Microsoft Corp’s Skype has vanished from Apple Inc and Android smartphone app stores in China, becoming the latest victim in Beijing’s sweeping internet clampdown. The internet phone and video service was no longer available on Apple’s iOS or on popular local Android stores such as Xiaomi Corp’s, though it still functioned as of Wednesday. The Ministry of Public Security notified Apple that a number of voice-over-internet-protocol apps didn’t comply with local law and the US company subsequently removed them, a spokeswoman for the iPhone maker said. Those apps, which enable voice calls among other things, remain in place elsewhere. It’s unclear why Skype, which has operated for years in China despite…
Author: Loknath Das
BEIJING: Skype, Microsoft Corp’s internet phone call and messaging service, has disappeared from app stores in China including that of Apple Inc, indicating the latest setback for a foreign tech service in the country. Apple, responding to questions about Skype’s absence, late on Tuesday said it had removed several internet phone call apps from its App Store in China after the country’s government said they violated local laws. “We have been notified by the Ministry of Public Security that a number of voice over internet protocol apps do not comply with local law, therefore these apps have been removed from…
Researchers at Princeton’s Center for Information Technology Policy (CITP) claim that over 400 of the world’s top 50,000 websites use ‘session replay scripts’ to track user behaviour. While this in itself may not be that disconcerting, the researchers add that these sites often do not strip personally identifiable user information from the behaviour data they glean, potentially giving hackers access to a trove of personal data sometimes even including passwords, should this data be exposed. Detailing their findings last week in the first of several posts about online privacy, CITP researchers Steve Englehart, Gunes Acar, and Arvind Narayan said they looked at…
The European Union will take measures to tax US tech giants if the international community doesn’t agree to a new system early next year, a senior official said Tuesday. “Last month, the Commission launched a public consultation on how to tax the digital economy,” said Margrethe Vestager, the bloc’s competition commissioner, at a conference organised by the French economy ministry in Paris. She said the EU would use the results of the consultation in negotiations being held under the auspices of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the 35-nation club of industrialised nations. But Vestager warned that: “if there’s no…
Xiaomi and Samsung are jointly the top smartphone brands in India, according to International Data Corporation latest report. The latest Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker by IDC for Q3 2017 reveals that Xiaomialong with Samsung captured 23.5 percent market share in the last quarter. Xiaomi almost tripled its shipments year-on-year and doubled quarter-on-quarter in last quarter. IDC adds that Xiaomi focus on the traditional channel for marketing its products has been a key strategy. The market research firm added Samsung had a “record breaking quarter” where it registered 39 percent sequential growth quarter-on-quarter and 23 percent year-on-year. According to the IDC report, some of Samsung’s bestselling models…
Security Current, an information and collaboration company by CISOs for CISOs, today published a collection of insights from leading Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs) on the use of open source software in their organizations. Eleven CISOs from across industries weighed in, with most saying that open source software generally has been well vetted for security vulnerabilities by the vast development communities that contribute software to the libraries. What’s more, they note that open source can provide more flexibility than commercial software products, which often must be heavily customized at great expense to the user organization. “Open source code is a…
IRYStec Software Inc., a leader in perceptual display processing technology, announced a number of initiatives that will significantly extend its ability to service customers. A photo accompanying this announcement is available at MONTREAL, Nov. 20, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — IRYStec Software Inc., a leader in perceptual display processing technology, announced a number of initiatives that will significantly extend its ability to service customers. To start, John Hartley joined IRYStec as Vice President of Sales. Mr. Hartley has 25 years of demonstrated success developing client relationships in international markets for semiconductor components and IP. This background fits well with IRYStec’s goal of…
Vulture South last week spotted an oddity in this Cisco end of sale announcement for “Cisco Select UCS Server Accessories”. Way down the page are a couple of products bearing the name “Telstra” – that’s Telstra as in Australia’s dominant telco. The two products are called “Telstra Custom – 10 x (MapR-Conf-Hadoop, DB-AddOn, Spark-Ad)” and “Telstra Custom – 5 x MapR-Premium-36months” and the announcement stated that sales ended last week, on November 15th, 2017, that orders end next year and the service and support will expire on February 28, 2023. Rodney Hamill, Cisco’s director of data centre and cloud for Australia and…
HIGHLIGHTS EA has removed micro-transactions from Star Wars Battlefront 2 This is temporary and not permanent EA fails to understand why this is a problem Star Wars Battlefront 2 is out now the world over. But hours before release, publisher EA has revealed that the game’s predatory and intrusive micro-transactions have been removed. What this means is, Star Wars Battlefront 2’s crystals, which is the game’s premium currency that can be bought with real money for in-game advantages has been removed for now. According to a statement on EA’s official Star Wars Twitter account attributed to Oskar Gabrielson, General Manager at Star Wars…
It has been a great year for Nintendo fans, with the new Switch console as well as a throwback console based on the beloved Super Nintendo Entertainment System. But it has also been a hard one, if you’re actually trying to find these consoles in stores. With the holidays coming, Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aimé said in an interview with The Washington Post that the company is working to have a regular supply of both consoles on store shelves for the rest of the year. Though, he said, it can be hard to predict what demand will be like. The research firm…