French security researcher Robert Baptiste, who goes as Elliot Alderson (@fs0c131y) on Twitter, has accused Indian microblogging platform Koo of leaking user data.

“You asked so I did it. I spent 30 min on this new Koo app. The app is leaking of the personal data of his users: email, dob (date of birth), name, marital status, gender, …” Baptiste tweeted on late Wednesday night.

Baptiste, who has been in the news in the past as well for pointing out gaps in other apps as well, also posted screenshots to back his claim.

He also posted a screenshot suggesting the microblogging platform that offers a Twitter-like experience in Indian languages had Chinese connections.

ALSO READ: Koo crosses 3 million users, popularity surges amid Twitter row

Following the allegations, Koo App co-founder Aprameya Radhakrishna on Thursday tweeted: “Some news about data leaking being spoken about unnecessarily. Please read this: The data visible is something that the user has voluntarily shown on their profile of Koo. It cannot be termed a data leak. If you visit a user profile you can see it anyway.”

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By Colin Packham

CANBERRA (Reuters) – Australia will introduce landmark legislation to force Alphabet’s Google and Facebook to pay publishers and broadcasters for content next week, Treasurer Josh Frydenberg said on Friday.

Australia is on course to become the first country to require Facebook and Google to pay for news content, legislation that is being closely watched around the world.

“The bill will now be considered by the parliament from the week commencing 15 February 2021,” Frydenberg said in an emailed statement.

With bipartisan support, the legislation – which Google says is “unworkable” and will force it to pull out of the country altogether – could come into law this month.

The acceleration of the bill came as a senate committee examining the proposals recommended no amendments.

Representatives for Google and Facebook did not immediately comment when contacted by Reuters.

The U.S. search and social media giants have pressed Australia to soften the legislation, with senior executives from both companies holding talks with Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Frydenberg.

Google last week launched a platform in Australia offering news it has paid for, striking its own content deals with publishers in a drive to show the proposed legislation is unnecessary.

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The American multinational computer software company Adobe has now made it easier for multiple users to work on the same file in Photoshop, Illustrator, or Fresco with the help of a new feature called ‘invite to edit’.

The upcoming feature will let users type in a collaborator’s email address to send them access to the file they are working on, reported The Verge.

However, there is also a limitation attached to the feature. Collaborators will not be able to work on the file live alongside the users, but they will be able to open up work, make changes of their own, save it, and have those changes sync back to the machine.

As per the publication, if someone is already editing the file, the new user would be given the choice to either make a copy or wait until the current editor is finished.

The new feature will work with .PSD and .AI files saved to Adobe’s cloud and at present is accessible within Adobe XD too. It will also support version history, so a user will be able to reverse course if a collaborator messes something up.

Adobe had announced that this feature was in development in October 2020. The organisation has been consistently building more collaboration features into Creative Cloud, the service which is responsible for tying its suite of apps together, in the hopes of making the platform quick, and reliable enough that teams can count on it to move their documents around. Adobe recently updated a related feature that allows documents to be sent to others for review.

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Chinese smartphone brand Poco on Wednesday announced it has sold more than 1.5 lakh units of M3 smartphone during its first sale.

The device received a phenomenal response with over 30 lakh consumers having expressed interest in purchasing POCO M3 in the first sale on Tuesday, the company said in a statement.

Poco M3 features 6.53 FullHD+ display with 19.5:9 aspect ratio. It comes with Corning Gorilla Glass 3 on the front.

The smartphone is equipped with 48MP triple camera setup, supported by a 2MP macro camera and a depth sensor. It comes with multiple creative modes such as movie frame, time-lapse, night mode, among other features. On the front, it has an 8MP selfie camera embedded with AI face unlock and AI beauty mode.

The device features a 6,000mAh battery along with an 18W fast charger, Qualcomm Snapdragon 662 chipset and sports Adreno 610 GPU for smooth gaming and video experience.

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Samsung has released a new software update for its Galaxy Buds Pro true wireless earphones that brings improvements to active noise cancellation and ambient sound modes, among other changes.

The software update appears to only be available in the US at the moment, reports SamMobile.

The update is just 2.2MB in size and can be applied using the Galaxy Wear app for Android or Galaxy Buds app for iOS.

The latest update arrives a few weeks after Samsung introduced another update that included improved Bixby voice wake-up response and left/right sound balance adjustment.

Priced at Rs 15,990, the new Galaxy Buds Pro comes with an Intelligent Active Noise Cancellation and feature system in the package which uses a separate woofer and tweeter making it a 2-way speaker.

Samsung claimed that the Galaxy Buds Pro can reduce the surrounding noise by up to 99 per cent.

In addition to ANC, there is also an ambient mode to let users hear what is happening in their surroundings such as traffic sounds.

The TWS headphones feature Samsung’s brand new Wind Shield technology so the wind doesn’t mess up your calls while outside or while riding your bike.

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Known to clone or lift ideas from its competitors to stay ahead in the game, Facebook is now reportedly working on to build its own social audio app like Clubhouse.

