Tech Talk

We last got an iPad Pro refresh in October 2022, when the premium 11-inch and 12.9-inch slates were updated with the Apple M2 processor. According to the rumor mill, those screens will be changing in 2024 when the next models are due to appear. This comes from display analyst Ross Young, speaking to MacRumors . First, the display technology will apparently be changing from the IPS LCD LED (11-inch) and IPS LCD mini-LED (12.9-inch) of the current iPad Pros to OLED – just like the flagship iPhones. That should mean even better screens in terms of contrast and darker blacks, though the panels attached to the current iPad Pro range are already impressive. We've been hearing rumors that Apple would switch to OLED on its iPads for some time now . Changing sizes There's also going to be a change in the display sizes, Young says. The 11-inch iPad Pro will become an 11.1-inch iPad Pro, while the 12.9-inch iPad Pro will become a 13-inch iPad Pro – not much of a difference then, but

Price cuts on gadgets are always good news for consumers, and it would seem that the iPhone 15 could be in line for one if the latest leak can be believed: apparently Apple is considering cutting the pricing of the iPhone 15 Plus due to launch in September. This comes from reputable online source Yeux1122 on South Korean social network Naver (via Macworld ). The move is apparently being given serious consideration, and would be made in response to underwhelming sales of the current Plus model. The iPhone 14 Plus that was unveiled with the rest of the family earlier this year has a starting price of $899 / £949 / AU$1,579 for the 128GB version, but it doesn't appear to be attracting buyers in the numbers that Apple would like. A tale of four phones While canceling the Plus model would be an option for Apple, it's likely that development on the iPhone 15 is too far down the line for that to happen. A price cut on the handset that replaced the iPhone 13 mini would be the n

Happy New Year, folks! The festive season may be over, but December 31 celebrations loom large as the world prepares to welcome 2023 (and the inevitably wild ride it has in store).  Compared to last week’s Christmas-focused streaming roundup – which featured the likes of Knives Out 2, Matilda the Musical and The Witcher: Blood Origin – this weekend’s slate of recommendations isn't anywhere near as stacked. However, for the first time in a long while, there are no sequels or follow-up seasons to enjoy over the next few days. Instead, everything included below is fresh off the creative conveyor.  2022’s final offering of new movies and TV shows can subsequently be described as unique, at least, and we’ve picked out seven highlights to stream on the likes of Netflix , Prime Video and HBO Max this weekend.  White Noise (Netflix)  Frances Ha director Noah Baumbach returns to Netflix this weekend with White Noise, his first feature film since 2019’s Marriage Story.  An adapta

When it comes to exercise, nobody wants to be seen as having all the gear but no idea. That said, owning any one of the best fitness trackers , best smartwatches or, for the most accurate measurements, heart rate monitors really can help to improve your bodily health and fitness in the long-term.  Ultra-marathon swimmer Ross Edgely, whose previous stunts involve completing a 157-day, 1,792-mile swim around Great Britain, is no stranger to useful fitness tech. In a recent interview with TechRadar to promote new Disney Plus series Limitless with Chris Hemsworth , we asked the chart-topping author which piece of kit he finds most helpful when exercising on a daily basis.  Edgley says you don't have to go hard to start your fitness journey, advocating for "Zone 2" aerobic training like a slow and steady jog, swim or cycle. He recommends using a heart rate monitor as a measure of intensity, to make sure you're not overdoing it.  “I think one of the best things [you c

Alibaba has announced a major reshuffle of its leadership team as it faces increasing competition in the public cloud hosting infrastructure provider space. In an announcement , the company revealed that current CEO Daniel Zhang will become acting president of Alibaba Cloud Intelligence. He replaces Jeff Zhang, who will now focus on the Alibaba DAMO Academy, including some of the company's IoT initiatives. Alibaba Cloud TechCrunch reports that the company’s Hong Kong servers had recently suffered a “serious outage” that left many services, like popular crypto exchange OKX, offline for up to one day, making it one of the biggest Chinese data center failures in recent history. Other changes include Wu Zeming’s appointment as CTO, and co-founder Jane Jiang’s promotion to Chief People Officer. Read more > These are the best cloud storage providers around > Data center outages are now less disruptive - but are costing more > Alibaba Cloud set to invest $1bn i

One of the improvements coming in 2023 with the iPhone 15 could be better battery life, with Apple's chip maker of choice TSMC (the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company) promising increased efficiency with its next generation of silicon. As per Bloomberg , TSMC has announced the move to chips made using a 3 nanometer manufacturing process, which is a jump from the 5 nanometer process currently used. Essentially, the smaller the number, the more tightly packed the elements of the processor are going to be. Crucially, TSMC says that their new chips are going to use around 35% less power, as well as being faster in terms of performance. That should relate to better battery life for devices made by TSMC's partners – including the successor to the iPhone 14 made by Apple. Chips with everything There are some caveats here: Apple designs the Bionic processors found inside the iPhone, so it may choose to engineer the improvements that 3 nm offers in a different way rather

