Tech. World

Tesla   said Friday in a regulatory filing that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and Department of Justice are investigating projections made last year about Model 3 production rates. The SEC has issued subpoenas for information related to Model 3 production estimates. The DOJ, which is running a separate investigation over Model 3 production targets, has stopped short of taking that action. The information contained in Tesla’s 10Q filing backs up an October 26 article by The Wall Street Journal that reported the FBI was investigating whether the company misstated information about Model 3 production and misled investors. The FBI is the investigating arm of the DOJ. Tesla issued a statement at the time of the article, acknowledging that it had received a voluntary request for documents from the Department of Justice about its public guidance for the Model 3 ramp. “We were cooperative in responding to it,” the statement issued last week said. “...

Beijing-based  ByteDance’s 2017 acquisition  of tween and teen-focused social app Musical.ly is paying off. The company this year  merged Musical.ly with its own short video app TikTok  as a means of entering the U.S. market. Today, the result of that merger is sitting at the top of the U.S. App Store, ahead of Facebook. More importantly, it recently surpassed Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Snapchat in monthly installs for the first time in September. According to data from app intelligence firm Sensor Tower,  TikTok’s  installs were higher than those of Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and YouTube in the U.S. last month. It surpassed the four other apps in terms of daily downloads on September 29, with 29.7 percent the downloads from this cohort of apps, the firm says. Since then, it has continued to increase its market share among this group of apps, reaching as high as 42.4 percent of downloads among the apps just days ago, on October 30....

Samsung appears all set to launch the Galaxy X, the smartphone with a foldable display. Samsung's plans to launch a foldable smartphone have been rumoured for years, and the company confirmed it had plans to launch it in 2018. While the tech world has been anticipating a foldable smartphone from Samsung for a long time, the South Korean giant is now said to be ready for the mass production of foldable OLED panels. While a new report out of South Korea claims to reveal the plans by Samsung Display, it does not indicate the exact device where the OLED panels will be used. However, rumours mills suggest that they could be used in the upcoming Galaxy X, said to get launched next year.  As per an ETNews report, sources have claimed that Samsung Display is finally gearing up for mass production of foldable OLED displays, with the aim to supply the folding phone next year. Of course, these display panels will differ from the ones seen in the likes of Galaxy S9 and iPhone X. They wi...

OnePlus 6 was launched to the world back in May this year in Mirror Black and Midnight Black colour options, followed by a Marvel Avengers Limited Edition variant as well as a Silk White Limited Edition model. But, it seems, the Chinese phone maker has plans to launch yet another colour variant in a shade of red as soon as July 2. The development was teased by OnePlus itself and could point towards the launch of an OnePlus 6 Lava Red variant. As is tradition, we could expect this edition to launch in India. In a video teaser on its official Twitter account, OnePlus wrote, "Now initiating: C61422. Do you wish to continue?" A simple Google search reveals that C61422 is, in fact, the RGB code for Dark Red. This almost gives away the upcoming launch of a red-coloured OnePlus 6 next month, on July 2. OnePlus India has shared the same tweet, indicating the India launch will be around the same time. Even tech YouTuber MKBHD posted a tweet that shows the silho...

Microsoft unveiled its first Lumia phones running Windows 10 back in October, and today it offered up a third and much cheaper variant. If last year’s Lumia 950 and Lumia 950 XL looked impressive — impressive for phones running on a ‘dead’ platform — then the Lumia 650, which was outed today, is the budget version, coming in as it does at $199 — far cheaper than the $549 and $649 of the 950 and 950 XL. That $199 gets you five-inch OLED screen, eight- and five-megapixel cameras and the front and back, and a Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 212 which doesn’t support Microsoft’s ‘Continuum ‘ phone-to-PC feature. http://techcrunch.com/

Even Microsoft’s new image recognition app has no idea what kind of dog I have.  Oh well!  If you don’t own a mixed-breed mutt saved from the kill shelter, however, you might have fun with the company’s latest Microsoft Garage project: Fetch!, a new iPhone app that looks at photos of dogs to identify its breed. Or, in the case when it can’t make an exact match, the app will show you a percentage of the closest match. Oh yes, in case you’re wondering – you can use it with people, too. The app is the latest in a series of fun projects that are meant to highlight machine learning’s potential. In this case, that’s the ability to look at an image and make some sort of determination about its contents – basically, it’s teaching machines to make the sort of intuitive leaps that people naturally do. http://techcrunch.com/

Amazon will acquire startup Emvantage for an undisclosed amount to develop its Indian e-commerce site’s payment platform. In a press announcement, Amazon said the Noida-based company’s employees will start working for Amazon’s payment team after the transaction is completed. Founded in 2012 by chief executive officer Vivek Sagar, Emvantage’s platform includes a payment gateway for online transactions made using credit or debit cards, mobile payment tools that integrate into merchant apps, and a prepaid wallet. Making it easier for customers to pay for online purchases is a key point of focus for India’s top e-commerce businesses, which include Amazon, Snapdeal, and Flipkart. India’s e-commerce market is expected to be worth $100 billion by 2020, but the country’s credit card penetration rate is still extremely low. Instead, many shoppers pay for e-commerce purchases using online wallets that can be topped up at brick-and-mortar stores, pre-paid cards, or...