According to a report in The New York Times, the social network has asked employees to create a similar product like Clubhouse.

The product is “in its earliest stages of development” and the “project’s code name could change”.

“We’ve been connecting people through audio and video technologies for many years and are always exploring new ways to improve that experience for people,” A Facebook spokesperson was quoted as saying in the report on Wednesday.

The news comes after Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg joined Clubhouse last week and participated in chat about the future of augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR).

Facebook has a history of cloning its competitors. Instagram in 2016 copied a Snapchat feature Stories that allows users to share ephemeral videos and photos.

Last year, Instagram debuted Reels, a TikTok-like video product.

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Newly-formed consumer technology company Nothing, a brainchild of OnePlus co-founder Carl Pei, on Tuesday announced it has raised $15 million in a Series A round led by GV (formerly Google Ventures), a venture capital investment arm of Alphabet which is the parent company of Google.

With new funds, the company aims to expand its operations in Europe with headquarters in London and release its first smart devices in the coming months, it said in a statement.

“We are grateful to have a venture capital firm of this calibre help in building Nothing together with us,” said Pei, CEO and co-founder of Nothing.

“We plan to aggressively grow the company, in particular our R&D and design capabilities, to realise our mission of removing barriers between people and technology,” Pei said.

London-based Nothing has so far raised over $22 million. In December, the company raised $7 million in seed financing in December that included tech leaders and investors such as Tony Fadell, Casey Neistat, Kevin Lin, Steve Huffman and Josh Buckley.

Kunal Shah, Founder, CRED, also invested in Nothing, although the amount has not been disclosed yet.

“Carl Pei is a seasoned entrepreneur with marketing, hardware, and distribution experience that is key to bringing new devices to market,” said Tom Hulme, General Partner at GV.

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Chinese conglomerate Huawei has reached a court in the US, demanding it to overturn the Federal Communications Commissions (FCC) decision to designate the company as a national security threat.

In 2019, the FCC voted to prevent US companies from doing business with Huawei and ZTE on national security concerns.

The FCC finalised the ban in December 2020, supported by former President Donald Trump.

“The order on review potentially impacts the financial interests of the telecommunications industry as a whole,” Huawei said in its court filing, reports The Verge.

An FCC spokesperson said: “Last year, the FCC issued a final designation identifying Huawei as a national security threat based on a substantial body of evidence developed by the FCC and numerous US national security agencies. We will continue to defend that decision”.

Trump’s Huawei ban was part of a bigger trade war with China, followed by attempts to ban mobile apps TikTok and WeChat.

President Joe Biden has not renewed the war on TikTok, but his administration has indicated that it will continue to crack down on Huawei.

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American multinational technology company Microsoft has started testing an update to Word that will color entire documents in a dark canvas. Currently, Word has a dark mode that modifies the ribbon and toolbars, but the canvas stays bright white.

According to The Verge, a future update to Word will include the ability to switch the canvas into the dark mode, too. A program manager on Microsoft’s Word team Ali Forelli said, “This has been a long-requested feature from many of Office Insiders and we’re excited to make it happen.”

He further added, “With Dark mode, you’ll notice that the previously white page colour is now a dark grey/black.”

While the canvas will change it will also adjust the colours in a document. Reds, blues, yellows, and other bright colours will be “shifted slightly to mute the overall effect of the colour palette” and match the dark background.

This new Word dark mode update looks similar to what currently exists in OneNote, which has options to switch between a dark and light canvas. There will be a Switch Modes button in the Word ribbon to change between a dark and light canvas, and options in Word to permanently disable the dark canvas, too.

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If early smartphone market trends are anything to go by, 2021 is going to be the year of 5G smartphones. In the midrange segment, Xiaomi and OPPO have already taken the early lead with the launch of the Mi 10i 5G (review) and the Reno 5 Pro 5G (review), respectively. Next in line is another Chinese smartphone brand, Realme, which has recently launched not one but two 5G smartphones under its X-series line-up. Named the Realme X7 and Realme X7 Pro, the former is price-wise more accessible and the latter a premium-midrange smartphone.

Business Standard took the Realme X7 Pro out for a spin to test the phone’s performance in real-life scenarios. Here is how it fared on key parameters:Design

The Realme X7 Pro looks similar to the Realme 7 Pro (review) in more ways than one. But it has new colour themes, including a special edition (review unit) named ‘Fantasy’ with ‘Dare to Leap’ subtly engraved on its reflective back cover. If not up to your liking, you can ditch the Fantasy colour variant for the regular version available in mystic black colour. Both colour variants feature a frosted finish on the back cover to aid the phone’s in-hand feel and protects it against scratches and smudges. The Realme X7 Pro is thin (8.5mm), lightweight (184g) and compact, something that Realme’s previous-generation premium midrange smartphones lacked. Even outside the Realme circles, there are only a handful of premium-midrange smartphones that match the comfortable ergonomics of the Realme X7 Pro. That said, the phone offers a good in-hand feel and it is easy to hold and operate.

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