News archive (8 / 2022)

Without much fanfare, Google just released the final, stable version of Android 13 operating system.

As usual, the new operating system is already available for all supported Google Pixel phones, starting with Pixel 4 series. Pixel 3 and older wont be eligible for the update and they're considered to have reached their end.

Android 13 beta is already available to selected handsets outside the Google Pixel family. All major Android manufacturers (Samsung, OnePlus, Xiaomi and more) have at least one of their models enrolled to Android beta program.

Android 13 improves privacy controls, the way how audio can be cast to various output devices and much, much more.

There's already a list of phones expected to get the Android 13 update available. Obviously, as manufacturer announce their detailed release plans, the list will evolve and grow.

For full list of changes - technical or more visible ones - Google's developer site has a very detailed list of changes since Android 12.

Nvidia released a warning before the final quarterly results, due in two weeks. The company's previous prediction was off by over $1 billion.

On Monday, graphics card manufacturer Nvidia has released the preliminary financial results for the second quarter of the current fiscal year. These preliminary results act as a warning for the investors ahead of the final results, and earnings call on August 24.

The revenue of $6.70 billion is a far cry from the company's outlook as consumers wait for the next round of GPUs.

In May, Nvidia predicted the quarter to top $8.10 billion in revenue, which would have been a slight decline from the previous quarter but a major uptick from the year prior. However, expectations weren't met and the stock market responded predictably.

Stock price slid from last week's high of $192 by approximately 10 percent to $172, but bounced back to $178 by the time of NASDAQ closing.

The company's lackluster performance was blamed on Gaming revenue, which did take a tremendous hit. Gaming revenue fell 33 percent year-over-year and nearly halved compared to the previous quarter which had record-breaking revenue for both Gaming and Data Center segments.

Twitter released a statement on Friday confirming that a vulnerability they had patched earlier this year was, in fact, used in a malicious attack to collect user data.

The company was forced to come clean after media reports about hacked account details surfaced on the web. According to Twitter, the company became aware of the problem in January 2022 via the company's bug bounty program. The bug had been in the code since June 2022 and was quickly fixed.

Now, the actual vulnerability and the exploit of it has to do with a form that provides the Twitter ID associated with the submitted phone number or email address. This shouldn't be publicly available, and according to a HackerOne report to Twitter, this happened even when the user had explicitly prohibited this action in the Twitter privacy settings.

This was abused to create lists consisting of Twitter IDs, phone numbers, and email addresses.

Last month Restore Privacy reported that over 5 million Twitter accounts were exposed by a hacker that was selling the database with Twitter IDs, phone numbers, and email addresses. For $30,000, the hacker by the name of "devil" claimed, you could receive information about "Celebrities, Companies, randoms, OGs, etc."

Shopping giant Amazon has somewhat unexpectedly moved in to acquire leading robot vacuum manufacturer iRobot. The acquisition cost is $1.7 billion, companies' press release states.

While Amazon's purchase of Roomba maker came as a surprise, the acquisition does make sense for the world largest shopping network that has been investing in smart home technology for years.

Amazon was the first to launch a line of voice assistant speakers in the form of Echo, shortly after Apple and Google had introduced their smartphone-tied assistants. The Alexa-equipped speakers, that Amazon has expanded tremendously over the years, have been a massive success for the company.

Later the company acquired a high-profile home tech in smart doorbell company Ring.

Some have suggested a somewhat hilarious, perhaps even sinister, reason for the iRobot purchase, as seen below. While it seems more like a baseless stab at Amazon's possibly nefarious nature, there's some truth to the concern.