The past week has left us with a bitter aftertaste of a serious hack Twitter. After him, famous people like Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Barack Obama and others 'asked' subscribers for money in order to return it double. Of course, they didn't do it themselves, which is why the FBI got involved. At the same time, OPPO showed that it is now possible to charge a smartphone in 20 minutes over a wire and in 30 minutes without a wire, and Google has taken another step towards the formation of its service of maps, which are already quite cool. What else happened this week and how can it be remembered by gadget lovers? It's time to discuss this.
It is not often that agents intervene in hacking social media applications.
How Google made its maps even better
Despite the fact that Apple has been actively drowning for augmented reality for quite some time, the company somehow did not make any special progress in its development, except for the function of eye correction in FaceTime and equipment iPad Pro 2020 ToF sensor. But who really had a hand in the development of this technology is Google. The search giant managed to direct augmented reality not only to entertainment like 3D animals, but also to derive practical benefit from it, providing AR-mode to branded maps, whose functionality has recently become even wider.
Google Maps learned to determine location using camera and AR
Google Maps for Android in the latest update, which was released this week, got a calibration function using augmented reality mode. It allows you to use the smartphone camera lens to more accurately determine the user's location.
Now you don't need GPS to determine your location in Google Maps
It is enough to take the device out of your pocket, launch Google Maps, launch the AR-calibration mode and scan the surrounding area. The maps themselves, based on the received data, will determine the visible objects and establish the current terrain.
The calibration function is based on Street View and a neural network that Google has trained to identify buildings, landmarks and other objects. As a result, the algorithms compare what they see with a database of addresses and determine the user's current location almost accurately.
The augmented reality calibration function should be used in situations where the use of GPS is for some reason impossible. This happens, for example, in a dense urban development, which is poorly penetrated by the signal.
Apple Maps also learned to determine the location using the camera
Recently, a similar feature, by the way, appeared in Apple Maps. Apple trained its maps to determine the current location using the camera built into the smartphone. True, augmented reality is not involved there, but the Look Around mode is used, which is an analogue of Google's Street View and pre-prepared routes that are formed by partners Apple.
As the Google Maps update is rolling out gradually, it's hard to tell if the new calibration mode works outside of the US. Anyway, Apple Maps only allow photo calibration in some American cities: San Francisco, New York, Chicago, Washington DC, Seattle and Las Vegas.
This limitation is due to the fact that Look Around is only available there, and Street View in Google Maps is available worldwide. Therefore, there is every reason to believe that it will be possible to calibrate Google maps using an AR camera and a camera in the United States, as well as in Russia, and the CIS countries.
Neural networks and an extensive database allowed Google Maps to work more efficiently with augmented reality
Frankly speaking, I am very impressed by Google's approach to the development of its services and Google Maps in particular. Despite the fact that AR mode, which appeared in the maps of the search giant last year, cannot work longer than a few minutes, since it loads both the processor and the battery, the very fact of its presence already speaks of the company's outstanding results in the development of augmented reality.
Neither Apple, nor Yandex, nor any other company have been able to achieve the same result so far, although they tried. Unlike Google Maps, all other maps either offer virtual directions for driving directions in AR, or they don't offer anything. Therefore, if Google can defeat excessive energy consumption, it will be a real breakthrough.
What processor will be in the Russian Samsung Galaxy Note 20
I've never liked Samsung's approach to equipping its smartphones. This practice of dividing models into American and European, when models for the United States are equipped with Qualcomm processors, and for Europe and Russia – with Exynos, always gave a kind of fake. Not that the latter are completely worthless, but just as there is no second freshness fish, there are no flagship processors of the second grade. After all, Exynos is inferior to Qualcomm's solutions in literally everything – from actual performance to battery life. But this year the gap will be even wider, and this is not good.
Galaxy Note 20 for the Russian market will be worse than for the American
Galaxy Note 20, which will be presented in early August, like all other Samsung flagships, will be released in two hardware modifications. But if the Galaxy S20 was equipped with Exynos 990 and Qualcomm 865 processors, which roughly matched each other, then in the case of the American version of the Galaxy Note 20, the Snapdragon 865 chip will be replaced with the Snapdragon 865+. It is an improved modification of the original 'stone', but with higher computational power. At the same time, the European one – the one that will arrive in Russia – will be equipped with the old Exynos 990.
