Apple to reportedly launch this iPhone SE 2 in first half of 2018

Apple to reportedly launch this iPhone SE 2 in first half of 2018

 In August this year, a report revealed that Apple will launch an iPhone in India first, even before US and other European countries. Now, a new report by Taiwan's Economic Daily News reveals that the second generation of iPhone SE will launch in the first half of 2018. The smartphone is likely to be called as iPhone SE 2.

The report also adds that the device will be assembled at Taiwan-based OEN Wistron. For those unaware, in May this year, the Cupertino-based giant entered into partnership with Wistron Corp for assembling iPhone SE smartphones at the Bengaluru facility.

The report comes in line with the earlier report which surfaced online in August this year. A Taiwanese website, Focus Taiwan also revealed that Apple will launch the next generation of iPhone SE in India first in early 2018. The same report also suggested that with the Made in India iPhone, Apple will be exempted from 10% basic custom duty. This means that Apple can sell the next generation iPhone SE at a competitive price in the country.

According to other online reports, the Apple iPhone SE is expected to be powered by company's own A10 Fusion chipset and will be available in two storage options - 32GB and 128GB. The smartphone is said to sport a 12MP primary camera and a 5MP secondary camera. The device is claimed to come with 2GB RAM and 1700mAh battery.

Apple launched the 32GB version of its iPhone SE smartphone in India in April this year. The company introduced the original iPhone SE in India in April 2016.

Recently, Apple launched its tenth anniversary edition - iPhone X in India at a starting price tag of Rs 89,000. The device is up for sale both online and offline in the country. This is the first iPhone to sport an all glass body and full screen display with FaceID.

Singapore to deploy driverless buses from 2022

Singapore has so far avoided the massive traffic jams that choke other Asian cities like Manila and Jakarta by imposing road tolls, spending massively on public transport and becoming one of the world's most expensive places to own a car.

It now plans to embrace self-driving technology to further reduce reliance on cars and improve how people get around.

Driverless buses will be deployed during off-peak traffic hours in three new suburban towns designed to accommodate the vehicles in a pilot project, said Transport Minister Khaw Boon Wan.

"The autonomous vehicles will greatly enhance the accessibility and connectivity of our public transport system, particularly for the elderly families with young children and the less mobile," he said at the launch of a test centre for self-driving vehicles.

"More importantly, we can gain further insights into how we can develop new towns or refurbish existing ones for the safe mass deployment of autonomous vehicles."

Khaw said the technology will help Singapore "alleviate its tight land and manpower limits that currently constrain our land transport system" and that he hopes the city-state can become a key global player in the sector.

Singapore is asking for input from industry and research institutions on what is needed to implement the project, with industry proposals to be invited after May 

2018, he said.

Around 10 local and foreign companies are currently in Singapore to test their driverless vehicle technology, Khaw said.

Some industry players believe autonomous vehicles can ply highways and busy city streets in Singapore "without any form of human intervention" in 10 years' time, he added.

Nirma, Lafarge cement Rs 9000 crore deal

Nirma, Lafarge cement Rs 9000 crore deal

Did you know that detergent maker Nirma is in the cement business? You surely will after this deal. In one shot, 71-year-old Karsanbhai Patel, founder and chairman of Nirma, will make the soap-to-soda ash enterprise the sixth largest cement manufacturer in India, if the transaction goes through.

The Rs 7,000-crore-plus Ahmedabad company on Monday agreed to buy French cement major Lafarge's local business for an enterprise value of Rs 9,400 crore ($1.4 billion), pipping bigger names like Piramal and JSW. Nirma will finance the acquisition, among the most profitable assets in the country, through a mix of equity and debt. The transaction will ramp up Nirma's fledgling cement business to 13-million-tonne capacity from two million tonnes in Rajasthan.

Patel, who started his entrepreneurial journey in the late 1960s as a manufacturer of detergent, and cycling around towns and villages to sell it, is known for creating low-priced products. "This acquisition is a landmark and transformational step for the group's cement business," said Nirma's MD Hiren Patel, son of Karsanbhai. "With a strong platform like Lafarge's India business, we plan to take the cement business to the next level."

He named his product Nirma after his late daughter Nirupama. Over the years, the low-priced Nirma became such a hit with housewives and captured a large market share, that it unsettled its MNC peers like HUL and P&G. In the 1990s it launched bathing soaps where it replicated its success in the detergent segment. Nirma is now one of the major players in the detergent and toiletries segments.

Over the years, it diversified into manufacturing of raw materials like soda ash, LAB and other related chemicals. Nirma has had a rough start with the cement business. It had originally planned to build a large-sized cement unit in Gujarat but that did not take off for years over environmental issues. The company eventually put the project in cold storage. Later in November 2014, it commissioned its first cement plant in Rajasthan.

