Latest Tech News

Worldwide IT spending is projected to total $4.6 trillion in 2023, an increase of 5.1% from 2022, according to the latest forecast by Gartner.

The analyst house expects enterprises to "push forward with digital business initiatives”, despite economists worldwide predicting a potential recession on the horizon.

Economists from the IMF, to take just one example, have predicted an “increasingly gloomy and uncertain outlook”, with baseline international economic growth forecast to slow from 6.1% in 2021, to 3.2%  in 2022, and just 2.9% in 2023.

Where will spending rise most?

Gartner warns that not all sectors are set for equal growth, spending on devices is likely to be the worst performer of all the IT segments looked at. 

The analyst house predicted that spending on devices will drop -0.6 to $735,394m in 2023, a stark decline from the 15.8% growth recorded in 2021.

The software market looks set to be the strongest performing IT segment, growing 11.3% in 2023 to $879,625m, which the firm attributed to the “shift to cloud options”.

The software segment's impressive performance could relate to the continued demand for tools enabling video conferencing and remote collaboration post-pandemic. 

IT services are set to be the 2nd best-performing segment, growing 7.9% in 2023 to $1,357,914 millio in 2022.

Data center systems and communications services are also primed for solid growth if Gartner’s statistics are to be believed, with 3.4% and 2.4% growth predicted respectively in those areas.

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“Enterprise IT spending is recession-proof as CEOs and CFOs, rather than cutting IT budgets, are increasing spending on digital business initiatives,” said John-David Lovelock, Distinguished VP Analyst at Gartner. “Economic turbulence will change the context for technology investments, increasing spending in some areas and accelerating declines in others, but it is not projected to materially impact the overall level of enterprise technology spending."

“However, inflation has cut into consumer purchasing power in almost every country around the world. Consumer purchasing power has been reduced to the point that many consumers are now deferring 2022 device purchases until 2023, driving spending on devices down 8.4% in 2022 and 0.6% in 2023.”

• Interested in cutting down your own IT spending? Check out if our list of the best cloud storage can provide any suitable options.

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Latest Tech News

Google is giving its Family Link app a makeover to be more user friendly while also adding more parental control features.

Family Link first launched five years ago as a way for parents to manage how children use their Android devices – setting a screen time limit, for example. Since then, the app really hasn’t gotten a lot of attention from Google, which makes this new wave of updates all the more welcome. The company states that developers took feedback from parents for the redesign, resulting in three new tabs – Controls, Location, and Highlights – to better organize the app’s features. 

A new look

The Controls tab holds Family Link’s legacy features like the ability to set limits on screen time for devices or apps, restrict certain types of content, and “manage [app] permissions.” There will be one new addition, Today Only, which overrides the base screen time tool. For example, if a child reaches the limit on the first tool, you can extend the time with the second tool, but just for that one day. You will have to set it again every day after that. 

Location, as the name suggests, will inform a parent of their child's location by zeroing in on a device and showing it on the tab’s map. It will also inform users of the device’s battery life plus notify them when a child has reached or left their destination, similar to Google Maps. Speaking of information, the Highlights tab gives parents an overview of a child’s behavior on their device. It will tell you what apps they use, for how long they've used them, and if they’ve tried to access restricted content. Google states there are plans to expand the Highlights tab to include “more helpful insights” but didn’t give any details.

We reached out to Google and asked for more information about the future of Family Link. A company spokesperson told us it has nothing more to share at the moment.

The updates to the Family Link app will be available on both iOS and Android devices as it rolls out in waves, so be sure to keep an eye out for when it arrives on your phone. We should also mention that Google launched a desktop version of Family Link that shares all the same features. All you have to do is log in to set up your account.

Google TV changes

Alongside Family Link, Google TV will get its share of kid-friendly changes including AI-generated recommendations and “parent-managed watchlists.” The latter allows parents to add or remove content their children can watch on the service from within the parents' own profile. Google TV will also sport a “supervised experience on YouTube” as a way to introduce kids to the platform. Of course, the YouTube experience will have its own set of parental controls. 

The Google TV updates launch today to the app and will reach other supporting devices like Chromecast with Google TV in the coming weeks. We’re sure parents will appreciate the new Family Link app, but it can’t oversee everything. If you’re interested in stepping up your game, be sure to check out TechRadar’s list of the best free parental control apps of the year. 

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Latest Tech News

Electric scooter company Bird continues to downsize as it has announced its machines will be exiting several regions in an effort to stay afloat.

The company states it’s going to “fully exit” Germany, Sweden, and Norway as well as several “small to mid-sized markets” across the United States, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, although it didn’t mention which exact locations. However, we do know of one: Atchison, Kansas, which recently revealed that Bird is pausing all operations in the city indefinitely. The city goes on to say Bird didn’t see Atchison as a good location “to support [its] near-term requirements for building an enduring business.” This reasoning falls in line with the company’s official statement on the downsizing.