Exynos processors have always been worse than Snapdragon
It's obvious to everyone why Samsung still hasn't given up on Exynos processors. After all, this is her own product, on which she makes money, selling European versions of her smartphones for the same money as American ones, but at the same time spending less money on their production. Another thing is that I am not satisfied with the company's approach, which involves the production of devices of the first and second class. How else to call the flagships, which are equipped with chips that are obviously losing in all respects?
But if usually the lag of Exynos was bearable, since the difference in performance and autonomy with Snapdragon reached no more than 10%, now this gap will be even greater. Despite the fact that Snapdragon 865+ is not an independent processor, but an improved version of the original 865, the new product is better than its predecessor in all respects.
Galaxy Note 20 for the US market promises to be the most powerful smartphone on Android
- The Snapdragon 865+ is the first mobile processor over 3 GHz;
- The Snapdragon 865+ is 10% more powerful than the Snapdragon 865 and is nearly equal in performance to the A13 Bionic
- Snapdragon 865+ features FastConnect 6900 modem with Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.2;
- The graphics of the Adreno 650 received a performance increase of another 10% over the regular version.
I have nothing against Samsung making money, even if something – namely, its own processors – is not very good at it. However, it makes me sick to think that Koreans are deliberately going to deprive some of the Galaxy Note 20 buyers of some of its potential. After all, it turns out that the performance of the phablet for the American market will be 15-20% higher than for the European and Russian, and there is no getting away from this. The only way to avoid the imposed restrictions is to buy the gray version imported from the USA.
It is especially disgusting that the Galaxy Note 20 will cost no less than $ 1,000, or even more. Therefore, Samsung shamelessly experiments with the audience of users who bring it the main income, checking how much patience they have. So far there is enough patience, but I would not hope that the margin of its strength is so great. Therefore, one or two such experiment, and the once loyal fans will spit on Samsung and go to competitors. At least that's what I would do.
Hacking accounts in Twitter
The social media sphere is constantly faced with some kind of problems. Either data is leaking, then someone is hacking, then the servers “fall”, then something else. For example, now Twitter faced a problem that affected not even ordinary users, but people who are called the mighty of this world. Elon Musk, Barack Obama, Tim Cook, Bill Gates and many others were faced with the fact that someone hacked their accounts. You will say that you can just change your password and move on, but not everything is so simple, and the FBI even got involved in the case. This already speaks of the seriousness of what is happening, but what could have caused the office that deals with state security to take it so seriously?
Now it's time for a serious hack Twitter. Be careful.
A rather serious event happened on Twitter the other day. It could be called a Bitcoin hack, and its goal was to raise millions of dollars from ordinary people who use Twitter and follow the publications of influential people in the world of high technology, business and even politics. Among these names were Elon Musk, former US President Barack Obama, Bill Gates and many others.
As a result, this even led to a temporary blocking of the ability to publish posts on this social network. Now, not only the company itself is investigating, but also the police and even the FBI. This is stated in a message from Reuters.
The FBI has not yet confirmed that they are investigating the hack, but has already stated that 'we are aware of a current security incident involving multiple accounts Twitter belonging to dignitaries. It looks like these accounts have been hacked to engage in cryptocurrency fraud. ”
Many serious people could potentially be affected by the current hack.
Agree, it is not often that account hacking leads to the fact that law enforcement agencies begin to deal with this, especially of such a high level. Usually, everything is just limited to the fact that users themselves change their password or do it on the recommendation of the service, when hacking or data leakage is massive. However, most users are not very worried that someone has access to their credentials. There is even research that supports this. All the more surprising is the FBI's intervention.
It is not necessarily the fault of the incident itself Twitter, but the company may also face fines.
If you haven’t heard about the hack and don’t know what I’m talking about here, then what happened was a cyber attack on some very popular accounts. As a result of this attack, a message appeared on the pages of popular personalities with millions of subscribers that people would transfer any amount in bitcoins to the page owner (in fact, not). Back on the promises, they should have received twice as much.
Of course, it looks very strange, but given the gullibility of many people, especially to such serious pages, and an audience of tens of millions of subscribers, this could work. Even if every hundredth believed what was happening, fraudsters could get millions of dollars.
Of course, this is a crime, and this is not just a hack with sending messages in the spirit of “I have a problem, came 500 rubles to this number.” Everything is much more serious, which is why the FBI got involved. After all, hackers could have access not only to tweets, but also to the entire account. This, in turn, could lead to the sending of private messages.
Twitter is used by many, but they need to be careful.
