Archives February 2023

The final weekend of February 2023 is upon us – and there’s a veritable bounty of new movies and TV shows to subsequently check out.

As is customary around these parts, we’ve rounded up seven of the most intriguing and (potentially) entertaining series and films for the weekend. Unsurprisingly, Netflix dominates this week’s list, but there are entries from Prime Video, Disney Plus, and Apple TV Plus, too. There’s even one from Peacock – we know, we surprised ourselves with that one.

Fruit and vegetable fans could be forced to tweak their diet after one of the biggest firms in the industry has had its operations disrupted by a ransomware (opens in new tab) attack. 

Dole Food Company issued a press release saying it suffered a ransomware attack that had a “limited” impact on its operations.

Adobe’s $20 billion deal to acquire Figma could be about to hit another roadblock, with whispers of a legal challenge from the US Department of Justice (DoJ). 

Insiders close to proceedings told Bloomberg News (opens in new tab) the DoJ is preparing an antitrust lawsuit for the coming months. Under condition of anonymity, a second mole confessed that the DOJ and Adobe were in talks. 

With the worldwide cost of living crisis continuing to bite, and the streaming wars showing no sign of abating, Netflix has moved to lower its pricing in over 30 separate countries, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal.

The discounts have been rolled out this week in primarily lower-income regions in Asia, Europe, Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East where subscription uptake is currently comparatively low. 

First Batch of Students of ‘Samsung Innovation Campus’ in Delhi Graduate with Certificates in Coding & Programming & IoT; Flagship CSR Program Aims to Make Students Job-Ready with Future Tech Skills
As a part of its flagship CSR program Samsung Innovation Campus, Samsung India has concluded its first batch of its coding, programming and IoT courses in New Delhi, India. The new program, according to the company, reiterates the company’s commitment to being a strong partner of India and working alongside the government to empower the country’s youth and Digital India initiative.
Students, who were mentored and trained at National Small Industries Corporation (NSIC), New Delhi were presented with certificates at a ceremony held on Friday.
ESSCI, which is a National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) approved entity, is executing the program through its nationwide network of approved training and education partners.
The coding and programming course for students were conducted for 3-days in which they developed codes based on problem statements given to them.
The problem statements included topics such as developing citizen feedback on road maintenance, creating a knowledge management portal, automation of reforestation efforts, a GST calculator, chat support for e-governance and an early warning system for farmers to protect crops from pests. The teams presented their prototypes to a jury consisting of engineers from Samsung R&D Institute, Noida and Samsung R&D Institute, Delhi.
Samsung Innovation Campus program: Details
Samsung introduced the Innovation Campus program in eight campuses across the country. The program, according to the company, aims at upskilling 3,000 less-privileged youth in future tech domains like AI, IoT, Big Data and Coding & Programming and helping them get relevant job placements.
Samsung Innovation Campus aims to upskill youth aged 18-25 years in future technologies and enhance their employability. These are key technology skills for the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
During the course of the program, participants receive instructor-led blended classroom and online training through approved training and education partners of ESSCI across the country.
Students will also be imparted soft skills training to enhance their employability and provided job placements in relevant organisations.
Students opting to enrol into the program will be provided with 270 hours of theory training and complete 80 hours of project work. For IoT or Big data courses students will undergo 160 hours of training and complete 80 hours of project work. Participants in coding and programming course will get 80 hours of training.

Paytm Payments Bank has launched UPI Lite payments feature which enables faster real-time transactions with a single tap on the Paytm app. The company claims that the Paytm UPI Lite will ‘never fail during peak transaction hours, even when banks have success rate issues’.
The company reveals that using Paytm UPI Lite users can easily carry out quick and seamless transactions of value up to Rs 200. “It provides superfast, convenient and hassle-free transaction experience as users don’t have to enter a PIN everytime they make a payment. Moreover, users can transfer UPI balance back to the same bank account anytime, without any charges,” said the company.

