The most-searched coffee is not cappuccino, mocha, or the humble espresso, but a creamy, sweet coffee. It started to heat up during the week of March 15, when searches surged 1,800% around the world.
Google has developed a carbon efficient platform that will enable some of its data centres to compute tasks during times of low-carbon electricity supply.
South Korean chipmaker that counts Apple among its customers warns of a volatile demand. But the company is positive about demand for servers and PCs.
An unknown flaw in iPhone may be giving way for hackers to exploit the email feature.
Finally, Google Duo has added four new features in its apps.
The most-searched coffee on Google
Move away latte, cappuccino and mocha. Dalgona is now the top searched coffee on Google.
A delicious, sweet and creamy type of coffee has captured attention of netizens. In the past 30 days, dalgona was searched the most world-wide, defeating even the humble espresso.
It started to heat up during the week of March 15, when searches surged 1,800% around the world. Since then, it’s increased to 3,000 times the usual number of weekly searches, Google said in a blog post.
While people around the world tried their hand at dalgona, Southeast Asia seems to have topped the chart. Google says four of the five countries where dalgona was most searched were in the region.
Apart from trying to make the coffee, searchers have shown interest in understanding the science behind the process.
That has made people turn to YouTube to know where the whole process began, and for videos that posted the best version of dalgona.
“Between March 15 and April 6, average views of videos with ‘dalgona’ in their title on YouTube increased by more than 5,000 percent globally,” Google said.
Google’s new carbon-intelligent computing platform
Whenever people access their Gmail, edit on Docs or search on Google, they are using one of its data centres.
Google claims that it is matching its renewable energy purchases with the annual electricity consumption for its global operations, including data centres.
To advance its sustainability goal, a small team of engineers have developed a carbon-intelligent computing platform for large-scale data centres.
The platform works by comparing data from two sources. Tomorrow, a technology company that helps firms reduce carbon footprint, provides data on the average hourly carbon intensity of the local electricity grid.
Google will complement that data with its internal forecast on the power resources needed at the data centre to perform computing tasks during the same period.
This combined forecast information helps Google move compute tasks to times with low-carbon electricity supply.
“Early results demonstrate carbon-aware load shifting works,” Google said in a statement.
iPhone may be vulnerable to email hacks
A previously unknown flaw in iPhone’s email software may have been exploited by hackers, according to a digital-security firm ZecOps Inc. that investigated the incidents, Wall Street Journal reported.
These attacks have been going on for over two years and would have been virtually undetectable by victims, ZecOps’ CEO Zuk Avraham said.
The sophisticated nature of the attacks makes the intrusions hard to detect. And Apple’s security measures were making it harder to investigate the hack, according to ZecOps.
Unlike usual hacks in which users have to take some action to download a malware or click a link to a website, attacks on iPhone involve hackers installing malicious software without the owners doing anything.
The bug is triggered when a message sent by a hacker is downloaded by the smartphone’s email reader, without any action taken by the user.
The bug can leave a large number of iPhones vulnerable to attacks, but some researchers say it doesn’t appear to be widely deployed.
Apple seems to have taken steps to fix the flaw. But the fix hasn’t been officially released via an iOS update, Avraham said.
Four new features on Duo
Google Duo is adding new features to make its users stay virtually close with friends and family.
To enhance the video quality of the platform, Duo will be rolling out a new video codec technology. The new AV1 codec will also improve the reliability of the call over very low bandwidth connections.
As people celebrate special moments like birthdays over video-chats, Duo is now allowing users to take a pictures on their smartphones and tablets.
Group calling has been on the rise, and Duo had increased the number of participants to 12, from 8, on Android and iOS. In the coming weeks, the company plans to increase participants even more.
Duo has also been witnessing its users sending more messages. Particularly in regions impacted by lockdowns and social distancing, the video-service platform has seen an 800% increase in use.
So, it is offering an option for users to share short videos using one of their AR effects. And soon, users will have the option to automatically save messages in Duo instead of having them expire after 24 hours.
SK Hynix warns of volatile chip demand
A South Korean chipmaker that counts Apple among its customers warned on Thursday that demand for chips will remain volatile, Reuters reported.
SK Hynix said that if the restrictions on global movement prolong, it may disrupt production, sales and product development across the industry.
“There are a lot of uncertainties about the outlook for supply and prices for servers in the second half,” Cha Jin-seok, SK Hynix’s chief financial officer, told a conference call.
Shipments of DRAM chips used to make smartphones, PCs, and servers may remain flat in the current quarter, the company said.
The chipmaker expects the global smartphone market to post a sharp decline this year, but sees demand for servers and PCs to grow as more people are staying at home and schools are operating online.
