Here’s how you can become a good engineer!

All good engineers have these qualities. Check them here

Developing into a good engineer is a lifelong venture. Engineers have created the world we live in today. The industrial ages of mechanisation, electrification, and digitalisation are the consequence of engineering excellence. Each age has impacted the work environment and the skills required for success. With the advent of mechanisation came factories and the nine-to-five work culture. Engineers designed, built and diagnosed the steam engines, the cams and the pistons that mechanised all production processes.

With mechanisation came rapid transportation systems by land and sea, enabling larger global trade. Electrification enabled higher efficiency in operations making mass production possible with every factory tool being motorised and the creation of the modern production line. Engineers designed and built electricity generation, transmission, and distribution equipment that brought electricity to homes, factories and farms.

With digitalisation, the primary work location shifted from the factory to the office. Increasing level of automation and remote operation of factories allowed engineers to focus on electronic design and software implementation for factory and office automation. Today, with the democratisation of digitalisation offered by mobile phones, engineers are building cyber-intelligent systems that digitalise every conceivable decision through algorithms.

Despite the rapidly changing environment, the underlying basis for engineering excellence endures. Broadly speaking, I group engineering excellence into three categories: 

1) Building a solid foundation

2) Developing an engineering mindset 

3) Focusing on execution.

Build a solid foundation

1. Strong fundamentals: When in doubt, always go to the fundamentals. Be it Newton’s Laws or the derivative Navier Stokes Equation, Maxwell’s equations or the derivative static, diffusion or wave equations. It is important to understand the physical meaning of mathematical expressions and be able to hand calculate approximate values of variables for critical verification. It is also important to understand the limitations of numerical methods and determine where experimentation is necessary.

2. Deep technical focus: Rome was not built in a day. It takes time and focused effort to develop engineering excellence. Each new learning experience is just a door that opens up a myriad of unknowns. It is important to focus and develop deep-rooted expertise in a single technical area for a minimum of six years early in one’s career. It is also true that once an expertise is developed, the ability to translate the learning to other technical areas is relatively quicker and easier. However, the credibility from the core technology area sticks throughout one’s career and hence is extremely important.

3. Hands-on expertise: The best way to ‘see’ an engineered part is with your hands. There are a number of hurdles to be overcome between a thought experiment or theory and actual realisation in the field. It is important to take every opportunity to experience the complete product life cycle. Books cannot capture or substitute the lessons of hands-on learning. Speed in engineering comes from a gut instinct of what might work. This instinct is developed through hands-on work.

4. Simulation expertise: Experimentation matters. With advances in simulation, the volumes of iterative physical experiments required have been dramatically reduced through the effective use of validated models. It is important for modern-day engineers to effectively use simulation tools and computational power at their disposal. At the same time, it is important to understand and prevent numerical errors that creep in through a variety of sources.

5. Continuous learning: Once an engineer, always a student. The accumulated knowledge in engineering is huge, but miniscule compared to the amount of unknown possibilities in the physical world. An engineer excels by continuously striving to be at the edge of knowledge and scientific progress. It is the mapping of a new science or material to new market needs that advances the frontiers of engineering.

Develop an engineering mindset

1. Attention to detail: The devil is in the detail. Engineering is about figuring out the details. Many showstoppers are not apparent at the big picture level. Manufacturing issues, cost issues, life issues, and ‘maintainability’ and ‘inspectability’ issues are amongst the many issues that need to be fleshed out. Solutions to problems can create new ones in their wake if regression analysis and testing are not performed. Engineering excellence, hence, is in the detail.

2. System-level thinking: ‘The whole is other than the sum of its parts.’ From an engineering standpoint, it is important to be able to define and model complex interactions among components that make up an engineered system, and implement the system with effective use of available resources. While we work on a component, the system should not be forgotten. In system engineering, the output of a system is typically linked to a customer need.

3. Market and customer orientation: First understand what the market needs and then proceed to make it. Engineering is about serving the market. Every feature should be looked at from a customer’s viewpoint. This does mean not just listening to the customer. It also means anticipating the customer need and changes in the market. It is important to maintain an external connection through journals, tradeshows, databases, industry peers, end-customers and emerging markets.

4. Innovation and change orientation: Innovation is finding new ways of creating value. An engineer should keep abreast with the cutting edge technology, while serving the current market needs. Every new market need and customer problem can be looked at as opportunities to innovate, leveraging the latest knowledge in the field. Innovation is clearly not only idea generation, but also the ability to take the idea to market. Innovation needs the engineer to create with freedom, nurture with passion and change with detachment.

