Today’s topics include word that that Samsung will introduce its S7 smartphones at Mobile World Congress this month, a former chip architect at AMD and Apple is now heading to Tesla, the Federal Communications Commission’s decision to allow Qualcomm and Verizon to test LTE-U, and reports that phishing attacks are growing in volume and complexity.
Samsung plans to unveil its upcoming Galaxy S7 smartphone models at its Galaxy Unpacked 2016 gala at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, on Feb. 21. The features of the Galaxy S7 smartphone line have been the focus of intense speculation since last autumn.
In January, the upcoming devices were rumored to be getting main cameras with lower image resolution than earlier models while potentially regaining previously deleted microSD card slots and water-resistance features.
The key architect behind some of the more successful processors for Advanced Micro Devices and Apple will now head up the self-driving automobile efforts at electric car maker Tesla.
Jim Keller, who left AMD in September 2015 after his second stint at the chip vendor, will be vice president of Tesla’s Autopilot Hardware Engineering unit.
Keller “will bring together the best internal and external hardware technologies to develop the safest, most advanced autopilot systems in the world,” according to a statement put out by Tesla officials.
Federal regulators have taken a significant step in the increasingly heated debate about allowing smartphones and other mobile devices to use unlicensed spectrum normally used by WiFi and other unlicensed services.
The Federal Communications Commission says it will allow Qualcomm and Verizon to jointly conduct more tests of LTE-U equipment that accesses the unlicensed spectrum.
The FCC says it will authorize “very small scale performance evaluation tests of LTE-U equipment” at Verizon facilities in Oklahoma City, Okla., and Raleigh, N.C.
Wombat Security Technologies recently released a report that found that phishing attacks are growing in number and sophistication.
These attacks are supported by more aggressive social engineering practices that make phishing more difficult to prevent. Organizations surveyed indicated they have suffered malware infections, compromised accounts and loss of data as a direct result of successful phishing attacks.
Survey respondents said they protect themselves from phishing using a variety of methods, including email spam filters, outbound proxy protection, advanced malware analysis and URL wrapping.