Scammers are abusing Google Adwords, the search engine giant’s advertising platform, to spread malware to people looking for legitimate and popular software. Google’s safety measures are usually robust, but experts found that they managed to employ a workaround. The campaign is simple - the crooks would clone popular software such as Grammarly, MSI Afterburner, Slack, or others, and infect them with an infostealer. In this case, the attackers were adding Raccoon Stealer, and IceID malware loader. Then, they would create a landing page where the victims would be sent to download the malicious programs. These pages were designed to look seemingly identical to the legitimate ones. Tricking Google Then, they would create an ad and place it on Google Adwords. That way, whenever someone searches for either these programs or other relevant keywords, they’d see the ads in various places (including the top positions on the Google search engine results page).  The trick is that Google’s a

The grand unveiling of the Samsung Galaxy S23 could be just a month and a bit away now, and the leaks around this flagship smartphone continue to drip in. The latest rumor brings with it some encouraging news about the potential performance boost that the new phone is going to bring with it. According to tipster Ahmed Qwaider , the Galaxy S23 series – the standard model, the Plus model, and the Ultra model – will boast a 36% increase in processor speed, a 48% increase in graphics performance, and a 60% increase in neural processing (AI-related tasks like voice recognition and smart photo editing). These improvements are courtesy of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 processor from Qualcomm, which we're hearing might be fitted inside the Galaxy S23 phones in every region. Normally, Samsung uses a Snapdragon processor in some parts of the world and one of its own Exynos processors in others when it comes to the Galaxy S series. Early arrivals While we already know plenty about the Snapdra

It’s been another transformational year for Apple, mainly due to the company bringing out new Mac products and features to keep itself ahead of the competition, and as we wrap up 2022, there’s plenty to look back on. There have been some surprises in macOS Ventura , such as Stage Manager and the Weather app, alongside a new focus on gaming, but products such as the rumored Apple silicon Mac Pro are nowhere to be seen. While Apple teased us about a new Mac Pro back in September by telling us to “wait and see”, it looks as though those plans have changed; but that doesn't mean we've missed out this year, with the impressive Mac Studio and the M2 MacBook Air making waves. With this in mind, we've passed judgment on what the Mac line delivered in 2022 in terms of software and hardware, and what we'd like to see from the platform in 2023, alongside, in true Apple style, one more thing… Software: 7/10 (Image credit: TechRadar) 2022 began with macOS 12 Montere

New research by a group of Stanford-affiliated researchers has uncovered that code-generating AI tools such as Github Copilot can present more security risks than many users may realize. The study looked specifically at Codex, a product of OpenAI, of which Elon Musk is among the co-founders.  Codex powers the Microsoft-owned GitHub Copilot platform, which is designed to make coding easier and more accessible by translating natural language into code and suggesting changes based on contextual evidence. AI-coding problems Lead co-author of the study, Neil Perry, explains that “code-generating systems are currently not a replacement for human developers”. The study asked 47 developers of differing abilities to use Codex for security-related problems, using Python, JavaScript and C programming languages. It concluded that the participants who relied on Codex were more likely to write insecure code compared with a control group. Read more > These are the best laptops for progr

A recent code change for Google Chrome has uncovered an updated feature that will see the popular web browser automatically preventing insecure downloads from HTTP sites. Formerly the norm, many HTTP sites have since been updated to use HTTPS encryption in an effort to protect extensive data that we share about ourselves on the web. Now the favored option, Google has already implemented a series of changes that see its users retrieving and sharing data more securely. Chrome: HTTP and HTTPS One such change is a recently-introduced “Always use secure connections” toggle that tells Chrome to upgrade any sites from an HTTP connection to HTTPS. Older sites that are HTTP-only also display a “Not Secure” warning in the address bar. The code change spotted by 9To5Google indicates that the toggle will now warn users against downloading anything from an HTTP connection. Previously, Chrome users were notified when an HTTPS website downloaded a file in HTTP format, known as mixed content.

North Korean state-sponsored threat actors have been observed using ransomware against companies and organizations in neighboring South Korea for the first time, police have reported. According to the South China Morning Post , the South Korean National Police Agency said threat actors targeted at least 893 foreign policy experts in the country, looking to steal their identity data and email lists.  The initial victims were mostly think tank experts and professors, who were targeted with phishing emails. North Korea ransomware The attackers would pose as a secretary from the office of Tae Yong-ho of the ruling People Power Party, or an official from the Korea National Diplomatic Academy. The emails, whose distribution started as early as April 2022, would either carry links to malicious websites or would carry malware as attachments. According to the law enforcement organization’s findings, at least 49 people fell for the trick, and gave the attackers access to their email accou