5. Engineering judgment: An ounce of engineering judgment sometimes works the miracle of tonnes of analysis. Engineering judgment comes from the confidence and decision-making capability developed through technical knowledge, experience and an appetite for risk-taking. Engineering judgment enables the engineer to quickly sense and articulate risks, and also come up with optimal solutions to complex technical problems. Engineering judgment is a starting point and needs to be followed by detailed analysis, experimentation and validation.

Focus on execution

1. Critical analysis: Measure twice and cut once. The ability to draw the right engineering conclusions from available data includes understanding whether the data is insufficient to support a claim and what additional data would enable a better conclusion. Also important to critical analysis is knowing which tool or experiment would give you the best information required to make the right conclusion and decision.

2. First time right and design margin: Quality is reputation, quality is credibility and quality is revenue. With products such as aircraft engines and nuclear reactors in the portfolio, there is no second chance. Being right the first time with adequate design margin is of paramount importance. Having the right tests and statistically significant number of tests to ensure confidence in our designs and testing our designs for failure to understand the validity of our design margins is critical for success.

3. Detailed documentation and design practices: Work not documented is work not performed. Every engineering success and every failure has a lesson that needs to be shared. Documenting is also a way to unlock certain missed details. By writing for others, you articulate certain assumptions, which upon expression might throw new light on the problem being addressed. Documenting your work is also a means of collaborating with yourself over time. Design practices are vital to ensure design knowledge developed through intense analysis and experimentation is transferred to the engineering community.

4. Cost / productivity consciousness: One of the responsibilities of an engineer is to take an idea to market. A significant component of success in the market is to be able to give the best value. To ensure good contribution margins while providing excellent customer value, an organisation has to have a handle on the cost and productivity. Hence, the engineer’s job is to also keep in mind the cost and productivity while still optimising quality and schedule.

5. Sense of urgency and desire to win: Sometimes it is all about time-to-market. The engineering incentive is to be the first with an elegant technical solution to significantly enhance human health or comfort in an environmentally friendly way. A sense of competitiveness and a race to be the first have defined many engineering successes from the light bulb to the aircraft engine to decoding the human genome.

Spokes Technologies

7 Reasons You Should Quit Facebook

Ten years ago Facebook was just cresting as the cool new social media site that helped you keep in touch with the people you didn’t actually like in high school. We fed it our thoughts and feelings, shared our meals and locations and our top ten movie lists, kept it up-to-date on our relationship status, political views, favorite links, and personal information — all in the name of staying connected, and all without a thought to our security. But with a decade of questions regarding how Facebook makes money now answered, and a general understanding of how sharing information online can be dangerous (while the platform constantly updates its security protocol), we continue to use it anyway, even though many of us are just checking in as ritual and have threatened our exit from Facebook for years.

Of course, screen time in moderation is, for the most part, perfectly acceptable, and social media can offer a few genuinely beneficial uses. But before you log in or tap that app on your smartphone again, here are a few reasons to quit Facebook in 2015.

It Wastes Your Time

It's estimated that the average casual user (17 minutes per day on Facebook) who has been active on the site for 10 years has wasted upwards of 40 entire days of their lives scrolling and liking and commenting on pictures and posts. And more engaged users, who spend at least an hour a day on the site, have clocked 150 days feeding the Facebook beast during the same time. Think about how long you spend on the site each day, and what else could be a more productive use of your time.

Facebook Uses You to Sell Stuff...

In 2012, the site manipulated posts from 689,000 accounts without consent in an experiment that examined whether or not it could affect your emotions by making a few edits on your page. The study was done, according to Facebook, to "improve our services and to make the content people see on Facebook as relevant and engaging as possible." Skeptics think it was really used to discover the monetary benefit of a Like. COO Sheryl Sandberg later apologized, adding that they "never meant to upset you."

And Targets You with Advertisements

One time you wanted to buy a thing, and then you searched for that thing, and six months later Facebook is still reminding you that you should think about buying that thing, even if you already bought the thing. Yes, most sites do this thanks to embedded cookies, but only Facebook seamlessly posts these ads in your timeline with enough regularity that you can only assume your friend has an odd obsession with the latest Norelco razor.

It's Bad for Your Health

Facebook isn't just a harmless website dedicated to cataloging your vacations, poor wardrobe choices, and myopic thoughts on sporting events (which can both define or destroy relationships), it can actually do you harm. Studies hint that it can impact your immune system and inhibit the release of growth hormones, impair digestion and vision, limit thinking and kill creativity, and affect sleep patterns and happiness.

"Who Are These People, Anyway?"

The average adult has 338 friends on Facebook and probably doesn't know more than 10 percent of them anymore, or at all. Many of them likely have new lives, some have new last names, new passions, new facial hair, and new humans they're now responsible for keeping alive (read: babies). These are not the friends you knew, and semi-casually keeping up with them is a waste of time that could be better spent with new, real friends. Or on Twitter.

