#1 Tech Bulletin

#1 TECH BULLETIN

1. Xiaomi Mi 6 Plus Spotted at Chinese Certification Site; Mi MIX 2 Said to Support Snapdragon 835 SoC.

The rumoured Xiaomi Mi 6 Plus has been spotted (via Playfuldroid) at the 3C certification listing with model number MDE40. The listing offers little detail about the handset but it does suggest that the Mi 6 Plus may be on the cards. Based on preliminary leaks, the Mi 6 Plus features a 5.7-inch full-HD display, Snapdragon 835 processor, 6GB RAM, and 64GB or 128GB storage.

The Xiaomi Mi MIX 2, on the other hand, has been listed by a third-party online retailer with specifications ahead of the company's official launch. The Mi MIX 2 is said to features a Snapdragon 835 SoC, 6.4-inch QHD display, 19-megapixel rear camera, and a 13-megapixel camera at the front. The dual-SIM handset is said to run Android 7.1 Nougat. Considering this is a third-party online retailer, we can expect the specifications to change when the Xiaomi Mi MIX 2 is officially launched.

2.LG G6 Pre-Bookings Open in India Ahead of Monday Launch; Offers Detailed

LG has opened pre-booking for its G6 smartphone in India ahead of its official launch on Monday, in line with a retailer report from earlier this week. The company is offering a cashback up to Rs. 7,000 as a pre-booking offer.

Additionally, the company is offering 50 percent off on the LG Tone Active+ HBS-A100 wireless headset as a pre-booking offer. The company explains the up to Rs. 7,000 cashback is only valid till May 1, and includes a Rs. 2,000 cashback for pre-booking, and a separate cashback of Rs. 5,000 that is valid till May 31. Both cashbacks are only for SBI and HDFC Bank card holders. The discount on the LG headset is also valid till May 31. You can pre-book through the LG website and via offline retailers.

Interestingly, LG is also giving away "EA special gifts" for 6 mobile games including Cookie Jam, Temple Run 2, and Spider-Man Unlimited among others.

3.Samsung Galaxy S8 Goes on Sale, Aims to Move on From Retail Crisis 

Samsung's new Galaxy S8 went on sale over the counter in South Korea Friday as the world's biggest smartphone maker seeks to move on from a disastrous handset recall and corruption scandal that has hammered its once-stellar reputation.

It also comes with vice-chairman Lee Jae-Yong and other executives on trial for bribery over their alleged role in the graft scandal that brought down former president Park Geun-Hye.

4.Elon Musk on Mission to Link Human Brains With Computers in 4 Years: Report 

Tesla Inc founder and Chief Executive Elon Musk said his latest company Neuralink Corp is working to link the human brain with a machine interface by creating micron-sized devices.

Neuralink is aiming to bring to the market a product that helps with certain severe brain injuries due to stroke, cancer lesion etc, in about four years, Musk said in an interview with website Wait But Why.

"If I were to communicate a concept to you, you would essentially engage in consensual telepathy," Musk said in the interview published on Thursday.

Artificial intelligence and machine learning will create computers so sophisticated and godlike that humans will need to implant "neural laces" in their brains to keep up, Musk said in a tech conference last year.

"There are a bunch of concepts in your head that then your brain has to try to compress into this incredibly low data rate called speech or typing," Musk said in the latest interview.

"If you have two brain interfaces, you could actually do an uncompressed direct conceptual communication with another person."

5.Sony A9 Full-Frame Mirrorless Camera With 20fps Burst and 4K Video Recording Launched 

Sony just announced the A9 full-frame mirrorless camera at an event in New York, which succeeds its A7 series of full-frame cameras. The camera takes the best of Sony’s camera technologies (be it mirrorless or DSLR) and crams it into a body that’s smaller than most DSLRs in the market. The Sony A9 will go on sale this May for $4,500 (approximately Rs. 3,06,000).

Some of the highlights of the A9 include high-speed, blackout-free continuous shooting at up to 20fps, 60 AF/AE tracking calculations per second and a maximum shutter speed of up to 1/32,000 second. At the heart of all this is the new 35mm full-frame stacked 24.2-megapixel Exmor RS sensor, which Sony says is the world’s first and enabled data processing speeds that that up to 20x faster than its previous full-frame models. This is paired with an upgraded Bionz X image processor.