The buyout will mark the second biggest acquisition in the cement sector after last week's proposed purchase of Jaypee Cement by UltraTech for Rs 16,189 crore. Lafarge, the world's largest cement maker, is divesting its domestic business so that it could conclude its global merger with Swiss' Holcim and operate as one entity in India.

Earlier, Lafarge wanted to sell part of its domestic business to Birla Corp for about Rs 5,000 crore ($753 million), but the deal ran into regulatory trouble as laws then prohibited the sale of mines linked to cement units. These norms, however, were subsequently changed. The local business of Lafarge comprises three cement plants and two grinding stations. The latest move leaves LafargeHolcim with ACC and Gujarat Ambuja in India with a combined capacity of more than 60 million tonnes, making it the second largest cement manufacturer behind UltraTech.

"This deal is expected to make up for the time lost by Nirma," said one of the bankers involved in the deal.

Revival hopes, after years of slow growth, have put India's cement sector on the fast lane of merger & acquisition play. Prior to the Lafarge-Nirma and UltraTech-Jaypee Cement deals, Kolkata-based Birla Corp had snapped up Anil Ambani-led Reliance's cement business.

Industry analysts expect the Narendra Modi-led government's thrust on infrastructure and housing will boost cement demand in the country and hence the heightened activity in the industry. From an annual growth rate of 10% in 2008, of late the rate had fallen to 4% while the prices slid from about Rs 1,300 per tonne to about Rs 700 now.

Hackers stole data from 57 million Uber riders, drivers: CEO

Hackers stole data from 57 million Uber riders, drivers: CEO

Uber is coming clean about its cover-up of a year-old hacking attack that stole personal information about more than 57 million of the beleaguered ride-hailing service's customers and drivers.

So far, there's no evidence that the data taken has been misused, according to a Tuesday blog post by Uber's recently hired CEO, Dara Khosrowshahi. Part of the reason nothing malicious has happened is because Uber acknowledges paying the hackers $100,000 to destroy the stolen information.

The revelation marks the latest stain on Uber's reputation.

The San Francisco company ousted Travis Kalanick as CEO in June after an internal investigation concluded he had built a culture that allowed female workers to be sexually harassed and encouraged employees to push legal limits.

It's also the latest major breach involving a prominent company that didn't notify the people that could be potentially harmed for months or even years after the break-in occurred.

Yahoo didn't make its first disclosure about hacks that hit 3 billion user accounts during 2013 and 2014 until September 2016. Credit reporting service Equifax waited several months before revealing this past September that hackers had carted off the Social Security numbers of 145 million Americans.

Khosrowshahi criticized Uber's handling of its data theft in his blog post.

"While I can't erase the past, I can commit on behalf of every Uber employee that we will learn from our mistakes," Khosrowshahi wrote. "We are changing the way we do business, putting integrity at the core of every decision we make and working hard to earn the trust of our customers."

That pledge shouldn't excuse Uber's previous regime for its egregious behavior, said Sam Curry, chief security officer for the computer security firm Cybereason.

"The truly scary thing here is that Uber paid a bribe, essentially a ransom to make this breach go away, and they acted as if they were above the law," Curry said. "Those people responsible for the integrity and confidentiality of the data in-fact covered it up."

The heist took the names, email addresses and mobile phone numbers of 57 million riders around the world. The thieves also nabbed the driver's license numbers of 600,000 Uber drivers in the U.S.

Uber waited until Tuesday to begin notifying the drivers with compromised driver's licenses, which can be particularly useful for perpetrating identify theft. For that reason, Uber will now pay for free credit-report monitoring and identity theft protection services for the affected drivers.

Kalanick, who still sits on Uber's board of directors, declined to comment on the data breach that took place in October 2016. Uber says the response to the hack was handled by its chief security officer, Joe Sullivan, a former federal prosecutor whom Kalanick lured away from Facebook in 2015

As part of his effort to set things right, Khosrowshahi extracted Sullivan's resignation from Uber and also jettisoned Craig Clark, a lawyer who reported to Sullivan.

Clark didn't immediately respond to a request for comment sent through his LinkedIn profile. Efforts to reach Sullivan were unsuccessful.

Uber's silence about its breach came while it was negotiating with the Federal Trade Commission about its handling of its riders' information.

Earlier in 2016, the company reached a settlement with the New York attorney general requiring it to take steps to be more vigilant about protecting the information that its app stores about its riders. As part of that settlement, Uber also paid a $20,000 fine for waiting to notify five months about another data breach that it discovered in September 2014.

Anil Ambani gets a seat on Atlantic Council advisory board

Anil Ambani gets a seat on Atlantic Council advisory board

 Reliance Group Chairman Anil Ambani has been inducted into the international advisory board of global think-tank The Atlantic Council.