"But I Don't Care About Privacy"

Fair. That's your right. But the problem is that we're setting precedent for the future without yet understanding how it will affect the free and open Web, and simultaneously creating an internet that relies on you having a Facebook account to access sites that are not Facebook. As one of nearly 1.2 billion users to date, odds are decent that your account won't be hacked by someone with ill-will toward your family. That doesn't mean that permitting easy access to your information goes without consequence, both immediately and decades from now.

Nothing You Post Actually Matters

Very few people care what you're doing, whom you're with, where you're eating, or what you just bought, and the people who do were probably right next to you when you did it. We all saw that funny Ice Bucket Challenge video, and if we didn’t see it, it's fine. We're all fine. You'll sleep well without knowing which childhood toys you owned are now worth a fortune, and you will absolutely "believe what happened next" on Upworthy, because someone took time to write about it. These articles only exist because you share them on Facebook, and you only share them because they exist. So, instead, just invite a friend over to talk about how much you both loved Save By the Bell. The internet can only take so much nostalgia.

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Wondering Why The Headphone Jack Missing In The iPhone 7? Here's Why

With every new iPhone release, it is now a tradition for iFixit, the device repairing site to break the device apart and look what has changed inside. Through the teardown process, they found out just what replaced the headphone jack exactly.

So as expected, iFixit performed a complete teardown of the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus to dole out information about internal parts that Apple preferred to leave out in its keynote speech during the iPhone 7 launch event.

iFixit says the process of tearing down the iPhone 7 Plus is quite similar to the previous models. It found that the classic pentahole screws are still there along with two familiar screws holding each side of the lightning connector.

Because the iPhone 7 Plus is now water resistant, the device opens to the side once the display is removed.

Coming to the headphone jack, the geeks at iFixit found that the newly introduced Taptic Engine takes up most of the space reserved for the 3.5mm headphone jack. However, interestingly there is now a plastic bumper where the headphone jack used to be.

While the Taptic Engine that powers the home button in the iPhone 7 Plus is the reason for the headphone jack going kaput, iFixit notes that water proofing is also one of the major reasons for ditching it.

Apart from this, iFixit also found out the exact amount of juice the new iPhone batteries have. While the iPhone 6 Plus ran on a 2750mAh battery, the new iPhone 7 Plus features a 2915mAh battery. During the keynote speech, Apple only revealed the new iPhone 7 Plus will give an hour of battery more than its predecessor. With the exact figure revealed, it seems it is indeed the battery that has become larger along with OS-level optimizations.

The dual camera setup was also examined by the team at iFixit. It noted that the camera has "dual lenses, dual sensors and two little connectors."

There are two 12-megapixel cameras, one with a wide-angle lens along with optical image stabilization similar to the iPhone 7 and another, a telephoto lens for optical zoom.

There are also two sensors that Apple claims is 60 per cent faster and 30 per cent energy efficient than the predecessors.

The cameras are built into a chassis to enable waterproofing and dust protection. This chassis is the reason behind the ugly camera bump in the iPhone 7 Plus.

The website still hasn't started the teardown of the 4.7-inch iPhone 7. As for the new Apple Watch Series 2, the teardown process has just started which iFixit notes is now much easier thanks to the new ZIF connectors.

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Important Programming languages for Hackers

Many of our readers often send us queries about which programming language they should learn. Some want to know quick fix hacking solutions. Almost all tech gadgets are built with coding. Every App, game or site that you use is programmed in a particular computer language. You need to know that hacking is not a click-of-a-button job but a serialized and compartmentalized vocation which uses different programming languages for different uses.

Most of the websites out there will give you list of most popular programming languages in the world. We at try to make it more easy for budding security researchers and hackers by breaking up the programming languages used by hackers.

Hacking is usually meant to break a code. There are three sections of hacking ― Web Hacking, Exploit Writing & Reverse Engineering and each of it requires different programming language.

1. Web Hacking

Since most of the tech is build around world wide web, it is important to learn web hacking to be a good hacker. Let’s say you are interested in hacking web apps and/or websites then you will need to learn web coding. Websites use mostly HTML, PHP and JavaScript so it is important to learn these three.

HTML:

One of the easiest and widely used static markup web language present in each and every website you see in your browser. It’s recommended to learn HTML because it helps understanding web actions, response, and logic.

JavaScript:

JS is a client-side web programming mostly used in web sites for better user interface and quick response. If you are interested in a hacking career you need to learn JavaScript because it helps to understand client-side mechanism which is essential for finding client-side flaws.