The company is also offering Rs 100 cashback to users for activating UPI Lite and adding Rs 1,000 as balance. Presently, 9 banks support Paytm UPI Lite — Canara Bank, Central Bank of India,HDFC Bank, Indian Bank, Kotak Mahindra Bank, Punjab National Bank, State Bank of India, Union Bank of India, and Utkarsh Small Finance Bank.
Paytm Payments Bank Spokesperson said, “As pioneers of QR and mobile payments, we have taken UPI to every nook and corner of the country. We are proud to launch UPI LITE as a step forward in our commitment to payments that are scalable and never fail. With Paytm UPI, payments never fail, transactions are superfast and you don’t see clutter in your bank statement.”
Recently, Paytm rolled out a new feature called Cancel Protect. The feature will protect users against the cancellation charges levied by airlines or bus operators. The users will have to pay an extra charge to avail this feature. For flight tickets users will have to pay Rs 149 and Rs 25 for bus tickets.

The iPhone 15 Pro rumors are already in full swing more than six months before its expected release – and while it’s a little early for reliable color leaks, a source has apparently revealed that a new ‘dark red’ special edition model is en route.

The new rumors from 9to5Mac (opens in new tab), which include some slightly less confident predictions about iPhone 15‘s new color options, suggest that Apple’s next premium model will be available in a crimson-like shade that the site has mocked up (below) based on its apparent color hex value of ‘#410D0D’. 

In its latest showcase event ‘State of Play’, Sony gave an update on its scheduled games coming later this year and made new announcements for PlayStation. From AAA titles such as Street Fighter 6 and Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League to indie titles such as Tchia, gamers received news about several games. In addition to PS5/PS4 titles, the showcase also focused on new VR titles coming to the platform.
Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League gameplay deep-dive
The highly anticipated Suicide Squad segment featured a new gameplay trailer and a behind-the-scenes video. The trailer showcased the game’s traversal mechanics for each character, combat abilities and shed light on more of the plot. Adding to that, it showed another Justice League member, Wonder Woman, in the game for the first time.

Resident Evil 4 gets new trailer
The remake of 2005’s Resident Evil 4 released a fresh trailer, showing glimpses of a boss fight versus Jack Krauser, fending off undead foes, and an ‘exciting’ minecart game sequence. Moreover, the trailer also confirmed the return of the fan-favourite ‘The Mercenaries’ mode. The cross-platform title will arrive on PS5/PS4 and has a “special demo” on the way – as revealed in the trailer.
Other PS5 and PS4 game reveals
On top of these games, a couple of other big titles – namely, Street Fighter 6 and Destiny 2 – also shared updates. In its latest trailer, Street Fighter 6 introduced three new additions to the roster: Cammy, Lily, and Zangief.

On the other hand, Destiny 2 revealed some footage for its next expansion, Lightfall, which is scheduled to roll out on February 28. Furthermore, Baldur’s Gate 3 shared an extended look at gameplay, including multiplayer sequences, along with the release date of August 31.
The showcase also revealed content from Goodbye Volcano High (releasing June 15), Naruto x Boruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm Connections, and Wayfinder.

PSVR2 announcements
Sony’s latest State of Play put a special focus on its newly launched PSVR2. It revealed a slew of games coming to the VR platform soon this year. This lineup includes The Foglands, Green Hell, and Humanity.

Using Google Docs to craft interesting and engaging documents could be about to get a whole lot more pleasant thanks to a round of new updates.

The word processor has announced a number of upgrades as it looks to boost integration and collaboration across both other Google Workspace apps and external services.

Fraud attempts and cyberattacks leveraging deepfake technology are on the rise, new research has claimed, adding that it’s high time for products and services that will help organizations defend themselves from these advanced identity theft (opens in new tab) attacks. 

This is according to identity proofing experts ID R&D, which claims nearly half (42%) of organizations have already encountered deepfake attacks. At the same time, 37% already experienced injection attacks – incidents where threat actors bypass the camera or otherwise inject digital content into the data stream. In other words, deepfake technology can help bypass biometric authentication in some scenarios.