First, many more users would believe in such mailings. And how not to believe when Elon Musk personally writes to you? Secondly, if the plans of the attackers were more cunning, they could get much more benefit by contacting other users on behalf of the same Barack Obama. Given the popularity Twitter, correct entries can simply bring down the value of the largest companies, buy up their shares for a penny, and when everything settles down and everyone understands that the recording was fake, selling them is much more expensive. You can think of a lot of fraud options, and this once again proves the seriousness of what is happening.
The incident led to the fact that the shares of Twitter itself fell by about one and a half percent. The company itself is also actively involved in the investigation, because the fact that someone hacked so many records at once is quite alarming in itself.
The investigation of both Twitter and the FBI will take some time before we know what really happened there. However, we can already say that what happened is one of the most serious data leaks in recent years.
Of course, this is unlikely to seriously affect the audience of the service and very few people will stop using it, but the damage to the reputation turned out to be very serious. Considering that so many famous people use Twitter and ensure its popularity, a decrease in their activity can lead to certain consequences. Let's see what comes out of this and whether there will be new hacks.
When will the new Qualcomm processors come out?
Recently from Qualcomm, which is not news, one solid vanilla. They will come up with some kind of robot with 5G, then they will show new developments in mixed reality, then they will release a processor with a frequency of more than 3 GHz. Everything is somehow too sweet and even cloying. The news that for the sake of Qualcomm the USA may force MediaTek to refuse to work with Huawei slightly diluted this positive wave. Now we have been shown a leak that gives an idea of when the new processors will come out. It talks not only about the flagships, but also about other models that are of no less interest.
There have been no leaks from Qualcomm for a long time.
Qualcomm recently revealed its new flagship Snapdragon 865 Plus chipset, which, as the name suggests, is an upgraded version of the Snapdragon 865 that the company launched last year. This time, it didn't just come out as a regular update. He crossed the psychological frontier and showed that mobile processors can already have frequencies above 3 GHz. This is really important and Qualcomm did it first.
Now the company is preparing to release its next generation flagship chipset, which will likely be called the Snapdragon 875. Although the company has not officially recognized this yet, it would not be logical to expect otherwise, unless the company's engineers are preparing some kind of super breakthrough, and already it will be impossible to talk about the old line. However, this is also possible if the new architecture is already ready to mass-produce processors on it.
Now a leak has been found on Weibo that shows when the new chipsets of the famous American manufacturer are planned to be released. The picture, which was posted on a Chinese social network, shows a quarterly graph that clearly states what time each processor generation is due out. This is very interesting and even gives an idea of when new smartphones based on these chipsets will come out.
This is how the processors will come out.
For example, you can see that the Snapdragon 460 and Snapdragon 662 will be released in the fourth quarter of this year. The latter should be at the heart of Samsung's new tablet, which I talked about this week. It has appeared on GeekBench and, apparently, this is the Samsung Galaxy Tab A7 (2020).
In addition, in the release schedule, you can see that Snapdragon 87 5G and Snapdragon 43 5G will be presented in the first quarter of 2021. In addition, Snapdragon 73 5G is slated to launch in the first or second quarter of next year. That is, we have even less reason to doubt that the next generation Samsung Galaxy S will be one of the first devices to receive an 875 series processor.
A new tablet from Samsung is always a pleasure.
Interestingly, the standard chipset Qualcomm Snapdragon 875 is not listed. Usually the company shows it at the end of the year. This has been the case for many previous years.
In addition to the model and production period, you can see that in some cases the manufacturer, consumer and even the technical process are shown as additional information. From this we can conclude that Snapdragon 87 5G and Snapdragon 73 5G are Qualcomm's flagship and mid-range chipsets, scheduled for release in 2021. Both are manufactured using Samsung's 5nm EUV process, which improves performance by 10 percent and reduces power consumption by 20 percent.
Increasing performance is, of course, good, but even with processors from the middle segment, everything is more or less normal with this now, but lowering power consumption is really important. Especially against the background of increasing requirements for smartphones from users and widespread adoption 5G, which should be supported by these processors. It is 5G that the modem will lead to an overall increase in power consumption. And although the new development of OPPO with charging a smartphone in 20 minutes partially solves this problem, you still need to somehow get out of the situation and reduce the level of energy consumption.
New processors are always more than just a new chip. It carries with it a whole generation of new smartphones.
Qualcomm is expected to move some of its flagship processors to a new architecture in the near future using a combination of Cortex X1 Super Core + Cortex A78 Large Core. This should happen in Snapdragon 87 5G. With this architecture, the chipset can break performance records for Android – smartphones that are still inferior in this indicator iPhone with their chips Apple A13 Bionic.