PHP:

A dynamic server-side language which is responsible for managing web-apps and database. PHP is considered one of the most essential language because it controls everything on site and server, like a captain of a ship. It is advised to learn PHP nicely.

SQL:

SQL is responsible for storing and managing sensitive and confidential data such as user credentials, bank and personal information about the website visitors. Black hat hackers mostly target SQL database and steal information which is later sold on underground dark web forum. If you want to be good security researcher, you should learn SQL so that you can find flaws in a website and report them.

2. Exploit Writing

After web hacking, another most important feature of hacking is exploits. You can crack a particular software by writing a exploit. But to write a exploit you need to learn either Python or Ruby.

Python:

It is said that a security researcher or hacker should know Python because it the core language for creating exploits and tools. Security experts and even pro hackers suggest that master Python is the best way to learn hacking. Python offers wider flexibility and you can create exploits only if you are good in Python.

Ruby:

Ruby is a simple yet complicated object-oriented language. Ruby is very useful when it comes to exploit writing. It is used for meterpreter scripting by hackers. The most famous hacker tool, Metasploit framework is programmed in Ruby. Though Ruby may not be as versatile as Python, knowledge of Ruby is must in understanding exploits.

3. Reverse Engineering

Reverse engineering, the process of taking a software program’s binary code and recreating it so as to trace it back to the original source code. If you know reverse engineering you can find flaws and bugs easily. If you want to learn reverse engineering you need to know C, C++ and Java. The process of converting the code written in high level language into a low level language without changing the original program is known as reverse engineering.

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8 iPhone 7 details you may have missed

You’ve read the press release (which confirmed most of the rumors) so what else might you want to know when you pick up iPhone 7 and it wakes up? What follows are a few details some of which you may not have come across.

Get to the Camera

Apple made a successful explanation of the advanced new camera technologies you’ll find in iPhone 7 and the 7 Plus. The standard iPhone 7 comes with a 12MP camera, while the iPhone 7 Plus boasts a dual-camera system, with a wide-angle and telephoto lens that provides 2x optical zoom, and 10x digital zoom for photos. Both get optical image stabilization and an ƒ/1.8 aperture that allows up to 50 percent more light than the 6s. The lens has been improved and will capture better photos in low light, while the flash is 50% brighter than before with an intelligent sensor designed to compensate for flicker. You can learn more about the camera here. These improvements are big enough to have helped many consumers get past the loss of the headphone jack. You can unlock the camera by swiping your finger right on the lockscreen when your iPhone is locked. Doing so brings up the camera app so you can grab a snap fast. I still don’t know if you can use Siri to take a picture.

Live Photos

Live Photos improve in iPhone 7. Not only does the built-in camera offer optical stabilization tools that should improve image quality, but it also provides better Live Photos editing tools so you can tweak those moving images to just the right fragment. Apple is also making these tools available to third party app developers.

That processor

We know the new A10 Fusion processor is ultra-powerful, 40 percent faster than the A9 the quad-core chip delivers twice the performance of iPhone 6. A Geekbench listing for the iPhone 7 Plus spotted by 9to5Mac claims the device carries 3GB of RAM. This generates a single-core score of 3,233 and a multi-core result of 5,363, just a few points behind the 5,472 performance you get from a 12.9-inch iPad Pro. Apple hasn’t disclosed how much RAM it has put inside the new phones, but a TENNA certification has emerged online that pegs the iPhone 7 Plus as holding 3GB RAM, while the iPhone 7 uses just 2GB.

Setting up Home

Apple’s iPhone 7 Home button uses a Force Touch enabled taptic engine and sensor that should make it more responsive. One thing you probably didn’t know is that you can customize button behavior in iPhone Settings>General>Home. Here you can choose what happens when you double-click the Home button. Doing so will take you to your choice of Home, Search, Phone Favorites, Camera or iPod. You can also set the Home button up in order that when you are playing music a double click will take you directly to music playback controls.

Better audio?

The decision to abandon the headphone jack actually makes more sense than it creates non-sense. You see, not only is Apple able to deliver better digital audio through the Lightning cable, but the removal of the port has created the space Apple needed for the Taptic Engine and a stereo speaker system. This means that when you use iPhone 7 for music or video playback you’ll get better volume and better sound clarity. Apple includes a pair of Lightning EarPods in the box, along with a Lightning to 3.5mm jack conversion adapter. The company also introduced new wireless AirPods ($159), which use a custom W1 wireless chip; however, as these aren’t water resistant I’d recommend most consumers choose one of Apple’s Beats subsidiaries new headphones which you can safely use when you run.

Jet Black

Apple’s designers love to experiment with new materials and process technologies and the new Jet Black iPhone is positive proof of this. That’s not to say there aren’t a few snags, not only does the small print warn that this finish may be “prone to fine micro-abrasions”, but you can only get it on the 128GB or 256GB iPhone models. The smartphones are also available in (matte) black, silver, gold and rose gold.

