TNPSC 2019 – Group I Mains Result Released

Tamil Nadu Public Service Commission (TNPSC) has released revised result for Group I Posts.

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Cyber-Attack Hits US Newspaper Distribution

The attack led to distribution delays in the Saturday edition of The Times, Tribune, Sun and other newspapers that share a production platform in Los Angeles, the Los Angeles Times reported. http://bit.ly/2QZ5UVj

Google Facial Recognition Lawsuit Dismissed by US Judge

US District Judge Edmond Chang in Chicago granted a Google motion for summary judgment, saying the court lacked "subject matter jurisdiction because plaintiffs have not suffered concrete injuries." http://bit.ly/2EZr6TV

Zuckerberg Sees 'Progress' for Facebook After Tumultuous Year

Capping a tumultuous year marked by data protection scandals and government probes, Zuckerberg said he was "proud of the progress we've made" in addressing Facebook's problems. http://bit.ly/2F1uFdg

In an year of breaches, data leaks, and reports of starvation deaths due to faulty implementation, India's Aadhaar had its constitutional status upheld in 2018 (Aria Thaker/Quartz)

Aria Thaker / Quartz:
In an year of breaches, data leaks, and reports of starvation deaths due to faulty implementation, India's Aadhaar had its constitutional status upheld in 2018  —  After almost a decade since its launch, India's controversial biometric identity programme, Aadhaar, finally got a measure …

LG G7 ThinQ to get Android Pie update in Q1 2019: Report

Highlights: LG G7 ThinQ will get the Android Pie update in Q1 2019 in South Korea The update may come to other countries in the Q2 It will bring performance-related upgrades   LG has announced that it is working on an Android Pie update for the LG G7 ThinQ and according to a report, will start rolling out the stable version of the update in the first quarter of 2019 in South Korea. The report in mylgphones.com says that it assumed that it would release for other markets in the second quarter of the next year. The news comes after LG officially launched the Android 9 beta programme for the G7 ThinQ in November in South Korea. The update seems to be very important as LG has listed a number of performance-related issues that will be addressed with this update. This includes an improvement that rectifies the screen freezes when the FPS setting is repeatedly changed in the professional video mode of the camera app. It will also address an issue in which fingerprints are not recognised in some financial apps and pay apps after software update.   So far, LG has not announced the Android Pie update plan for the LG V40 ThinQ, though, it said that the upcoming update for the flagship would bring PentaShot feature on camera and parking assistant function and subway notification function in the context awareness setting, among others. According to the report, LG is also testing the firmware for LM-G820N, which is said to be the model number of the LG G8. The LG G8 is expected to launch with Android Pie out-of-the-box. LG G7 ThinQ Specifications The LG G7 ThinQ comes wrapped inside a glass with Corning Gorilla Glass 5 display protection. The handset features a 6.1-inch QHD+ FullVision Super Bright Display. The display is said to have a maximum brightness of up to 1,000 nits. It offers a 19.5:9 screen to body ratio. The smartphone is IP68 dust and water resistant. The LG G7 ThinQ comes with a rear-mounted fingerprint scanner and there is also a dedicated Google Assistant button on the device. Tapping the button once will launch the Google Assistant, while tapping it twice will bring up Google Lens. The phone includes Super Far-Field Voice Recognition (SFFVR) technology and is also equipped with “Boombox Speakers”, which are said to deliver 10 times louder audio, in comparison with standard phones. The LG G7 ThinQ is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 SoC with 4GB RAM and 64GB internal storage. Storage on the phone can be expanded up to 2TB. The phone is backed by a 3,000mAh battery and runs Android 8.0 Oreo. In terms of optics, the LG G7 ThinQ is equipped with a dual 16MP rear-camera setup with one standard lens of f/1.6 aperture and another 16MP Super Wide Angle sensor with f/1.9 aperture. On the front, it is equipped with an 8MP wide-angle camera with f/1.9 aperture and an 80-degree lens. The LG G7 ThinQ is equipped with a Hi-Fi Quad DAC and also supports DTS:X to deliver virtual 3D sound for delivering up to 7.1 channel audio with earphones, has a face recognition and HDR10 support on the device.   Related Read: LG G7 Plus ThinQ Review LG G7 ThinQ, G7+ ThinQ launched   http://bit.ly/2Ap41ac

Google clarifies Android One promise of guaranteed updates for 2 years

The Android One program by Google has come to replace the Nexus devices. In 2017, Google jumpstarted the program globally with the Xiaomi Mi A1. When earlier it was to make entry-level phones more responsive and usable, Android One became an embodiment of devices that would run a vanilla flavour of Android (always the latest), and offer two years of version upgrades and security patches. At that time, the promise of regular updates was a big selling point and a year down the line, we had quite a few Android One certified devices in the Indian market. On the landing page of the official Android One website, the promise of regular updates was highlighted explicitly — 2 years of guaranteed updates. However, a couple of days back, Reddit user anshumanpati6 spotted the mention of that same promise of regular updates missing from the landing page. This led many to believe that Android One no longer came with the compulsion of regular updates. However, Google denied there had been any change in the program; the promise of regular updates still holds. In a response to India Today, Google said, “We confirm that our promise to provide 2 years of updates on Android One devices still stands and our website design does not impact the promise of this program.” The Android One program was initially tailored for developing markets that demanded affordable devices with timely updates. Google enforced this with stringent minimum hardware requirements, but smartphone vendors couldn’t make much money on them. As a result, the present form of Android One is more flexible in terms of the hardware under the hood. For the entry-level phones, Google designed Android Go. Android One, on the other hand focused on offering affordable, mid-range devices update cycles users enjoy in the high-end Pixel phones with an user experience that seemed better than most skinned Android phones. There was no reason to think Google would abandon this crucial element of the program, save for the missing feature in the official website. In fact, there’s still no mention of the feature in the homepage. We are still waiting for Google to release an official response on the matter. It could just be a website redesign highlighting the security features, unlimited storage and the wide portfolio of Android One devices available in the market. Or, there could be more to the story than what meets the eye. http://bit.ly/2SufBrR

