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Microsoft has revealed an attempt to identify and target e-mail accounts related to the U.S. 2020 Presidential Elections by a group with suspected links to Tehran.

Tom Burt, Corporate Vice President, Customer Security & Trust at Microsoft, revealed in an article that a group he identified as Phosphorus had targeted accounts linked to an election campaign for the U.S. 2020 Presidential Election. Microsoft believes that the attack originates from Iran and is linked to the Iranian government.

During August and September, Microsoft observed more than 2,700 attempts to identify consumer e-mail accounts belonging to specific Microsoft customers. 241 of these accounts were later directly attacked and four were compromised. Microsoft would only say that the targeted accounts are associated with a U.S. presidential campaign, current and former U.S. government officials, journalists covering global politics and prominent Iranians living outside Iran.

However, sources told the Reuters news agency that U.S. President Donald Trump's re-election campaign was specifically targeted, but the operation was unsuccessful. Responding to the report, Tim Murtaugh of the Trump campaign said it has no indication that any of its campaign infrastructure being targeted.

Apple has announced that it will repair some iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus handsets for free as they may become unusable due to a component failure.

The Cupertino giant did not specify what component is leading to the failure of some iPhone 6s series handsets to power on, but it did say that the issue is limited to units manufactured between October 2018 and August 2019. It established a homepage for its free service program where users can check if their handset is eligible for a free repair.

If you have an iPhone 6s or iPhone 6s Plus that suddenly won't power on then it might be caused by this component issue. To find out, visit the repair page and enter the serial number of your model and it will inform you whether or not it is eligible for a free repair.

Affected iPhone 6s models can be repaired at any Apple Authorized Service Provider, an Apple Retail Store, through Apple Support's mail-in service. Owners who previously paid to have an iPhone 6s repaired that would have been eligible for free repair can contact Apple for a refund.

The program covers affected iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus devices for 2 years after the first retail sale of the unit.

It should be noted that Apple may restrict or limit repair to the original country or region of purchase, which might complicate things if the handset was imported from a foreign source.

PayPal has dropped out of the Libra Association, the first financial backer to leave the group backing the Libra digital currency.

Facebook's ambitions to launch a digital currency that can be used worldwide for payments have hit constant roadblocks. PayPal has continued to this shaky start by dropping out of the Libra Association, the organization that would oversee the development and deployment of Libra and associated products.

"PayPal has made the decision to forgo further participation in the Libra Association at this time and to continue to focus on advancing our existing mission and business priorities as we strive to democratize access to financial services for underserved populations," PayPal said in a statement.

"We remain supportive of Libra's aspirations and look forward to continued dialogue on ways to work together in the future. Facebook has been a longstanding and valued strategic partner to PayPal, and we will continue to partner with and support Facebook in various capacities."

Libra has also been subjected to probes and attacks from politicians and bureaucrats the world-round, who see Libra and other digital currencies as a threat to the financial system. Facebook's chequered history on its handling of user data is another commonly cited reason for opposing the proposed digital currency.

A mother is warning about the dangers of social media 'challenges' after her 12 year old son is badly burned doing the so called 'Fire Challenge'.

Viral challenges are far from new. For years, people have essentially performed silly or stupid stunts on video and posted it online. We all remember the ALS challenge phenomenon that prompted millions of people to dump cold water over their heads and then challenge others to do the same.

Well, how about you set yourself on fire? Incredibly, a small number of people seem to have done this. It was reported this week that a 12 year old Michigan boy had suffered second degree burns after his friend set him on fire. Amazingly, the goal was to post the video of this "challenge" online.

The boy spent four days in hospital after his friend sprayed him with nail polish remover and then lit him up. His mother, Tabitha, has warned about the dangers of social media challenges.

"I just want everybody to know that these challenges, or whatever they're watching on YouTube, is not worth risking your life," she said, reports NBC News.

Rockstar Games has provided details about the release of Red Dead Redemption 2 for PC, including that it will be a Google Stadia launch title.

Red Dead Redemption 2 is available for PC platforms from November 5, with pre-orders available from the new recently launched Rockstar Games Launcher from October 9. The PC version of the first in the Red Dead Redemption series to launch on the platforms comes with some new content and bonuses as well.

Red Dead Redemption 2 for PC features a range of graphical and technical enhancements for increased immersion along with new Bounty Hunting Missions, Gang Hideouts, Weapons and more.

Red Dead Redemption 2 for PC also includes free access to the shared living world of Red Dead Online featuring all previously released improvements and the latest content updates for the complete online experience including Frontier Pursuits and the specialist Roles of Bounty Hunter, Trader and Collector for players to progress through and earn unique rewards.