Water resistance

The iPhone 7 has IP67 water resistance. This doesn’t mean you want to leave it overnight in the rain, but does mean it will be able to withstand being in up to a meter of water for up to 30 minute. The iPhone 7 also has a moisture detection feature that will warn you if it finds moisture inside the device – if the warning comes up you should disconnect any accessory from the Lightning port and leave the device to dry.

This is 7

Apple’s “This is 7” slogan means something fairly rude in Hong Kong, so the company changed it.

“You’re holding it wrong”

Remember when Steve Jobs told us all we were “holding it wrong” as the company worked to undo the damage of antenna-gate? Well, the scientists say he was right all along.

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The iPhone 7’s new A10 Fusion: quad-core, high-efficiency, and a more powerful GPU

Apple announced the iPhone yesterday, along with its A10 microprocessor. We’ll have to wait a bit to see how the new CPU compares with the A9 in terms of overall performance, but Apple shared some significant details of what to expect with the new chip.

Past rumors have suggested a second-generation 14nm SoC built at TSMC, but Apple said nothing about either its process node or foundry manufacturer of choice. What we do know is that the new A10 is a quad-core, 3.3-billion transistor CPU (the A9 CPU contained more than two billion transistors) with an estimated 40% performance advantage over A9 (according to Apple).

Big.Little-ish

Ever since it debuted the iPhone 4s, Apple has stuck to a dual-core policy for its iPhone, even as its Android competitors steadily boosted their core counts. It’s become common for flagship Android devices to field 4-8 cores — either a single cluster of high-end CPUs like the Snapdragon 820, or a combination of high-end and low-power CPUs in a unified cluster via ARM’s big.Little.

When ARM debuted big.Little it was by no means certain that the idea would take off. As we covered at the time, making the large and small CPU clusters talk to each other effectively required some heavy lifting from both SoC manufacturers and Android itself. Intel, meanwhile, believed that it could use Dynamic Frequency and Voltage Scaling to effectively address the market with a single CPU or CPU cluster, rather than relying on clusters of high-performance and high-efficiency CPU cores that share data and workloads amongst themselves.

Apple isn’t calling its own cluster implementation big.Little, but its implementation of the same concept appears similar. The A10 will combine two high performance cores with 40% better performance than the A9 with two high-efficiency cores that draw 1/5 the power of the A10’s high-end chips. The controller that manages these workloads is custom Apple silicon, so we don’t know how well Apple’s solution will compare with ARM’s. Apple could be facing a learning curve here — the first chips to implement big.Little didn’t actually do so properly and it took several technology and Android iterations before the standard was fully supported in both hardware and software. Alternately, Apple may have been developing the technology through several revisions, and only rolled it out when it knew it had everything nailed down.

Apple is also claiming that the new GPU inside the iPhone 7 will deliver 50% more graphics performance than A9 and 240x more performance than the original iPhone. These gains appear to have been plotted against the iPhone 6s rather than the 6s Plus. The iPhone 7’s battery life is said to have improved as a result of these changes, with more than two hours of run-time compared with the iPhone 6s and one hour more than the iPhone 6s Plus.

Apple’s decision to use a similar technology to big.Little should pay dividends in terms of battery performance, but we’ll have to wait for more details before we can compare the two technologies. The latest revisions of big.Little allow for workloads to be shared across all the CPU cores in a device, provided its thermal budget allows for this. Apple may have duplicated this functionality with the A10 Fusion. Apple is also claiming that its screens are now 25% brighter than before, and these types of changes can have a significant impact on battery life.

Heading into the event there were rumors that the iPhone would use an Intel-branded modem rather than a Qualcomm chip, but if this is true Tim Cook didn’t mention it. The new Fusion technology Apple is debuting here is a significant shift for its device strategy and it’ll be interesting to see how the new hardware impacts overall SoC performance. The GPU is presumably by Imagination Technologies — they’ve built the hardware for every iPhone and there’s no sign Tim Cook changed suppliers for the iPhone 7.

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This smartphone is the mother and father of them all with 12GB of RAM and 2 Snapdragan 830 SoCs

Meet Turing’s Cadenza, there is no smartphone on earth like it.

Imagine a smartphone with two Snapdragon 830 SoCs, 12GB of RAM, 12MP front cameras, and 60MP rear cameras. Yes! These are the specs of the forthcoming smartphone from the house of Turing which is popular for its hack proof smartphones.

While other manufacturers are trying to push the RAM boundaries to 6GB, Turing Cadenza will have exactly double that at 12GB of RAM.

