Important announcements
Dell, Purism and System76 are selling laptops with Intel Management Engine disabled
Intel has admitted that its in-chip Intel Management Engine program has major security holes and so, some PC vendors are now disabling Management Engine to protect their customers. Intel Management Engine is a technology that is often described as a secret operating system inside the main Intel CPU. It, along with Trusted Execution Engine (TXE) and Server Platform Services (SPS), can be used to remotely manage a computer.
You can read more here.
Qualcomm is partnering with AMD to create a new line of Always Connected laptops
AMD has announced it’s partnering with Qualcomm to enable high-performance mobile computers featuring AMD Ryzen processors and Qualcomm Snapdragon LTE modems to stay connected without relying on Wi-Fi. “Qualcomm Technologies believes the Always Connected PC is the future of personal computing, and we are working with AMD to bring each company’s expertise to bear for these exciting products,” said Alex Katouzian, senior vice president and general manager at Qualcomm.
More info are available here.
NiceHash has confirmed that more than $64 million was stolen in bitcoin hack
Hackers stole $64 million from NiceHash, a company that lets users apply their extra GPUs to mining cryptocurrencies. The attack caused NiceHash to shut down its website for 24 hours, as the site’s payment system was compromised and its bitcoin wallets emptied. Roughly 4,700 bitcoins were stolen from the site’s account, the CEO said.
You can read more here.
Top new products
Samsung W2018
The W2018 has two 4.2-inch 1080p Super AMOLED touchscreens, a 2,300 mAh battery and 64GB of internal storage. It comes with a Snapdragon 835 processor and 6GB of RAM.
More info here.
Honor View 10
The phone has a 5.99-inch Full HD+ display, Kirin 970 octa-core processor and 6GB of RAM. It comes with 64GB & 128GB storage options and dual rear camera with sensors of 16MP and 20MP.
More info here.
Huawei P11
Huawei P11 will have a 5.8-inch display, Kirin 970 octa-core processor, 6GB of RAM and 64GB of internal storage. It will came with a 3,200mAh battery and a 40 MP primary camera.
More info here.
Top interesting info
Apple will pay over $15 billion to Ireland in back taxes
Ireland’s Finance Ministry has said that up to $15 billion in disputed taxes will be transferred from Apple to a third-party account in the first quarter of 2018. The European Commission ruled in August 2016 that Apple must reimburse the Irish state $15 billion to make up for what it considered to be unpaid taxes over a number of years.
You can read more here.
Nissan will start testing self-driving taxis in Japan next year
Nissan intends to have its fully-automated ride service on the road in Japan by the early 2020s. The Easy Ride mobility service was jointly developed by Nissan and DeNA, a Japanese company that builds mobile and e-commerce websites. The autonomous Leaf EVs have already been tested in Britain.
More info can be found here.
ProtonMail encrypted mail service adds support for Apple Mail, Outlook and Thunderbird
ProtonMail, built around the encryption standard known as PGP (Pretty Good Privacy), previously required users to use its own apps or webmail service. Now, users of Apple Mail, Thunderbird, Outlook or anything else that supports IMAP and SMTP can run ProtonMail Bridge. The process maintains the core offerings of ProtonMail: end-to-end encryption and zero-access encryption.
You can read more here.
