Tech Nuggets with the Technology

Thursday, June 4, 2020

Realme Narzo 10A Second Sale Will Take Place Today at Noon via Flipkart

Realme Narzo 10A is set to go on sale in India for the second time today at 12pm (noon). The new Realme smartphone that was launched alongside the Realme Narzo 10 earlier in May will be available for... https://ift.tt/2Y8YuQq

Realme Watch First Sale Starts at 12 Noon via Flipkart, Realme Website

Realme Watch will go on its first sale today via Flipkart and Realme India website at 12pm (noon). Launched late last month, it is the first smartwatch by the company and comes at a fairly budget... https://ift.tt/3eSkQw9

Google Research to take guess work out of pandemic policy

The research project may help policymakers design strategies that will help contain pandemic situations https://ift.tt/30bHagi https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

Iran- and China-backed phishers try to hook the Trump and Biden campaigns

Stock photo of a slip of paper being dropped into a bin marked 2020.

State-backed hackers from Iran and China recently targeted the presidential campaigns of Republican President Donald Trump and Democrat Joe Biden, a Google threat analyst said on Thursday.

The revelation is the latest evidence of foreign governments attempting to gain intelligence on US politicians and potentially disrupt or meddle in their election campaigns. An Iran-backed group targeted the Trump campaign and China-backed attackers targeted the Biden campaign, said Shane Huntley, the head of Google’s Threat Analysis Group on Twitter. Both groups used phishing emails. There’s no indication that either attack campaign succeeded.

Kittens and Pandas

Huntley identified the Iranian group that targeted Trump’s campaign as APT35, short for Advanced Persistent Threat 35. Also known as Charming Kitten, iKittens, and Phosphorous, the group was caught targeting an unnamed presidential campaign before, Microsoft said last October. In that campaign, Phosphorous members attempted to access email accounts campaign staff received through Microsoft cloud services. Microsoft said that the attackers worked relentlessly to gather information that could be used to activate password resets and other account-recovery services Microsoft provides.

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https://arstechnica.com

A detective hunts a costumed vigilante in Major Grom: Plague Doctor trailer

Major Grom: Plague Doctor is adapted from the Russian comics of the same name.

A rogue detective who doesn't always play by the rules hunts a costumed vigilante serial killer in the first English-language trailer (well, subtitled) for a Russian superhero film called Major Grom: Plague Doctor, directed by Oleg Trofim (Ice). There's some pretty strong The Punisher vibes here, as well as V for Vendetta. The Major Grom comic books, created by Artem Gabrelyanov, have been likened to the early Batman comics in tone, which might explain the Dark Knight overtones as well.

(Some spoilers for the Russian comics below.)

The original Major Grom comics were published between 2012 and 2015, later spawning several spinoffs. The protagonist is Major Igor Grom, a detective in St. Petersburg who has mean martial arts skills and takes part in the occasional amateur boxing competition (aka Russian Fight Club). He has a tendency to bend the rules, which irritates his young rookie partner, Dmitry "Dima" Dubin, who prefers to play things by the book. Grom's love interest is an investigative reporter named Yulia Pchelkina, whose skill set proves useful in helping solve Grom's various comic book cases. A billionaire social media mogul named Sergey Razumovsky is Grom's archnemesis. Razumovsky is a philanthropist by day but murders homeless people by night, all in the name of cleaning up St. Petersburg.

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https://arstechnica.com

Abu Dhabi's state fund Mubadala Investment buys a 1.85% stake in Reliance Jio Platforms for $1.2B (Campbell Kwan/ZDNet)

Campbell Kwan / ZDNet:
Abu Dhabi's state fund Mubadala Investment buys a 1.85% stake in Reliance Jio Platforms for $1.2B — Jio Platforms has now received investments totalling ₹87,655 crore in six weeks. — Reliance Industries has gained yet another investor, with Abu Dhabi state fund Mubadala Investment …

IIHS study of 5K+ crashes: self-driving cars would've prevented only one-third, which were caused by "sensing and perceiving" errors and driver "incapacitation" (Tom Krisher/Associated Press)

Tom Krisher / Associated Press:
IIHS study of 5K+ crashes: self-driving cars would've prevented only one-third, which were caused by “sensing and perceiving” errors and driver “incapacitation” — DETROIT (AP) — A new study says that while autonomous vehicle technology has great promise to reduce crashes …

Swiggy, Zomato redraw exclusivity contracts with restaurants

Typically, for both Zomato and Swiggy, these exclusive tie-ups with restaurants accounted for about 30 % of overall sales last year. https://ift.tt/2MBbkkJ https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

Here’s what is driving GM’s reported plans to develop a commercial electric van

GM’s electric offensive to bring at least 20 new EVs to market by 2023 reportedly includes a commercial van.

Reuters reported Thursday that the company is developing an electric van for the commercial market code named BV1. The vehicle is expected to start production in late 2021 and will use the Ultium battery system that was revealed in March, according to the report.

When, and if, GM delivers on that goal in 2021 it will join an increasingly crowded pool. Amazon ordered 100,000 electric delivery vans from Rivian, the first of which are expected to be on the road in 2021. Ford has announced an electric Transit van that’s expected to launch in 2021. Startups such as Arrival, Chanje, Enirde, and XoS have received orders for electric vans from package delivery companies such as Ryder and UPS.

Tesla is one outlier that hasn’t revealed plans to produce commercial electric vans. GM’s move has been cast as a strategy to get ahead of Tesla in the commercial marketplace.

But there are likely other reasons driving GM’s decision, including high margins that can be achieved selling commercial trucks and vans as well as governments enacting increasingly strict emissions laws, particularly in urban centers.

Electric vans are logical fit for delivery companies, which tend to have predictable routes, a specific geographic area and operate a high utilization all of which fits with the EV infrastructure and charging ecosystems that enables their full economic use, a research note released Thursday from Morgan Stanley argues.

Morgan Stanley notes it hasn’t been “smooth sailing” for all EV vans. For instance, DHL’s StreetScooter program was recently shut down.

Prior to Reuters’ report, it appeared GM’s EV strategy was pinned to passenger vehicles. In March, GM revealed an electric architecture that will be the foundation of its future EV plans and support a wide range of products across its brands, including compact cars, work trucks, large premium SUVs, performance vehicles and a new Bolt EUV crossover expected to come to market next summer.

GM said the modular architecture, called “Ultium,” will be capable of 19 different battery and drive unit configurations, 400-volt and 800-volt packs with storage ranging from 50 kWh to 200 kWh, and front-, rear- and all-wheel drive configurations.

GM’s focus on making this EV architecture modular underlines the automaker’s desire to electrify a wide variety of its business lines, from the Cruise Origin autonomous taxi and compact Chevrolet Bolt EUV to the GMC HUMMER electric truck and SUV and the newly-announced Cadillac Lyriq SUV. GM also showed a variety of electric vehicles that had not yet been announced, to show how this modularity will be exploited further out in their product plan, including a massive Cadillac flagship sedan called Celestiq.