Turing has been famous for its completely secure products and pushing the envelope further, Turing Robotics Industries (TRI) has announced its intention to release a smartphone with literally insane specs.

Turing’s new super smartphone will be released in 2017 and called the Turing Phone Cadenza. Cadenza has previously unheard and unbelievable specs. Imagine a smartphone in your hand with two Snapdragon 830 SoCs, 12GB of RAM, 12MP front cameras, and 60MP (yes, it is 60!) rear cameras.

And folks that’s not all. Turing’s smartphone’s rear camera is not something ordinary but an iMAX 6K Quad Rear Camera with Triplet Lens/T1.2. If the Cadenza becomes a reality and I am pretty sure it will, it will the first smartphone to capture 60MP photos and 6K videos. The matter of storage comes to.

Wait, Turing is not done yet! With such heavy specs, there is a small matter of internal storage. If it was a normal smartphone, 128-256GB would have done the job but Cadenza being a Turing masterpiece will have 1TB of internal storage. Not that 1TB is less but Cadenza will also give you opportunity to add additional memory via two microSD card slots for that extra bit.

Turing is planning to do to smartphones what Jio has done to mobile telephony in India! Revolutionize it by disrupting it.

For connectivity, Turing’s Cadenza will have NanoSIM slots as well as WiGig.

To power this super smartphone, Turing Phone Cadenza will derive whopping 100wh of power from three sources: a 2,400mAh graphene superconductor battery, a 1,600mAh lithium ion battery, and a hydrogen fuel cell.

And as you may have guessed by now, Android and iOS can’t power this super giant of a smartphone. So Turing is relying on Swordfish OS, which is capable of deep learning, running a neural network, using differential privacy and natural language processing.

The reason why Turing intends to take the smartphone market to the next level is Outer Blueprint program, which aims to improve mobile communication with the use of artificial intelligence. The company calls the Turing Phone Cadenza a “perfectly designed device.”

The company calls the Turing Phone Cadenza a “perfectly designed device.” I call it a super smartphone! It would be great to see how much Turing’s marvel will cost us. With specs like these, rest assured Cadenza won’t come cheap but as they say, best things are always costly.

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Samsung Galaxy Note 7 sales halted; company issues statement and worldwide recall of handsets

Reports of Samsung Galaxy Note 7 phablets exploding had recently hit the news. The actual source of the trouble is unknown Samsung took their time responding. Finally, after at least 35 reports of exploding phones poured in, Samsung has today issued an official statement announcing that it will replace every single Note 7 handset out there with a new one.

Korean news agency Yonhap News, has reported that Samsung held a conference in South Korea with regards to the same. The agency states that Samsung investigated the issue and has concluded that it was due to faulty battery cells.

Koh Dong-jin, head of Samsung’s handset business division, confirmed to reporters at the conference that only 24 out of 1 million units have been found to have faulty batteries.

“As of Sept. 1, a total of 35 claims were registered with Samsung’s service centers at home and abroad. Only 24 units on a scale of 1 million were affected by the battery problem,” he said.

“By putting our top priority on customer safety, we’ve decided to halt sales (of Galaxy Note 7) and offer new replacement handsets to all customers,”

Samsung has issued an official statement on the same issue as well that clarifies any doubts for customers who have already received their handsets.

“Samsung is committed to producing the highest quality products and we take every incident report from our valued customers very seriously. In response to recently reported cases of the new Galaxy Note7, we conducted a thorough investigation and found a battery cell issue.

To date (as of September 1) there have been 35 cases that have been reported globally and we are currently conducting a thorough inspection with our suppliers to identify possible affected batteries in the market. However, because our customers’ safety is an absolute priority at Samsung, we have stopped sales of the Galaxy Note 7.

For customers who already have Galaxy Note 7 devices, we will voluntarily replace their current device with a new one over the coming weeks.

We acknowledge the inconvenience this may cause in the market but this is to ensure that Samsung continues to deliver the highest quality products to our customers. We are working closely with our partners to ensure the replacement experience is as convenient and efficient as possible.”

Out here in India, Samsung today had just begun rolling out its Galaxy Note 7 handsets to physical stores and online channels as the handset had hit pre-order on 22 August with a positive response.

Those who pre-ordered the devices are, however, receiving the following message from Samsung, “Thank you for pre-booking Galaxy Note7. We regret to inform that delivery of your Galaxy Note 7 is being delayed. We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience. You can be assured that we are working hard to deliver your Galaxy Note7 to you as soon as possible. Thank you for your understanding.”

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Samsung Galaxy S8 leak points to big dual-camera changes

With most of 2016's major smartphones now here and seemingly almost nothing left to learn about the iPhone 7, attention is turning to 2017 and to the Samsung Galaxy S8, which if the latest rumors are to be believed could have a very different camera to the Samsung Galaxy S7.