He joins News Corp Chairman Rupert Murdoch, former Spanish prime minister Jose Maria Aznar, Airbus CEO Thomas Enders and former Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd, among others, on the board.

"The Atlantic Council today announced the induction of Anil Ambani, one of India's best-known business leaders, to its international advisory board - a prominent group of global corporate and political leaders," a company statement said.

Welcoming Ambani, former Utah governor and Chairman of the Atlantic Council, Jon M Huntsman, said: "The Atlantic Council's presence in South Asia and in particular India is growing at a rapid pace and Anil's presence on our board could not be more timely. We look forward to working with him to make a difference."

Other notable members of the board include Dr Zbigniew K Brzezinski, former US national security advisor; P.M. Carl Bildt, former prime minister of Sweden; Lord Robertson, former secretary general of NATO. The business leaders include Hakan Buskhe, President and CEO, SAAB; Stephen A Schwarzman, CEO of the Blackstone Group and Marillyn A Hewson, Chairman, Lockheed Martin Corporation.

Ambani said, "I am delighted to accept Jon's invitation to join the advisory board of the Atlantic Council, which is undoubtedly America's leading and most influential think-tank on global strategic affairs. This is a clear recognition by the Council of India's growing geopolitical influence under Prime Minister Modi's visionary and transformational leadership."

The Atlantic Council is a foreign policy think-tank headquartered in Washington, DC

Through the work of its 10 programmes and centres, the Atlantic Council promotes constructive US leadership and engagement in the world based on the central role of the Atlantic community, working with its allies and partners, to meet global challenges.

The Atlantic Council aims to shape policy choices and strategies and provide an essential forum for navigating the dramatic, economic and political changes that define the 21st century.

Among the 10 regional and thematic centers, the Atlantic Council's South Asia Center manages sustainable and innovative programmes that are focused on fostering development and cooperation in South Asia and its neighbourhood.

Bharath Gopalaswamy, Director of South Asia Center, said, "We are eager to draw on his (Ambani's) expertise as a business leader and service to the government of India, and he will be an invaluable addition to the Council as we look to deepen our programming on India, the subcontinent, and beyond."

Android smartphone users, here's how you can read deleted messages on WhatsApp

Facebook-owned WhatsApprecently, rolled out its 'Delete for Everyone' feature, which enables users to delete any message within seven minutes of sending. The feature comes really handy and prevents users from any kind of unwanted embarrassment.

However, now it seems that receiver can read all the deleted messages. A Spanish blog called Android Jefe has revealed that there is method using which the receiver will be able to read the deleted by the sender. The report suggests that in order to use the method, users must have 7.0 Android Nougat or higher version. Once that is in place, they have to download a third-party app called Notification History available on Google Play store. After downloading the app, users will be able to access the deleted messages from the Android Notification log.

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10 'blacklisted' Android apps

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10 'blacklisted' Android apps

Recently mobile security firm Appthority released the latest edition of its Enterprise Mobile Security Pulse Report. The app lists apps that have been blacklisted by enterprises across the world for reasons like specific malicious or data leakage behaviors, security policy compliance and shadow data storage. Here are the 10 apps blacklisted by enterprises, as per Appthority, during the Q3 2017.

Poot-debug(W100).apk

Category: Tools Threat: Malware detected

AndroidSystemTheme

Category: Personalization Threat: Malware Detected

Where's My Droid Pro

Category: Tools Threat: Malware Detected (Image courtesy: YouTube)

Weather

Category: Weather Threat: Malware Detected

Wild Crocodile Simulator

Category: Game-Simulation Threat: Malware Detected

Star War

Category: Not available Threat: Malware detected

Ggz Version

Category: Not available Threat: Malware detected

Boyfriend Tracker

Category: Not available Threat: Sends IMEI, sends data unencrypted

Chicken Puzzle

Category: Game-Puzzle Threat: Tracks location

Device Alive

Category: Business Threat: 9 Malware Detected

The blog post further suggests that the process of accessing the messages is even simpler if the user is using a third-party launcher such as Nova launcher. Then, they don't have to download any app in order to access the deleted messages. They just have to long press on the home button and select the Widgets. After that, they have to click on the Activities and then on Notifications log in order to view the log. Users on Stock Android phones can use the Settings Widget to gain access to the Notification log.

The blog post reads, "What we found is that the messages are stored in the notification register of the Android system. So, it's just a matter of entering that record to see the messages that the other person deleted. The Notification History application is a shortcut to that record."

The blog post also highlights that there are some limitations of accessing the deleted messages using this method. Users will only be able to see the text messages and that too only the first 100 characters of it. Along with this, the notification center will consist of the messages for which the user has received a notification. If there was not notification then they will not be able to read the messages. The deleted messages are stored only for some time on the device and are deleted every time you reset your phone. Lastly, if does not work on the Android version older than Nougat.