For those who choose to pre-order from October 9 to October 22 on Rockstar Games Launcher, Rockstar will also throw two free games. You can choose your two free games from Grand Theft Auto III, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, Grand Theft Auto: San Andrea, Bully: Scholarship Edition, L.A. Noire: The Complete Edition, and Max Payne 3: The Complete Edition.

Samsung says that its expensive Galaxy Fold can handle up to 200,000 folds during its lifetime before it can be expected to break due to wear and tear. Can it?

CNET put it to the test with a device built by SquareTrade. The device folded and unfolded the Samsung device for hours until it failed. It clocked up a reported 119,380 folds - which were achieved in around 14 hours - before the screen and hinge were damaged from the folding and unfolding.

Of course, the test doesn't really reflect real-world use of a Galaxy Fold as owners who have coughed up so much money are unlikely to carelessly fold and unfold the device for hours nonstop.

Samsung says that 200,000 folds accounts for around 100 folds per day for five years. Whether or not the CNET / SquareTrade test can cast doubts on that is up to you to determine once you check out the CNET video.

Be warned, it was live-streamed for almost twelve hours.

EA Sports confirms that a bug exposed some personal information of some players signing up for FIFA 20 Global Series.

In a bizarre incident, some players who were trying to sign up for the new FIFA 20 Global Series saw that the registration form was already pre-loaded with information of other people. Some popular live-streamers reportedly had their personal information exposed due to the registration bug.

EA Sports acknowledged the bug and estimated that around 1,600 people had been directly affected by it. Exposed information included e-mail addresses and date of birth. It has since identified the cause of the issue and has patched it up.

"Player privacy and security are of the utmost importance to us, and we deeply apologize that our players encountered this issue today," EA Sports said in a statement.

It has been reported that Disney has blacklisted Netflix ads across multiple of its properties as it prepares to jump into the streaming deep end.

Disney is soon to make quite the splash with Disney+, its video streaming service that will go head to head with the big boys including Netflix, Amazon, and others. According to the Wall Street Journal, Disney had informed employees earlier this year that it would not accept any advertisements across its services for any rival streaming services.

In the meantime, it has reportedly come to a compromise with every streaming service except for one pretty significant rival: Netflix. The WSJ reports that Netflix ads are not permitted across Disney's TV networks ahead of the launch of Disney+.

Disney+ was launched in the Netherlands on September 12, and will be launched in the United States and Canada on November 12, followed by Australia and New Zealand on November 19. It focuses on film and television content (incudling original programming) from its properties, including Disney, Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars, National Geographic, and 20th Century Fox.

A study showed that people now type out text on their mobile devices almost as fast as they can with a conventional keyboard on a PC.

After years of social media interaction, people type almost as fast now on mobile devices as they do using a traditional keyboard on a PC. A study co-wrote by ETH Zurich, Cambridge University, and Aalto University in Finland gathered data from more than 37,000 people who participated in speed typing tests on smartphones and PCs.

The fastest typist on a phone maxed out at around 85 words per minute (wpm). Keyboards can enable type speeds up to 100wpm. Most people hit between 35wpm and 65wpm on devices, while those aged between 10 and 19 years old tended to be around 10wpm faster than older participants in the study.

"Such a large amount of experience transfers to the development of typing skill and explains why young people, who spend more time with social media, communicating with each other, are picking up higher speeds," said Dr Anna Feit, researcher at ETH Zurich.

Another interesting detail is how type speed on mobile devices is helped by auto-correct, but hindered by predictive services. It seemed that participants used up noticeable time overall making sure a predicted word is correct, whereas auto-correct eliminated the need for a few thumb taps regularly enough to make a positive difference.

Microsoft's announcements yesterday can be divided into two categories: refreshes and new products. The former include the likes of Surface Laptop 3 and Surface Pro 7.

The latter was represented by the next year's Surface Duo smartphone but also a product that you don't have to wait another year.

It is the Surface Pro X, which is a slimmer and more mobile version of the Surface Pro lineup. What makes it very different from other Surface Pro devices is the CPU. This is the first Surface Pro with an ARM processor.

However, Microsoft assures that it is capable of performing like a full-fledged Windows 10 computer, a proper Surface Pro, should.

Surface Pro X features a 13-inch, 2880 by 1920 resolution display with what Microsoft calls the thinnest bezels in class.

The system-on-chip inside is a custom Qualcomm chip developed with the help of Microsoft. They call it Surface SQ1 and it's based on Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8cx that has found its way to laptops, for example in Samsung Galaxy Book S.

Perhaps the device that made Microsoft's Surface lineup what it is today, namely a success, got a revamp yesterday.

The device is of course Surface Pro 7, which was leaked ahead of launch revealing some of its most anticipated features. However, now we've got the whole story.

Surface Pro 7 features, just like the new Surface Laptop 3, finally a USB-C port, and, just like the laptop, it also still has the full-sized USB-A to go along with it.