According to a Weibo leaker, the flagship will have a dual-lens rear camera, which is becoming a common feature for phones, with the LG G5 and Huawei P9 both sporting one, while the iPhone 7 Plus and LG V20 are also rumored to offer it too.

Apparently one lens on the S8 will be 12MP (just like on the S7), while the other will be 13MP, and the company will supposedly be using both its own lenses and Sony's.

This isn't the first time a dual-lens camera has been rumored for the Galaxy S8 and it's a believable feature, with so many rivals opting for the same. What's not clear though is what purpose the second lens would serve. It might be monochrome like in the Huawei P9, wide-angle like the LG G5 or something else entirely.

Upgrades all round

But according to the Weibo post, spotted by TechAndroids, it's not just the rear camera that's changing, as the front-facing camera on the Samsung Galaxy S8 will apparently be 8MP, up from 5MP on the Galaxy S7 and Samsung Galaxy Note 7.

This too is a believable change, as Samsung hasn't changed the spec of its flagship selfie snapper in a couple of years.

Supposedly the S8 will also have an iris scanner, which is the most believable part of the leak, as an iris scanner was one of the Note 7's big new features and it would make sense for Samsung to carry it over to the Galaxy S8 - although it was largely ineffective.

But while all these things seem more than possible we'd still take them with a pinch of salt for now, as the Galaxy S8 is months away and the leaker has provided no real evidence for their claims.

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The Best Encryption Software of 2016

Businesses, websites, and government agencies that store your personal data have a duty to protect that data from hackers. Not that even the best practices and security software can keep the hackers out—they always find a way in. But if the data is properly encrypted, stealing it doesn't do the hacker much good. You can up your security game by encrypting sensitive data on your own desktop and laptop computers. We've rounded up a collection of products to help you with that project. This isn't an exhaustive list, and we will update this story with additional products in the future.

No Back Doors

When the FBI needed information from the San Bernardino shooter's iPhone, they asked Apple for a back door to get past the encryption. But no such back door existed, and Apple refused to create one. The FBI had to hire hackers to get into the phone.

All of the products in this roundup explicitly state that they have no back door, and that's as it should be. It does mean that if you encrypt an essential document and then forget the encryption password, you've lost it for good.

Two Main Approaches

Back in the day, if you wanted to keep a document secret you could use a cipher to encrypt it and then burn the original. Or you could lock it up in a safe. The two main approaches in encryption utilities parallel these options.

Which is better? It really depends on how you plan to use encryption. If you're not sure, take advantage of the 30-day free trial offered by all of these products to get a feel for the different options.

Secure Those Originals

After you copy a file into secure storage, or create an encrypted version of it, you absolutely need to wipe the unencrypted original. Just deleting it isn't sufficient, even if you bypass the Recycle Bin, because the data still exists on disk, and data recovery utilities can often get it back.

Overwriting data before deletion is sufficient to balk software-based recovery tools. Hardware-based forensic recovery works because the magnetic recording of data on a hard drive isn't actually digital. It's more of a wave form. In simple terms, the process involves nulling out the known data and reading around the edges of what's left. If you really think someone (the feds?) might use this technique to recover your incriminating files, you can set your secure deletion tool to make more passes overwriting the data.

Encryption Algorithms

An encryption algorithm is like a black box. Dump a document, image, or other file into it, and you get back what seems like gibberish. Run that gibberish back through the box, with the same password, and you get back the original.

If you're an encryption expert, you may prefer another algorithm, Blowfish, perhaps, or the Soviet government's GOST. For the average user, however, AES is just fine.

Public Key Cryptography and Sharing

Passwords are important, and you have to keep them secret, right? Well, not when you use Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) cryptography.

With PKI, you get two keys. One is public; you can share it with anyone, register it in a key exchange, tattoo it on your forehead—whatever you like. The other is private, and should be closely guarded. If I want to send you a secret document, I simply encrypt it with your public key. When you receive it, your private key decrypts it. Simple!

If you want to share a file with someone and your encryption tool doesn't support PKI, there are other options for sharing. Many products allow creation of a self-decrypting executable file. You may also find that the recipient can use a free, decryption-only tool.

What's the Best?

Right now there are two Editors' Choice products in the consumer-accessible encryption field. One is the easiest to use of the bunch, the other is the most secure.

AxCrypt Premium has a sleek, modern look, and when its active you'll hardly notice it. Files in its Secured Folders get encrypted automatically when you sign out, and it's one of the few that support public key cryptography.