What with the iPad mini 6 launching in September 2021, it would be reasonable to expect a follow-up appearing in September 2022 – but of course we haven't seen any such tablet, and the rumor is that we might not get one until early in 2024. This comes courtesy of reliable Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo , who reckons that the next small slate that Apple releases is going to start shipping by the end of 2023 or in the first half of 2024 (though it's not clear what that's dependent on). Kuo goes on to say that the "main selling point" of the iPad mini 7 is going to be a new processor. The current model carries the A15 Bionic chipset that also appeared in the iPhone 13 series that Apple unveiled at the same time as the iPad mini 6. Folding iPads This iPad mini claim was actually preceded by another bit of crystal ball gazing by Kuo: he says that a foldable iPad is  "unlikely" to replace the iPad mini in 2025, a move that has been "previously predict

Christmas wouldn't be Christmas if it didn't involve cooking enough food to feed a small army. Yet knowing what to do with all of your leftovers can be tricky. Especially if you don't want to resort to good old throw it in a pan and fry it up again. We recently turned to TikTok for inspiration and found a novel way of using up leftovers in the form of a festive leftover toastie. Not only can this toastie be cooked in any one of the best air fryers on the market, it even includes the famous Moist Maker (a slice of bread soaked in gravy) from the TV show Friends .  In fact, the entire Christmas leftover sandwich from @emilyscooking on TikTok appears to be inspired by the scene in which a colleague eats a sandwich made for Ross, by Monica, using Thanksgiving leftovers.   Below we've outlined our favorite take on this recipe and it's so quick, simple, and tasty, you won't even realize you're eating leftovers.  Best air fryer deals If you haven't bee

Just when you thought the various controversies surrounding Twitter were winding down, a hacker claims to be selling the data of 400 million users. The data is said to have been captured in 2021, and was obtained using an API vulnerability that has since been fixed. The threat actor, who calls themself ‘Ryushi’, has advised Elon Musk and Twitter to buy the data for the asking price of $200,000, or face an even larger GDPR fine. Twitter data leak 2022 The threat actor, who appears to have joined the Breached hacking forum in December 2022, wrote: “Your best option to avoid paying $276 million USD in GDPR breach fines like facebook did (due to 533m users being scraped) is to buy this data exclusively… after that I will delete this thread and will not sell this data again.” Sample data of more than 1,000 users, including a number of celebrities, has been leaked, including email addresses, usernames, follower counts, creation dates, and some users’ phone numbers.  If an exclusive

The Samsung Galaxy S22 FE trail had gone pretty cold, what with it not showing up in 2022 and everything – but the latest whispers emanating from the rumor mill suggest that the phone is indeed on the way and has a newly developed chipset inside it. This comes from @RGcloudS on Twitter (via Notebookcheck ): this is a source we haven't heard too much from in the past, so bear that in mind. The tipster says the Galaxy S22 FE will show up in 2023, replacing the mid-range Galaxy A74 in Samsung's line-up. It will apparently be powered by a brand new Exynos 2300 chipset developed by Samsung itself, although other sources have suggested that the Exynos 2300 isn't going to make an appearance in any mass-produced devices in the near future. And a tablet too If the rumor is right, the Samsung Galaxy S22 FE could show up at a second Unpacked launch event, scheduled in addition to the one we're already expecting in February for the grand unveiling of the Galaxy S23 flagsh

You might save a few dollars downloading pirated software, but you could also end up losing a lot more in the process, as researchers have discovered a cryptocurrency-targeting infostealer lurking among the cracks.  Two separate cybersecurity firms - Flashpoint and Sekoia, uncovered a brand-new information-stealing malware dubbed “RisePro”.  RisePro is being distributed through websites hosting pirated software, cracks, loaders, and similar illegal content, and infects endpoints through the PrivateLoader pay-per-install (PPI) malware distribution service.   Stealing crypto account details According to the researchers, RisePro carries many similarities to PrivateLoader, prompting the researchers to conclude that the malware distribution platform now has its own infostealer. What’s more, they discovered that it was most likely built on Vidar as a foundation, as it uses the same system of embedded DLL dependencies. RisePro hunts for data from an extensive list of browsers , browser

The holidays have come and gone, and that means after-Christmas TV sales have arrived with record-low prices on a range of 4K, OLED, and QLED displays from retailers like Best Buy, Amazon, Walmart, Samsung, and more. To help you find all of today's top offers, we've rounded up the very best after-Christmas TV sales happening right now. The after-Christmas sales event is your last opportunity of the year to score a killer bargain on some of this year's best-selling TVs. Retailers are offering their best discounts yet on older model TVs to make room for new stock. Some of the top offers we've spotted today include our best-rated TV of the year, LG's 65-inch C2 OLED TV on sale for a record-low price of $1,699.99 (was $2,099.99), this 60-inch 4K smart TV from Samsung down to just $379.99 (was $549.99) and you can pick up this Insignia 24-inch Fire TV for only $79.99 (was $89.99) at Amazon. Below you'll find the best after-Christmas TV sales, followed by the