In addition it has a microSD slot, magnetic Surface Connect charging port, a headphone jack as well as the magnetic connector for Type Cover keyboard.

In terms of design there's really nothing new here. The same sleek line has been retained with sharp edges, and color options are still black and platinum.

The display is also still the same 12.3 incher with 2736 x 1824 resolution, but processors have been updated to the new 10th gen Intel chips. You can choose from Core i3, i5, or i7.

The i3 comes with 4 gigabytes of RAM and 128 gigs of SSD storage, the i5 is available in 8GB/128GB, 8GB/256GB and 16GB/256GB options, and i7 as 16GB/256GB, 16GB/512GB, and the top of the line 16GB/1TB option.

Microsoft held their fall Surface event yesterday in New York City. By far the most surprising of the product announcements was the company's first smartphone since Windows Phones, but there were other interesting devices unveiled as well.

One of the most anticipated ones was the new Surface Laptop. Microsoft's competitor to MacBook got its third generation in Surface Laptop 3.

Most importantly the new laptop has finally a USB-C port, in addition to a traditional and full-sized USB-A. Other major addition was the new 15-inch version, which comes with a completely different CPU setup.

The 15-inch one is equipped with a custom Ryzen chip purpose-built for Surface devices with a little bit of extra graphics processing oomph. The 13.5 inch version still hosts a Intel chip, albeit one of the new and more powerful 10th gen CPUs.

Alcantara is now also optional depending on which model and color you choose. 15-inch model is solely metal while some color options (Platinum and Gold) of the 13.5 inch model are available in soft Alcantara.

There's not much changed in terms of design. The super sleek lines of Surface Laptop 3 make it one of the most minimalist devices available. Even the speaker grill and the lid opening slit have been removed in order to make the thing as neat a possible.

Microsoft has today unveiled their first smartphone in years. Surface Duo was announced at the company's Surface event rather surprisingly, in a very "one more thing" fashion.

The Redmond company of course has a very storied history with smartphones, and there has been rumors about an upcoming Surface Phone for years, but it's fair to say that pretty much nobody expected a smartphone announcement today.

However, Surface Duo announcement wasn't exactly a run-of-the-mill smartphone reveal. Instead, the company essentially teased a product that is still year away from launch.

According to Microsoft, Surface Duo is slated for 2020 holiday season release.

We did get some specs as well as a good look at the industrial design today though. Microsoft says that the device will feature two 5.6 inch displays that fold 360 degrees using a hinge in the middle.

Unlike all the other Surface devices, Surface Duo also runs Android, which means that Microsoft isn't ready or willing to join the mobile platform wars again with Windows.

However, you can expect Microsoft's own Windows-like experience from Surface Duo, and the company assured that it is a true Surface experience.

Current prototypes have used Snapdragon 855 chips but we can expect more up-to-date specs when launch is closer. That is pretty much all there is to say about the device so far.

Artificial intelligence has been developing in massive leaps and bounds in the recent years. This is probably most evident to customers in products like Google Assistant but there's a lot of influential work being done behind the scenes that advance the capabilities.

One of the companies working on improvements in AI is IBM. They are developing the algorithms and models that recognize speech patterns and styles. Their text-to-speech (TTS) modeling has advanced so much that it can create a nearly indiscernible and infinitely adaptable human voice from just 5 minutes of talking.

The speech synthesizer can improve itself even after this, and after 10 or especially 20 minutes of "listening" to sample speech it can reproduce the voice in whatever text very naturally.

IBM says that the trick to the impressive performance is the modular architecture of the neural speech synthesis. This means that the system detects and trains each aspect of the voice independently.

This makes the result retain the original character of the voice.

But you don't have to believe us, here you can listen to the samples (5 min, 10 min, 20 min) for different voices. You can also make them speak text of your choice here.

Microsoft is preparing a Surface event for tomorrow, and they've gotten away without leaking their devices all the way til today.

Unfortunately for the company, and perhaps luckily for us, The Verge in association with the famed leaker Evan Blass have released some photos of the upcoming devices ahead of the launch event.

The pictured devices include the likes of Surface Pro 7, Surface Laptop in two sizes (13" and 15") as well as a yet unnamed new ARM based 2-in-1 device.

The pictures don't really reveal anything out of ordinary. For example, there is no Surface device with two displays present. Nor is there any folding displays.

Also, there are no specs revealed but we do get to see some of the features of the devices in the pictures. The new 2-in-1 device has at least two USB-C ports, camera in the back, and a vertical kickstand. It also supports stylus input.

The Surface Laptop's design seems fairly conservative, and perhaps reminds a little bit like a touch screen version of MacBook Air.

We can also confirm that Surface Pro 7 will still have the same USB-A and USB-C ports on the right side and same docking ports and pins.