CertainSafe Digital Safety Deposit Box goes through a multi-stage security handshake that authenticates you to the site and authenticates the site to you. Your files are encrypted, split into chunks, and tokenized. Then each chunk gets stored on a different server. A hacker who breached one server would get nothing useful.

The other products here also have their merits, of course. Read the full reviews and decide which one you'll use to protect your files. Have an opinion on one of the apps reviewed here, or a favorite tool we didn't mention? Let us know in the comments.


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Paytm parent in talks to raise $300 million from Goldman Sachs, Temasek, Mediatek

One97 Communications, which runs mobile payment and ecommerce platform Paytm, is in advanced talks to raise fresh funding of about Rs 2,000 crore ($300 million) from Taiwanese semiconductor maker MediaTek, Goldman Sachs, Singapore's Temasek and other investors, according to two persons with knowledge of the development.

This round will see Paytm's valuation more than doubling to $5 billion.

Existing investors, which include Alibaba and its payments affiliate Alipay besides venture capital firm SAIF Partners, will also be participating.

"The new round is expected to value the company at close to $5 billion," said one of the people cited above. The money will be deployed across all of Paytm's businesses -digital payments, online marketplace and the upcoming payments bank," the person said.

Paytm was valued at $2.3 billion in the last round of capital infusion in June.

Paytm E-commerce Pvt Ltd, set up earlier this month, will house the marketplace and is expected to initially mirror parent One97's shareholding. This unit is also expected to become the launchpad for Alibaba's online operations. The Chinese company's business-to-consumer site Tmall is expected to make its India debut in six months.

Founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma, who holds the payments bank licence in his personal capacity, has established Paytm Payment Bank to house the financial services business.

The arm's CEO Shinjini Kumar and Ash Lilani, whose investment firm Saama Capital is an early Paytm backer, are on the board of this entity. The bank is likely to be launched in October.

ET was the first to report on Paytm's plans to spin off its ecommerce business and raise fresh capital in its March 21 edition.

The new round of financing comes after Alibaba and Alipay invested a total Rs 4,400 crore in 2015, according to Registrar of Companies (RoC) filings. Paytm has said it raised about $675 million from Alibaba and Alipay.

ET could not ascertain the cash split between the payments bank and commerce business. Paytm did not reply to a detailed email questionnaire sent by ET and multiple calls made to its spokesperson. There was no response to emails sent to MediaTek, Goldman Sachs and Temasek.

If the deal goes through, it will be the largest financing round in India's broader technology and internet space this year, going past the $200 million raised by online marketplace Snapdeal and $150 million by grocery retailer Bigbasket. Last year saw several bumper rounds with cab hailing app Ola getting $900 million, Flipkart raising $700 million and Snapdeal getting $500 million.

But in the last 10 months, investor sentiment on the broader tech and internet ecosystem has turned cautious. Snapdeal and Flipkart have found it hard to raise capital at their existing valuation, according to multiple sources directly involved in these talks, with the latter also seeing a series of valuation markdowns by mutual fund investors.

What helps Paytm in raising capital is that it has established market leadership in consumer payments, while ecommerce companies like Flipkart are under constant threat from US rival Amazon, according to analysts.

"In the payments space, they (Paytm) have a big lead and an edge in terms of execution on the ground," said Forrester Research analyst Satish Meena.

"They are tapping the next 100 million customers, while other mobile wallets are pushing their services to the same top 50 million customers by offering cashbacks."

Paytm rivals in payments include Mobikwik, which recently raised $40 million from South Africa's Net1, and Snapdeal-owned Freecharge, which has been looking to raise a $150-300 million round since October 2015. Flipkart is also expected to launch its mobile payments business under PhonePe next week, and plans to invest $100 million initially.

Total payments through digital instruments is expected to reach $500 billion by 2020 in India, according to a study by Boston Consulting Group, with customer payments to merchants driving growth.

Paytm has been pushing its offline to online business aggressively over the last 12 months, entering areas like movie ticketing, petrol pump payments, taxi payments and education fees among others.

This is expected to be key drivers in monthly gross merchandise value (GMV) increasing to $500 million by December from $300 million in July, Sharma told ET in an interview earlier this month. Sharma had also said that Paytm is running at a 1% operating loss, which includes online marketing, payment gateway and cashback costs.

According to RoC filings, One97's losses swelled to Rs 1,534 crore in the year ended March from Rs 372 crore in FY15. This would mean that its average monthly cash burn was $19 million as it spent aggressively to build a mobile wallet customer base and launch an online marketplace after first raising capital from Alipay in February 2015.

As of now, Sharma holds 21.33% stake in One97 and its earliest venture capital investor SAIF Partners has 30.81%. Alibaba holds 8.53% while Alipay is the single largest shareholder with a 32.41% holding.

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