6.Government Working on Data Protection Law, Says IT Secretary 

The government is working on exclusive framework on data protection to strengthen privacy provisions and check misuse of personal information, a top official said on Wednesday.

IT Secretary Aruna Sundararajan said that the government has "already taken cognisance of the fact that data is being put out indiscriminately in certain cases".

She said that the IT ministry is working on exclusive framework of privacy rules which will be soon placed in public domain for consultation.

"We have written to banks, all ministries and states to ensure that citizens data is treated as sacrosanct and is used only the purpose for which it is collected. If anybody found violating this, action will be taken in accordance with law," Sundararajan told reporters at an IAMAI event in New Delhi.

She was responding to question on the government's action to protect crucial citizen's data.

"The IT Ministry administers the IT Act. However, whether it is specific violation by a banker or by particular company or by an industry, that action need to be taken by owner of that."

The Delhi High Court had earlier restrained WhatsApp, an instant messaging application, from sharing with Facebook the user information existing up to September 25, 2016, when its new privacy policy came into effect.

7.Facebook Reveals It's Working on Brain-to-Text Technology That Can Read Minds 

Facebook wants to read your mind.

At least, when it comes to what you'd like to say or type.

The social network giant, at its annual developers conference, unveiled Wednesday projects aimed at allowing users to use their minds to type messages or their skin to hear words.

"Speech is essentially a compression algorithm, and a lousy one at that," Facebook executive and former DARPA director Regina Dugan told a packed audience at the Silicon Valley event.

"That is why we love great writers and poets, because they are just a little bit better at compressing the fullness of a thought into words. What if we could type directly from our brain into a computer?"

The project grew from being an idea six months ago to being the focus of a team of more than 60 scientists, engineers, and system integrators, according to Dugan, who heads a Building 8 team devoted to coming up with innovative hardware for the social network's mission of connecting the world.

"We are just getting started," Dugan said.

"We have a goal of creating a system capable of typing 100 words-per-minute straight from your brain."

Cutting out implants
Video played during her presentation showed a woman with an advanced neurodegenerative disease using her mind to move a cursor on a computer screen, slowly typing words.

Such brain-computer interface technology currently involves implanting electrodes, but Facebook wants to use optical imaging to eliminate the need to surgically intrude on brains, according to Dugan.

Facebook is looking at creating "silent-speech interfaces" based on sensors that could be worn, and made in quantity.

"We are not talking about decoding your random thoughts; that is more than many of us want to know," Dugan quipped.

"We are talking about thoughts you want to share. Words you have decided to send to the speech center of the brain."

Such technology could let people fire off text messages or emails by thinking, instead of needing to interrupt what they are doing to use smartphone touchscreens, for example.

It would also have the potential to capture concepts and semantics associated with words people are thinking, making language differences irrelevant by enabling sharing of what is in mind, Dugan said.

"Unlike other approaches, ours will be focused on developing a noninvasive system that could one day become a speech prosthetic for people with communication disorders or a new means for input to AR," Dugan said in a post on her Facebook page, referring to augmented reality.

"Even something as simple as a 'yes/no' brain click, or a 'brain mouse' would be transformative."

Feeling words
The Building 8 group is also working on sensors that let people "hear" through their skin, with what they feel being converted into words in a variation on how the ear turns vibrations into comprehensible sounds.

"Our brains have the ability to construct language from components," Dugan said.

"I suggest that one day, not so far away, it may be possible for me to think in Mandarin and for you to feel it instantly in Spanish."

Such technology remains years away, according to Dugan.

Work under way in Building 8 "will one day allow us to choose to share a thought, just like we do with photos and videos," Facebook co-founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said in a post on his page at the social network.

"Eventually, we want to turn it into a wearable technology that can be manufactured at scale."

Facebook started the Building 8 group last year, and put it in the hands of Dugan, who had previously led an advanced-technology projects group at Google.

Before joining Google, Dugan ran the Defense Department's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, devoted to developing technology for the US military.