Huawei has unveiled its 7nm Kunpeng 920 chipset, which it claims is the industry’s highest performance ARM-based CPU.

In addition to boosting the performance of the infrastructure powering big data, distributed storage and AI, the tech giant has its sights set on using the new launch – which will power its TaiShan server – to help it gain a top spot as a cloud player, competing with the likes of Alibaba, Amazon, Google, IBM, and Microsoft. 

“We hope to make our cloud service, together with our partners, one of the top five cloud services in the world,” William Xu, Huawei’s chief strategy marketing officer and director of the board, said in a CNBC article.

The Kunpeng 920 is based on the ARMv8 architecture license and integrates 64 cores at a frequency of 2.6GHz, with support for PCIe 4.0 and CCIX interfaces and 640 Gb/sec total bandwidth provision.

“Huawei has continuously innovated in the computing domain in order to create customer value. We believe that, with the advent of the intelligent society, the computing market will see continuous growth in the future. Currently, the diversity of applications and data is driving heterogeneous computing requirements. Huawei has long partnered with Intel to make great achievements. Together we have contributed to the development of the ICT industry. Huawei and Intel will continue our long-term strategic partnerships and continue to innovate together,”  Xu said. 

“At the same time, the ARM industry is seeing a new development opportunity. The Kunpeng 920 CPU and TaiShan servers newly released by Huawei are primarily used in big data, distributed storage, and ARM-native applications. We will work with global partners in the spirit of openness, collaboration, and shared success to drive the development of the ARM ecosystem and expand the computing space, and embrace a diversified computing era.” 

It will join the company’s other 7nm chipsets,  including the Kirin 980 found in the Chinese manufacturer’s smartphones and the Ascend 910. The latter chip is also designed to power data centre operations, with reports suggesting it could mean that Huawei is about to start producing servers powered entirely by its own processors.

In the past, Huawei has teamed up with Intel to provide its server chips, however, Xu said this latest partnership won’t affect that long-standing relationship.

“Huawei and Intel are long-term strategic partners, in the past, now and will be in the future. The relationship between Huawei and Intel, though we have differences in our CPU structures, our products complement each other. We will keep using Intel CPU in areas where they perform better, and use ARM-based CPU in areas like cloud and servers where they are better,” Xu told CNBC.

The Chinese company has found itself in a tricky spot recently; while it has experienced strong growth both inside and outside its native market, it has also faced a growing backlash. Western governments have voiced concerns over the potential for Huawei’s technology to be used by the Chinese government to spy on foreign countries. In particular, intelligence agencies in the US and UK have warned that the company’s tech could constitute a national security risk if incorporated into critical infrastructure.

WhatsApp Gold, the scam that’s been hitting users’ phones since 2016, has once again surfaced, masquerading this time as a new update that hides a malware payload.

WhatsApp Gold has been confirmed by WhatsApp to be a hoax set up by scammers to convince users that by clicking on the link users can receive an update to a new form of WhatsApp. Some previous iterations have attempted to convince users that the new version is exclusive and previously only available to celebrities.

The latest message to do the rounds reads: “Today the radio was talking about WhatsApp Gold and it is true. There is a video that will be released tomorrow on WhatsApp and is called Martinelli. Do not open it. Enter your phone and nothing you do will fix it. Spread the message if you know someone. If you receive a message to update Whatsapp Gold Do not open it! They just announced that the virus is serious. Send it to everyone.”

While the message only hints at the idea of WhatsApp Gold, there is no such service in existence. What’s more, it seems the purpose of the message is also to spread fear about a potential malware threat known as ‘Martinelli’ – again, no such video exists.

It isn’t the first time we’ve heard of ‘martinelli’ either. Back in 2017, a similar pseudo-warning was circulated around the messaging app claiming that a video called ‘martinelli’ would download malware to the user’s device if it was opened when in fact, no such video existed.

WhatsApp Gold has used various means to convince users that the link provided was genuine from the promise of free flights to scare tactics such as convincing the user was hacked and that their phone number would be changed imminently.

The original, poorly constructed message distributed in 2016 read: “Hey Finally Secret WhatsApp golden version has been leaked, This version is used only by big celebrities. Now we can use it too.”

It’s important to stay savvy when receiving messages from unknown contacts in any messaging service. The same awareness of phishing emails must be applied to everything you receive on the web.

Any updates to WhatsApp will usually occur automatically, or through your device’s app store. If it looks too good to be true then it probably is and you should never open links from an unidentified source.

If you have encountered the message, the best course of action is to ignore it and delete it promptly.

Box has come a long way from its early days as a simple cloud storage repository and has evolved into a fully-fledged cloud file sharing and collaboration platform. The Box Business plan on review also looks great value for SMEs, as £12 per user/month gets you unlimited cloud storage all round and a 5GB file size restriction on uploads.

Along with file syncing and sharing, user management and two-factor authentication, the Business plan enables enhanced reporting and security, plus integration with Active Directory and single sign-on (SSO) providers. Billing can be monthly or yearly, but Box doesn’t offer a discount for the latter and you must provide payment details prior to starting the 14-day trial.

The admin portal is easy to use and we liked the Insights page, which provides a graph of user activity for up to 90 days and can be changed to show details such as logins, uploads, downloads and edits. More graphs reveal the top files types being used, the most popular third-party apps, a map of geographical activity and a bubble chart for hourly activity.