Low support

Bird states the reason for its exiting is due to a “lack of robust regulatory framework” in local regions. The company claims some locations are not as conducive to its e-scooter business model as others. Support is available in some cities, but not others. Bird then goes on to blame the high amount of vehicles in these regions leading to “overcrowded streets,” along with stiff competition from rivals as other reasons for closing up shop. 

From here, the company will start weeding out cities it considers to be nonviable to instead focus on ones with the “right regulatory framework and business environment”. Unfortunately, this downsizing will affect Bird employees in these regions. While it doesn’t say it outright in the announcement, Bird alludes to these people losing their jobs. 

Absent from the announcement is any mention of fleet managers. According to Bird, these are the local businesses and entrepreneurs who manage fleets of the company’s e-scooters within their local area. Managers pay a fee to the company and in return they can earn an income on the machines. Presumably, they’re losing their jobs as well, which may result in them taking the hardest blow out of anybody. The fleet manager program has been criticized in the past for putting people into thousands of dollars in debt for machines they will never truly own. It's possible something similar can happen with fleet managers losing their business overnight.

We reached out to Bird to see if they would like to make a statement. A company spokesperson got back to us and essentially reiterated what Bird said in its announcement: that it will focus “towards cities and countries that have put the right regulatory framework and business environment in place…”

Recent trend

Sadly, Bird’s downsizing continues this year’s trend of tech companies laying off employees. In fact, back in June, the company laid off 23 percent of its employees as a way to cut costs. Something similar is happening at Microsoft with the company laying off some of its employees, although it didn’t say how many. (One anonymous source claims about 1,000 jobs will get the axe.) In a similar vein, companies like Meta have enacted hiring freezes as a way to stay afloat in these tough times.

The particularly unfortunate thing about the Bird downsizing is that it affects the customer just as much since people are losing a mode of transportation. If you find Bird scooters disappearing in your area, we recommend checking out TechRadar’s best e-scooter list for 2022 to get an idea for a more permanent solution. 

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The Raspberry Pi has helped spur on development and ingenuity throughout the world, with its pint-sized capability offering users around the world the chance to experiment and build with all kinds of computing use cases.

But the hardware can also be scaled up in a big way, and TechRadar Pro got to see the world’s largest Raspberry Pi cluster whilst attending Oracle Cloud World in Las Vegas.

Oracle noted that the Raspberry Pi is the ideal choice to power cluster computing, where developers, researchers, and data scientists choose to experiment at home rather than in the cloud.

Raspberry Pi overload

With its small footprint and unbridled flexibility and scale, the Raspberry Pi has proved a popular choice, with clusters bringing multiple Raspberry Pi devices onto a single system to boost performance.

The world's largest Raspberry Pi cluster at Oracle CloudWorld (Image credit: Oracle)

At Cloud World, Oracle was able to showcase the Raspberry Pi cluster’s underlying technologies, including APEX, GraalPython, Java, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, Oracle Database, and Oracle Linux, with attendees able to use augmented reality headsets to gain extra insight into what the cluster can do.

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“The Raspberry Pi has created a whole new class of computing devices and is fundamentally changing the way systems are designed,” noted Chris Bensen, Cloud Experience Developer, Oracle

“For 10 years, the Raspberry Pi has brought together a community of enthusiasts, professionals, students, and teachers pushing what’s possible with technology. This tiny computer performs high computational tasks and has made a significant impact on the industry at large.”

• Check out our list of the best laptops for programming right now

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Samsung has verified it has achieved an 8.5 Gigabit per second (Gbps) transfer speed via its 14-nanometer (nm) LPDDR5X DRAM on Qualcomm's Snapdragon platform, a combo that's likely to find its way in the next Samsung Galaxy S23 range expected to be unveiled in 2023.

The Korean electronics giant claims this gives it the fastest transfer speeds available in the mobile industry. 

DRAM (Dynamic Random Access Memory) is a type of semiconductor memory located close to a processor, which can provide faster access to data than when compared to storage media such as hard disk drives and solid-state drives.

What does this mean for consumers?

Samsung has previously gone on record as saying its LPDDR5X DRAM, released in November 2021, is expected to help in high-speed data service applications including 5G, artificial intelligence (AI), and the metaverse.

“The joint validation of 8.5Gbps LPDDR5X DRAM has enabled us to accelerate market-wide availability of this high-speed memory interface by more than a year, which is a tremendous accomplishment made possible through our long-standing collaboration with Qualcomm Technologies," said Daniel Lee, Executive Vice President of the Memory Product Planning Team at Samsung Electronics.

“As LPDDR memory continues to broaden its usage beyond smartphones into AI and data center applications, strong collaboration between memory and SoC vendors is becoming all the more important," he added.

The integration will, "enhance user experiences with new features and improved performance for mobile, gaming, camera, and AI applications," noted Ziad Asghar, Vice President of Product Management at Qualcomm.

This isn’t the first time that Samsung has smashed its own record, it surpassed the previous maximum transfer speed of 7.5Gbps which it achieved in March 2022.

