Tag: Electronics

WhatsApp has been working on adding support for chat themes on more than one occasion, and a feature tracker has now given us a peek at what the feature could look like when it is launched. The messaging app is expected to let users change the color of the chat bubbles as well as the background using preset themes or pick their own color and wallpaper. The company was also spotted working on the ability to pick a username and set a PIN that protects them from unknown users on WhatsApp.

Microsoft said on Friday it would hold a summit in September to discuss steps to improve cybersecurity systems, after a faulty update from CrowdStrike caused a global IT outage last month.

The conference marks the first big step by Microsoft to address the issues that affected nearly 8.5 million Windows devices on July 19, disrupting operations across industries ranging from major airlines to banks and healthcare.

The event will be held on Sept. 10 at Microsoft’s headquarters in Redmond, Washington. The company will invite government representatives to the gathering, it said in a blog.

Sony’s Web3 exploration has now come to a point that the Japanese tech giant has announced its own blockchain network, named Soneium. The layer-2 network is being built atop Ethereum in collaboration with Startale Labs, the team behind Astar Network. Sony has established a new entity called Sony Block Solutions Labs (Sony BSL) to oversee the development and deployment of Soneium. This unit is a joint venture between Sony and Startale.

The aim of this layer-2 blockchain is to connect blockchain and Web3 technologies to existing Web3 Internet services. A blog published on the official site of Soneium said this blockchain is being designed on the basics of ‘open Internet’ to encourage the creation of decentralized landscape for entertainment, gaming, and finance sectors among others

Microsoft has revealed the release date for the three new Xbox Series S/X console options unveiled earlier this year. The new variants, which include a 1TB Xbox Series S, an all-digital 1TB Xbox Series X and a special edition 2TB Xbox Series X, will launch on October 15, with select countries following on October 29, Microsoft announced Wednesday. The new console options, however, are not launching India for now. All three new Xbox Series S/X console options are now available to pre-order on the Xbox website.

Xbox Series S/X console options will be available in all current Xbox hardware supported regions and markets, but markets in India, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Israel, Korea, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Africa, Turkey, and UAE are not supported yet, Microsoft confirmed in an Xbox Wire post. The new console options do not show up on the Xbox store in India. The company did not divulge any plans to bring the new consoles to these markets.

The three new console options include a 1TB SSD storage variant of Xbox Series S in Robot White colorway, an all-digital 1TB Xbox Series X, and a 2TB Xbox Series X Special Edition in Galaxy Black color option. These were announced at the Xbox Games Showcase held in June.

Microsoft released the family of Phi-3.5 artificial intelligence (AI) models on Tuesday, as the successor of the Phi-3 models introduced in April. The new release comprises Phi-3.5 Mixture of Experts (MoE), Phi-3.5 Vision, and Phi-3.5 Mini models. These are instruct models, so they will not work as a typical conversational AI but will require users to add specific instructions to get the desired output. The open-source AI models are available to download from the tech giant’s Hugging Face listings.

The release of the new AI models was announced by Microsoft executive Weizhu Chen in a post on X (formerly known as Twitter). The Phi-3.5 models offer upgraded capabilities over the predecessor, but the architecture, dataset and training methods largely remain the same. The Mini model has been updated with multilingual support, and the MoE and Vision models are new inclusions in the AI model family.

Coming to technicalities, the Phi-3.5 Mini has 3.8 billion parameters. It uses the same tokeniser (a tool that breaks down text into smaller units) and a dense decoder-only transformer. The model only supports text as input and supports a context window of 1,28,000 tokens. The company claims it was trained using 3.4 trillion tokens between June and August, and its knowledge cut-off is October 2023.

A four-person crew for SpaceX’s Polaris Dawn mission arrived in Florida on Monday ahead of their August 26 launch to space for a mission that includes the first privately managed spacewalk, a risky endeavor only government astronauts have done in the past.

The crew – a billionaire entrepreneur, a retired military fighter pilot and two SpaceX employees – neared the end of more than two years of training for the mission, in which they will venture out of their Crew Dragon capsule in Earth’s orbit for a tethered spacewalk.

The mission will be a major first test of SpaceX’s new astronaut spacesuits and marks the latest risky, high-stakes commercial milestone that Elon Musk’s space company is looking to clinch on the billionaire’s path to eventually building colonies on Mars.

Samsung introduced the first Ultra model in its Galaxy S series of smartphones in 2020, when it launched the Galaxy S20 Ultra. While the company has launched an updated version of that handset in the following years, the purported Galaxy S25 Ultra that is said to arrive in the coming months could be the last phone to bear the moniker. According to a tipster, Samsung might rename two models in the Galaxy S series of smartphones, starting with its smartphones that are anticipated to debut in 2026.

Yogesh Brar (@heyitsyogesh) claims that Samsung could rebrand the Galaxy Ultra as the Galaxy Note, while the ‘Plus’ model could be replaced with Pro. This suggests that the South Korean tech conglomerate could be looking to rename two of its high-end smartphones, while the standard model’s moniker might remain unchanged.

A groundbreaking project by Harvard University and Google has produced the most detailed map of human brain connections to date. This achievement focuses on a cubic millimetre of the cerebral cortex, extracted from a patient during epilepsy surgery in 2014. Over a decade, a team of biologists and machine-learning experts meticulously analysed this small tissue sample, which contains roughly 57,000 cells and 150 million synapses. Their work marks a significant advancement in brain science, providing an unprecedented level of detail in understanding the brain’s wiring.

The process began with staining the brain tissue using heavy metals, which bind to lipid membranes in cells, making them visible under an electron microscope. The tissue was then embedded in resin and sliced into extremely thin sections, each just 34 nanometers thick. This technique converted a complex 3D problem into a more manageable 2D one, resulting in a colossal dataset of 1.4 petabytes. To piece together these 2D slices into a coherent 3D model, the team utilized machine-learning algorithms developed in collaboration with Google. This involved aligning the images and automatically segmenting the different cell types, although manual adjustments were required to refine the accuracy of these segments.

Oppo F27 5G is confirmed to debut in India soon as the company’s next F-series handset. While the Smartphone Manufacturer is yet to reveal an exact launch date, the purported Oppo F27 5G price and specifications have been leaked online. The upcoming F-series phone is said to be available in two RAM and storage configurations. The Oppo F27 5G is tipped to run on MediaTek Dimensity 6300 chipset. The handset is also said to have an IP64 rating and will reportedly feature a 50-megapixel primary rear camera, along with a 5,000mAh battery.

An alleged marketing poster obtained by 91Mobiles Hindi suggests that the Oppo F27 5G will be priced at Rs. 22,999 for the base 8GB RAM + 128GB storage variant in India. The top-of-the-line variant with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage could be priced at Rs. 24,999. It is tipped to be released in Amber Orange and Emerald Green colors.

The Oppo F27 5G will reportedly be available for sale starting August 18.

Tecno Pad is believed to be in the works as the first tablet offering from the brand. The Transsion Holdings subsidiary is yet to confirm its existence, but ahead of it, images and specifications of the Android tablet have emerged on the Web. The Tecno Pad is expected to debut as a budget offering with a 10.1-inch display. It is said to be powered by a MediaTek Helio G80 chipset. The Tecno Pad is likely to feature a 13-megapixel single rear camera and could get a 7,000mAh battery with 18W wired charging support.

A report by Naija Android Arena shared alleged renders and specifications of the unannounced Tecno Pad. The renders show the tablet in grey and gold colour options with narrow bezels on top and bottom.