The leak also indicates that Qualcomm's rival company MediaTek is set to release the Dimensity 600 chipset in the third quarter of this year. The Taiwanese company has reportedly received a large number of orders for the upcoming chipset. However, what devices will be equipped with it is not yet clear, but we will find out in the near future. For now, you can make your predictions in our Telegram chat. Then we will check them with reality.
So far, we can say that based on the emerging schedule for the release of processors, we understand before what time we should not wait for the release of smartphones that traditionally used this series of chipsets.
When Instagram Reels Released
Despite the difficulties that TikTok has been constantly facing lately, it still continues to gain popularity around the world. It has already surpassed all existing networks in terms of audience growth, and even left behind in terms of the number of active users Instagram. Naturally, this could not but lead to the fact that everyone wants to create something similar. Attempts to do this and Instagram. First, he tested the new feature in some countries, and now he is starting to come out with an update around the world. Gradually, Reels – this is the name of the service – will appear everywhere, but for now, let's track the stages of its appearance, see where it already exists, and build our forecasts.
New items are always good. The main thing is that it is not just a copy of a successful project.
Within months, the response Instagram to the popularity of TikTok, dubbed Reels, was through Early Access in countries such as Brazil, France, Germany and India. Given the size of these countries, it should be understood that the company has gathered enough information to expand into other markets.
Now the representative of Facebook, which owns Instagram, has confirmed the data that appeared earlier on the Web about the imminent launch of Reels in the USA. The release of a service focused on short music videos in the home Instagram market suggests that it will soon be expected around the world.
If you believe the representative of the IT giant, the launch on the American market will take place in early August, that is, literally in two to three weeks. So far, without mentioning specific dates and names of countries, he added that Reels will soon arrive in more than 50 more countries, including the UK, Japan and Mexico. Most likely, Russia will be among them, but it is too early to speak about it with certainty.
There is no exact information yet on what platforms the new service will run on, but it will almost certainly run on both Android and iOS.
Like TikTok, Reels will likely work across all platforms.
Reels is very similar to TikTok. Its main focus, in contrast to Instagram, is short videos that are humorous, danceable or simply musical in nature. However, there is one fundamental difference between Reels and TikTok. Unlike the Chinese service, the American service will not allow publishing videos up to a minute in length, limiting it to fifteen seconds. There will also be slight differences in the recommendations and in the feed, but otherwise everything will be very similar.
Until the service has entered the wide market, it is too early to say that Instagram will be able to lure the audience away from TikTok, but there is a chance of this, especially against the background of the fact that recently TikTok has been experiencing serious difficulties with the governments of different countries . Examples include blockages in India and impending blockages in the US, which Mike Pompeo (US Secretary of State) talked about.
TikTok is on the verge or already on the verge of blocking in many countries.
I don't want to go into the intricacies of conspiracies, but it may seem a little strange that just before the appearance of the analogue of TikTok, they want to ban it in the United States. Let me remind you that he was accused of collecting data in favor of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). But what prevents Reels from also collecting data if it is a copy of TikTok. However, let's not talk about it, although you can put forward your theories in our Telegram chat.
It should be noted that only the American audience of TikTok is more than thirty million users, who, if banned, will have to go somewhere and look for an alternative to their favorite service. If she becomes Reels, few will be surprised.
TikTok itself does not agree with the blocking and claims that it has never sent user data to anyone, including the government of China. Moreover, so that there were no questions, the company deliberately moved all its servers outside the territory of the Middle Kingdom, but this convinces few people that Bytedance (the company that owns TikTok) does not cooperate with the PDA.
It's hard to say that TikTok has access to a lot of user data, but potentially whatever it sees it can process. Such thoughts are also prompted by the fact that TikTok drains the battery and heats up the phone.
Many associate TikTok too strongly with the Chinese government.
TikTok's problems in some countries are for reasons other than potential espionage.
For example, in India there was a scandal with the display of content related to violence and other inappropriate scenes. As a result, the Indians staged almost a flash mob, in which they had to go in and put one star on the application on Google Play. As a result, the rating dropped to almost one.
Google intervened and decided that such reviews should be canceled. After she started doing this gradually and raised the rating to about three, it caused a serious resonance.
After all this, a real war began in the country with Chinese applications, which were blocked by dozens. For many developers, this was a major challenge given the size of the Indian market of 1.3 billion inhabitants.
Let's see what happens next, but to see what the alternative to TikTok will look like is interesting even to me, although, to be honest, I am not a fan of it, although I tried to use it for a long time.