Invite new team members by email and the link asks them to provide a password, after which they can log in to their personal cloud portal. The portal initially asks them to install the Box Sync app but we suggest taking a step back before doing this.

Box is in the process of phasing out Sync and replacing it with a new Drive app but both cannot coexist on the same system. Box Drive is designed to save local hard disk space by keeping all your work folders in the cloud and accessible from anywhere.

You can access the Box Drive folder with Windows Explorer or Mac Finder and use your favourite apps to create new documents or edit existing ones and all changes are instantly saved in the cloud. Sync is the best choice if you want offline access to your files as Drive doesn’t currently support marking files for offline access.

The Sync app links up with user’s portal where they select folders and activate syncing so they are copied down to a predefined local folder for offline access. The Drive folder shows all your cloud content and both apps provide right-click options to create email links for sharing files or locking them so no-one else can edit them.

User security is excellent: Box admins can set quotas on cloud storage, enable or disable syncing, allow them to install Box on any number of devices, force password changes, decide whether they can see all managed users and stop folder sharing with external users. Groups make it easier to manage large numbers of users as you can apply a set of base restrictions to all members.

Collaboration invitations for folders can be sent to other account users and seven access levels are available, ranging from full editorial rights down to viewing only. Users can email file share links to send a file but Box still doesn’t support file upload requests.

App choices are outstanding with Box for Office allowing you to create, edit and save files directly from Microsoft Office and Office365. Box can work with Google Docs, SalesForce, Oracle NetSuite and many others while Box for Gmail lets users attach files from Box and save them to their cloud folders directly from the Gmail portal.

The transition from the Sync to Drive apps does complicate deployment, but there’s no denying Box Business is offering a superb range of file sharing and cloud collaboration features. It’s remarkably easy to manage, offers great access security and is highly recommended for businesses of all sizes.

Mozilla has announced its opensource email client Thunderbird will benefit from a redesigned user interface (UI) and better Gmail support within the next year.

As part of its roadmap for 2019, the firm will grow its team by half a dozen members, from eight to 14 engineers, in order to make the service faster, more secure, and improve the user experience (UX).

Announcing the plans in a blog post, the Firefox developer said it will build on the progress made with the release of Thunderbird 60 in August, which saw major upgrades to its core code and improvements to security and stability.

“We heard from users who upgraded and loved the improvements, and we heard from users who encountered issues with legacy add-ons or other changes that they hurt their workflow,” said Thunderbird community manager Ryan Spies.

“We listened, and will continue to listen. We’re going to build upon what made Thunderbird 60 a success, and work to address the concerns of those users who experienced issues with the update.

“Hiring more staff will go a long way to having the manpower needed to build even better releases going forward.”

Mozilla will prioritise Thunderbird’s design and UX improvements, after receiving “considerable feedback” and complaints, with a primary focus on improving compatibility with Google’s Gmail.

This, specifically, will see better support for Gmail’s labels, a way to categorise messages, and improvements to how Gmail-specific features translate to the Thunderbird client.

Among the project’s engineering priorities for the new year will be looking into methods for measuring slowness, and developing fixes to specific bugs that deteriorate the user experience.

The new staff members will also be put to work re-writing parts of the core code and “working toward a multi-process Thunderbird”.

The client’s notifications and encryption settings will also benefit from an overhaul, the firm confirmed.

Thunderbird will seek to integrate its own notifications with a user’s operating system, while Mozilla will allow users to more easily secure their communications after an engineer was recently hired with a specific remit over security.

Mozilla hasn’t yet completely determined its roadmap, and wouldn’t guarantee that all changes outlined, including the UI redesign, would be available in the next Thunderbird release.

Google has been given the green light by the FCC to push forward with a radar-based sensor that can recognise hand gestures, with the technology being pegged as a new way to control smartphones and IoT devices.

Project Soli, which is a form of sensor technology that works by emitting electromagnetic waves in a broad beam, was initially blocked due to concerns it would disrupt existing technology.

Radar beam interpreting hand gestures – courtesy of Google 

Objects within the beam scatter energy, reflecting some portion back towards a radar antenna. The signals reflected back capture information about its characteristics and dynamics, including size, shape, orientation, material, distance and velocity.

However, it’s taken Google a number of years to get project Soli going as initially its radar system was unable to accurately pick up user gestures and had trouble isolating each motion. Google attributed these problems to the low power levels the smartwatch had to operate on due to FCC restrictions.

The tech giant applied for a waiver from the FCC to operate at higher power levels, something that was initially protested by Facebook as it claimed higher power levels could interfere with existing technology. This dispute has been settled by the two companies and Google has been granted a waiver after the FCC determined that project Soli could serve the public interest and had little potential for causing harm.

The approval means that Soli can move forward and create a new way to interact with technology. Due to the small size of the chips, it can be fitted into wearables, smartphones and many IoT devices.

Carsten Schwesig, the design lead of project Soli, said his team wanted to create virtual tools because they recognised that there are certain control actions, such as a pinch movement, that can be read fairly easily.

“Imagine a button between your thumb and index finger — the button’s not there, but pressing it is a very clear action and there is a very natural haptic feedback that occurs as you perform that action,” he said.

Virtual button gif – courtesy of Google

“The hand can both embody a virtual tool and it can also be acting on the virtual tool at the same time. So if we can recognise that action, we have an interesting direction for interacting with technology.”

There is currently no indication as to when the company plans to roll out the new technology.