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Close ties between the two hardware giants could prove beneficial for Samsung.  Qualcomm’s Snapdragon processor remains one of the most popular in the mobile industry, the brand controls around 29% of the mobile processor market, below the 39% share held by Mediatek, but well above above the 14% owned by Apple.

• Interested in achieving next level speeds for your other devices? Check out our guide to the best RAM 

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Microsoft is set to make some serious job cuts across multiple divisions, reports have claimed..

An anonymous source speaking to Axios pegged the figure at around 1,000 jobs, although the company has yet to officially confirm the news just yet.

This isn't the first report we've seen of Microsoft trimming down its employee count in recent months; in July 2022 the software giant confirmed that it cut around 1% of its total headcount.

What's driving the lay offs?

In response to the news, Microsoft declined to provide reasons for the actions. 

“Like all companies, we evaluate our business priorities on a regular basis, and make structural adjustments accordingly," it told Axios. "We will continue to invest in our business and hire in key growth areas in the year ahead."

Microsoft is set to announce its latest earnings on October 25, and  although it remains immensely profitable, this success isn't being shared equally among different business divisions.

The company's revenues increased 18% in Q3 2022 while net income jumped 8% year-over-year, to $49.4 billion and $16.7 billion respectively. The company's cloud division was disproportionally successful and posted a 32% revenue growth to $23.4 billion.

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But's not just Microsoft that is cutting staff, with several other tech giants also following suit.

Salesforce has recently reportedly laid off about 90 employees, its first round of layoffs since 2020.

In addition, companies including Meta, Google, Apple, Twitter, and Amazon have all announced hiring freezes so far in 2022.

The software giant's shares are down around 30% this year, broadly in line with the rest of the tech-heavy NASDAQ stock index.

• Looking for for next career move Checkout our guide to the best job search tools 

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Google is hoping to expand its stake in the software industry with the launch of  KataOS, a new OS for machine learning tools.

Described in a company blog post as, "a provably secure platform that's optimized for embedded devices that run ML applications", KataOS will run alongside its reference implementation, Sparrow.

Most computer users will be accustomed to the Windows and macOS operating systems, while pro users have been left to source their favourite Linux distro for more specific operations.

Google announces KataOS and Sparrow

In its announcement, the company stated the importance of being able to build “verifiably secure systems for embedded hardware” as smart devices become more commonplace. 

Google says that our personally identifiable data - like images and voice recordings - could be at risk if the devices can’t be mathematically proven to keep data secure.

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While there’s “plenty left to do”, Google has still confirmed some details about the upcoming KataOS. In the past, the company has favored the Carbon and C++ programming languages, however its new project is “written almost entirely in Rust”, according to its related GitHub page. 

The Register takes a closer look at the underlying seL4 microkernel, which is usually implemented in C. The article explains how CAmkES, which uses Haskell and Python, comes into play as an “abstraction layer to join the C and Rust layers together.” 

Google sees this as the first step in a “future where intelligent ambient ML systems are always trustworthy.” 

Moving forward, the company hopes to open source all of Sparrow - both hardware and software.

• Check out the best student Chromebooks

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Ducktail, a known phishing campaign that hijacks Facebook accounts running advertising campaigns for businesses, is now distributing a brand new infostealer malware.

According to researchers at according to Zscaler, Ducktail previously used LinkedIn to distribute a piece of malware written in .NET Core that would steal Facebook Business account data stored in a web browser and exfiltrate it into a private Telegram channel which acted as the malware’s command & control server (C2), communicating with target systems to coordinate cyberattacks.

Now, however, Ducktail has been spotted distributing a new malware variant that can not only steal Facebook-adjacent data, but also other sensitive data stored in browsers, such as data related to cryptocurrency wallets, account information, and basic system data. 

Stealing browser data

The C2 has also been changed - the data no longer goes to a Telegram channel, but rather to a JSON website that also stores account tokens and other data needed for on-device fraud.

Zscaler also claimed that the malware is being shared as an archive file uploaded to a legitimate file hosting service. The attackers, they say, made sure that the malware doesn’t get flagged by antivirus software by only loading in memory.

Users can mitigate the damage caused by Ducktail and other malware by switching to an anonymous browser, or simply making sure not to save sensitive information in their browser of choice.

This is especially important because, if malware compromises an endpoint with a Facebook Business account, they may search for additional sensitive financial details such as PayPal data. This includes amounts spent on certain purchases, verification statuses, and more.

Read more

> Check out our list of the best secure browsers right now

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In most cases, attackers using malware try to trick people into downloading it by presenting it as movie subtitle files, adult content, or cracks for illegitimate software.

While it’s true that Ducktail’s new infostealer could be evading antivirus software, software that comes with in-built web protection could still be of help against it by blocking access to suspicious sites that may be carrying it.

• Here's our rundown of the best ID theft protection right now

Via: BleepingComputer

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