulnerabilities that may no longer be under prominent investigation by the security community. Called LemonDuck, the rising threat was recently reported by the Microsoft 365 Defender Threat Intelligence Team, and details how LemonDuck has evolved into a highly sophisticated malware — and is today being used by threat actors to target companies with old, unpatched vulnerabilities in their system.

Once targeted, the consequences can be dire. According to Microsoft, the abilities of LemonDuck include stealing key credentials from Windows and Linux PCs, removing security controls to render system admins powerless, spreading through emails (in likely spear phishing attempts), and installing in systems to enable further remote code execution (RCE) backdoors — something that can therefore leave computers completely open to an endless number of ransomware, spyware or other sophisticated cyber warfare tools.

New Delhi: Social media giant Facebook is all set to extend its payment system to all online retailers in August this year, the company announced earlier this week. Facebook said that shoppers will eventually see another payment option listed next to the usual payment methods, now that Facebook Pay will expand beyond the company’s own platforms.

Not long after credit card companies dropped out of its Libra cryptocurrency project, Facebook launched its payments system for use across the main site, as well as WhatsApp and Instagram. Now, just like Google’s stored cards, PayPal integrations, Amazon Pay, and others, Facebook Pay is opening itself up for use in transactions with participating retailers. Shopify merchants are first in line to add the system on their sites, with others to follow after it launches in August.

New Delhi: WhatsApp is seemingly working on a new feature that would allow users to change the image quality setting before sending it to others. As spotted by popular WhatsApp updates tracker WABetaInfo, the new image compressor tool would provide the three options of ‘data save,’ ‘best quality,’ and ‘auto.’ The new WhatsApp tool, whose traces were found on WhatsApp beta for Android 2.21.14.16, is still under development, and the stable rollout could take months. Recently, the Facebook-owned messaging platform was seen working on a similar feature where users could compress the quality of the video before hitting send. The advantage of both image and video compressors would include less sending time and download time as well as low storage intake.

New Delhi: Qualcomm Inc’s new chief thinks that by next year his company will have just the chip for laptop makers wondering how they can compete with Apple Inc, which last year introduced laptops using a custom-designed central processor chip that boasts longer battery life. Longtime processor suppliers Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) have no chips as energy efficient as Apple’s. Qualcomm Chief Executive Cristiano Amon told Reuters on Thursday he believes his company can have the best chip on the market, with help from a team of chip architects who formerly worked on the Apple chip but now work at Qualcomm.