Comcast-linked Xfinity hack exposed data of 36 mn people; Know how to create strong passwords, stay safe

With the Samsung Galaxy Unpacked Event nearing, leaks and rumours are now coming out in full force. Samsung is expected to unveil three models as part of its latest flagship lineup - Galaxy S24, Galaxy S24 Plus, and Galaxy S24 Ultra. While the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra is the top-end smartphone that is expected to get all the bells and whistles, a recent leak suggests that the South Korean giant may bring a big display feature to its lesser siblings as well. This means the Galaxy S24 and S24 Plus may too benefit from it. Know what's coming.

 Apple Inc.'s iPhone sales slump in China is deepening and the company is likely to see volumes decline further this year, according to Jefferies analysts led by Edison Lee. The iPhone maker's latest generation, iPhone 15, got off to an atypically sluggish start in China last year, which most recently expanded to a 30% year-on-year decline, Lee and colleagues said in a note on Sunday, citing industry checks. The rest of the country's mobile market grew in December, with Huawei Technologies Co. growing fastest on the back of its new Mate 60 device lineup.

After months of anticipation, Apple has finally announced the availability of the Vision Pro, its first AR/VR headset. The Apple Vision Pro will go on sale starting February 2. However, there's a catch. The device will initially only be available in the US. So, if you're an Apple enthusiast residing in the US and looking to get your hands on the Apple Vision Pro, then you'll be able to do so starting January 2, and it will be available for purchase from Apple Store locations and the US Apple Store online.

Civil liberties advocates are mounting a new challenge to the use by police of Google search data for help solving criminal cases, as the practice draws greater scrutiny nationwide. After a Pennsylvania woman was raped in 2016, police submitted a search warrant to Alphabet's Google for information about users who had typed the victim's name or address into the search engine in the week leading up to the attack, according to court papers. Google responded with the IP address of a user who had searched for the victim's address twice shortly before the incident, court papers show. That breakthrough prompted police to begin monitoring a corrections officer, who was ultimately arrested and convicted.

Huawei Technologies Co.'s newest laptop runs on a chip made by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., a teardown of the device showed, quashing talk of another Chinese technological breakthrough. The Qingyun L540 notebook contains a 5-nanometer chip made by the Taiwanese company in 2020, around the time US sanctions cut off Huawei's access to the chipmaker, research firm TechInsights found after dismantling the device for Bloomberg News. That counters speculation that Huawei's domestic chipmaking partner, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp., may have achieved a major leap in fabrication technique.

Union Minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar has said the NYT-OpenAI-Microsoft case is important and interesting one, and represents the broader issue of the nature of a relationship between those scraping internet and monetising from it versus the copyrighted content on the internet. Last Wednesday, New York Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft over copyright infringement, alleging that millions of its articles were used without consent to train chatbots and AI models, which now compete with it.

In yet another proud moment for India, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has powered another amazing mission to a successful conclusion. Dubbed the PSLV-C58 XPoSat Mission, ISRO launched the rocket and got the satellite into place exactly where it was required. While the XPoSat satellite is the most important part of the entire mission, all the hard work involved in boosting it into space in the correct orbit depended on just one thing - the PSLV-C58 rocket system, which has not been just successful, it is also very cheap when compared to other rocket systems from the US space agency, the National Aeronautics Space Administration (NASA). This success comes quickly on the heels of ISRO having successfully launched two historic missions in 2023 - the Chandrayaan-3 mission and Aditya-L1 mission.

Donald Trump's former lawyer Michael Cohen unwittingly included phony cases generated by artificial intelligence in a brief last month arguing for his release from post-prison supervision, according to court papers made public Friday.

On a summer day in New York City, thousands of people gathered in Union Square and spilled out onto the streets. Video footage and images show the crowd vandalizing nearby businesses and setting off fireworks. The New York Police Department showed up and started arresting people. All this commotion was motivated by one person: Kai Cenat. People gathered because he had planned an event to give away PlayStation 5 consoles and gaming computers.

On November 10, Humane, a 2018-founded startup known for working with AI technology, unveiled its first product called Ai Pin, a clothing-based wearable gadget. The OpenAI CEO Sam Altman-backed company presented the device as a new technology that does not require a user to spend time interacting with it and instead gets the information needed quickly so they can focus on the moment. With a displayless design, which goes against the ethos of most consumer tech products, the company focuses on voice and laser ink technology to show and tell the information through an AI chatbot. The company has now revealed that the product will be shipped to consumers starting in March 2024.

X outage: Many X (formerly Twitter) users who opened the app and website to check posts and catch up to the daily trends today morning were met with a rude awakening when they found empty timelines on their home feed. The realization set in quickly that the Elon Musk-owned social media platform had suffered yet another outage. This was the experience of thousands of users, and the situation is still ongoing. However, it was not the first time a social media platform has suffered an outage, with similar incidents making headlines throughout the year. Let us take a look at the 5 major social media outages in 2023.

On December 18, Comcast notified customers of a «recent data security incident» with one of its software companies that exposed their personal information to an outside party. In October, someone gained «unauthorized access» to customers' usernames and hashed passwords for a period of four days. And it gets worse: Comcast says that «for some customers, other information was also included, such as names, contact information, last four digits of social security numbers, dates of birth and/or secret questions and answers.»