Nubia Red Magic Mars RNG Edition With Up to 10GB RAM Launched

Nubia Red Magic Mars RNG Edition price in China starts at CNY 3,299 (roughly Rs. 33,500) for the 8GB RAM/ 128GB storage configuration. http://bit.ly/2QcZNHJ

WhatsApp Will Stop Working on These Phones Today

WhatsApp says that devices that run on Nokia S40 won't be able to use WhatsApp after December 31 i.e. today. http://bit.ly/2ViN5ei

You Can Play Bandersnatch Game 'Nohzdyve', With a Bit of Work

If you haven't gotten enough of the new Black Mirror: Bandersnatch interactive film on Netflix, you can now also play one of the games that's spoken about in the episode, Nohzdyve. http://bit.ly/2QcrBfF

iPhone XS Max Catches Fire in US Man's Pocket, Report Claims

An iPhone XS Max smartphone reportedly caught fire in the pocket of man from Ohio, United States earlier this month. http://bit.ly/2QdqmMW

Googles Messages app is reportedly getting new spam protection feature

Key Highlights: Google is said to be activating Spam protection feature on its Messages app The new feature is reportedly being enabled via a server-side update The spam protection feature could be rolled out soon for everyone   Google is reportedly enabling a new spam protection feature on its Messages app for some users. Android Police reports that some users who launched the app were greeted with a notification stating, “New! Spam protection” and it seems that the new feature, which is said to have been under development for more than a year, is finally being made available. As of writing this article, Google has not posted anything regarding the spam protection rollout and the feature is reportedly being enabled via a server-side update and only for a few people. We checked for the option on some of our devices but they have not received it yet.  As per the report, those who have received the spam protection feature on their Messages app will see a new “Spam protection" option under the Advanced tab of the app’s Settings. Earlier, Android Police reported a section on Google’s Support website that detailed how the new feature works. “When the setting is enabled, some information about the messages you receive (such as inbound phone numbers) is sent to Google, though stripped of identifying content like your phone number or the actual message itself. The inner machinations are undescribed, but presumably, it looks at that data statistically to determine commonalities between spam messages to detect them,” the report reads. In case one sends a spam report manually, the feature still submits the entire message to Google, which is said to include phone numbers of both, the sender, the recipient, along with the message's contents. Speaking of the Messages app, new commits found in Chromium’s Gerrit source code management site suggest that the web interface of the app could be moved from Messages.Android.com to Messages.Google.com. While the URL change might not seem like a big deal for the average user, the change is said to tell Chromebooks to stop using the Android.com URL and instead use the Google.com URL in versions 72 or 73 of Chrome OS. These versions are also said to include the ‘Better Together’ features for integrating Android and Chrome OS. This change should not affect the web interface of the app.    Related Reads: Android Messages web app now lives in Google.com, not Android.com   http://bit.ly/2StVSbB

Nokia 9 PureView With Penta-Lens Cameras Tipped to Launch in January 2019

Nokia 9 PureView, leaked multiple times with a penta-lens camera setup, is now tipped to launch in the last week of January. http://bit.ly/2R0vWrz

Huawei P Smart (2019) With Android Pie, Dewdrop Display Launched

Huawei P Smart (2019) is seen sporting a waterdrop-shaped notch, a dual camera setup aligned vertically, a rear fingerprint scanner, and a 3,400mAh battery. http://bit.ly/2GPpdff

China to land on the dark side of the moon: Report

In what will soon become another first for all of humanity, China is planning to land its lunar probe Chang'e 4 on the dark side of the moon. According to a recent report by the state-owned Xinhua News Agecny, the unmanned spacecraft was launched on a Long March-3B rocket on December 7. Chang'e 4 reached lunar orbit five days later and deployed its landing craft and surface rover in preparation for descent. The planned landing site is Von Kármán, a 180-kilometre crater in the South Pole–Aitken basin. The spacecraft reportedly entered an elliptical orbit around the moon on December 12 at 6:25 AM IST (12:55 AM GMT). From the pericenter, the point of closest approach for any celestial body in an elliptical orbit, the spacecraft is only 14.4 kilometres from the moon's rocky surface. The China National Space Administration reportedly announced that it would soon "prepare for the first-ever soft landing on the far side of the moon".  From the dark side of the moon direct communication with Earth is not possible as the moon itself blocks all transmissions. For this reason, the Chinese National Space Administration set up a communications relay satellite called Queqiao (meaning Magpie Bridge) back in May this year in a halo orbit around the moon. Two other microsatellites, Longjiang-1 and Longjiang-2 (meaning Dragon River), were launched along with Queqiao for additional relay support. Chang'e 4's payload includes a landing camera (LCAM), a terrain camera (TCAM), and a low-frequency spectrometer (LFS) to study solar bursts, among other equipment. Chang'e 4's mission on the dark side of the moon is to measure the surface temperature, chemical compositions of lunar rocks and soils, study cosmic rays, observe the solar corona, and carry out low-frequency radio astronomical research. http://bit.ly/2GNesdu