We will take Kashmir from Pakistan soon: says indian minister, Yogi Adityanath

In a news comfrence the indian minister of kerala who is very near friend of Mr modi, The Prime minister of india Yogi Adiyanaat said "As Pti came in to the Government of Pakistan we have secretly contacted imran khan to sell Kashmir to India and he is ready For A fair deal.

New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi called up Pakistan’s prime minister-in-waiting Imran Khan to congratulate him on his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) emerging as largest political party in the recent election.

The Ministry of External Affairs press notesaid that Modi spoke about his vision for peace and development in South Asia, while the read-out from the Pakistani political party claimed that Indian prime minister suggested evolution of a “joint strategy” for progress in their bilateral affairs.

The MEA released a statement on Monday night noting that Modi had called Khan earlier in the evening to convey a personal congratulatory message.

“Prime Minister spoke to Mr Imran Khan, chairperson of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf Party and congratulated him for his party emerging as the largest political party in the National Assembly of Pakistan in the recently conducted general elections,” said the MEA communique.

PTI has emerged the winner of parliamentary elections with 116 seats, with the previous ruling party Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) obtaining just 64 seats. Khan’s party is currently involved in negotiations to cobble together a coalition by talking to smaller parties.

The MEA press release noted that Modi “expressed hope that democracy will take deeper roots in Pakistan”.

The “prime minister also reiterated his vision of peace and development in the entire neighbourhood,” it added.

In Islamabad, Imran Khan’s party released a a set of highlights of the conversation which quoted Modi as talking about a “new era” and “joint strategy in bilateral relations.

“Pakistan ke saath taaluqaat mein naye daur ka aaghaaz par taiyaar hain – Bharatiya vazeer e azam (We are ready for the beginning of a new era in relations with Pakistan – Indian prime minister),” said the PTI press note.

It further stated that Modi had advocated a more active approach. “Muamlaat aagey badhaaney ke liye donon mumalik ko mushtarka hikmat-amli apnana hoga – Bharatiya vazeer-e-azam (Both countries should adopt a joint strategy for progress in bilateral affairs – Indian prime minister)”.

During this conversation, Imran Khan told Modi that solutions to disputes should be found through dialogue, as per the PTI press release, which made no mention of the ‘Kashmir’.

He further stated that the two governments should devise a joint plan of action on poverty alleviation. “Instead of answers to conflicts, wars and bloodbath give birth to tragedies,” Khan told Modi, as per the press release.

Khan’s remarks mirrored those that he made in his victory speech on July 25.

Along with Modi’s purported call for a “joint strategy”, there was no direct mention in the MEA press statement about Imran Khan’s offer in his election victory speech to hold talks with India and stop the “blame game” on Kashmir.

“The leadership of Pakistan and India now need to come to the table to resolve this and end the blame games,” he said on July 25, adding “we are stuck now in square one”.

Modi’s phone call was his first direct contact with Imran after they had met in New Delhi in December 2015. At that time, both leaders had hoped for “closer cooperative ties between the two countries”.

India’s first response to the elections came on Saturday when it had welcomed the fact that the “people of Pakistan have reposed their faith in democracy through general elections”.

“India desires a prosperous and progressive Pakistan at peace with its neighbours. We hope that the new Government of Pakistan will work constructively to build a safe, stable, secure and developed South Asia free of terror and violence,” said the MEA spokesperson.

Modi’s call to the victor came two days after the results were formally announced, in contrast to the congratulatory message Manmohan Singh had delivered to Nawaz Sharif when the latter won the 2013 elections.

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Apple says it has over 4M people in its beta programs for iOS, macOS, watchOS, and tvOS (Greg Kumparak/TechCrunch)

Greg Kumparak / TechCrunch:
Apple says it has over 4M people in its beta programs for iOS, macOS, watchOS, and tvOS  —  For the past few years, Apple has made early versions of its operating systems available to those willing to brave the bugs.  Through its beta software program, anyone willing to deal with spotty battery life …

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Four million people are using Apple’s OS betas

For the past few years, Apple has made early versions of its operating systems available to those willing to brave the bugs. Through its beta software program, anyone willing to deal with spotty battery life or a crash or three could load up pre-release builds of iOS, macOS, watchOS, or tvOS.

Ever wonder how many actually take advantage of it?

According to Tim Cook on today’s earnings call, over four million people are currently running on the betas.

Alas, that’s as detailed as he got. He didn’t break down which platforms had the most beta users (though I’d bet iOS or macOS lead the way), nor what percentage of that beta group was developers (accessing the beta to debug their apps before the update) vs consumers (who just want to poke around the new goods early.)

For reference: as of February of 2018, Apple had 1.3 billion active devices across Apple TV, iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad, and Mac. So if each of the users Tim Cook mentioned is running a beta OS on one device, that’s around 0.3% of active devices running on a beta.

While that percentage might not sound huge, having four million people happily stress test your software before you officially ship it is a rare stength that few other companies can claim. Still, Apple has had a few rather glaring bugs slip through the cracks; from the annoying but forgettable bug that borked the letter “i” in iOS for a few days, to more severe security issues like the root user bug discovered in macOS at the end of last year. Could Apple be doing more to encourage pre-release bug hunting?

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Apple sold 3.7M Macs in Q3, down 9% QoQ and down 13% YoY, with a 5% decline in Mac revenue YoY (Matt Weinberger/INSIDER)

Matt Weinberger / INSIDER:
Apple sold 3.7M Macs in Q3, down 9% QoQ and down 13% YoY, with a 5% decline in Mac revenue YoY  —  - While Apple says that it's investing in the Mac, it's also had a series of MacBook Pro-related embarrassments that have caused some to doubt its focus.  —  Apple reported its quarterly earnings on Tuesday.

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Apple Pay is finally coming to CVS and 7-Eleven, and will soon expand to Germany

Longtime Apple Pay holdout CVS will finally be adding support for Apple’s mobile payments platform this fall, along with 7-Eleven, Apple CEO Tim Cook said this afternoon on the company’s earnings call. The news is particularly notable because CVS was one of the first major retailers to snub Apple Pay, choosing instead to launch its own barcode-based mobile payments solution “CVS Pay” back in 2016, following the failure of the retailer-backed Apple Pay rival CurrentC.

CVS Pay had become the first mobile payments solution the pharmacy chain adopted, having purposefully avoided support for Apple Pay or any other rival NFC (tap to pay) technologies at its register. The company believed there was value in offering its own end-to-end solution to customers that combined both payments and loyalty, it had said.

In addition, CVS had earlier backed an Apple Pay alternative called CurrentC, which was developed by the merchant consortium MCX led by major retailers like Walmart, Best Buy, Rite Aid and others. The QR code-based payments solution was designed to challenge Apple’s potential dominance in mobile payments. Many of the retailers even blocked Apple Pay at their stores in advance of bringing CurrentC to market.

However, CurrentC eventually failed and the technology was sold off to JPMorgan Chase in 2017. Some of its backers – like Best Buy and Rite Aid – had also relented, by allowing Apple Pay into their stores. But CVS did not. It instead moved forward with its own solution.

That it has now decided to also support Apple Pay is a major win for Apple, as is the addition of 7-Eleven to the list of retailers that will soon offer Apple Pay at checkout.

The retail expansions weren’t the only big Apple Pay news announced on the call.

Cook also said that Apple Pay would launch in Germany – but didn’t offer a timeframe for this launch. And he noted that Apple Pay saw more than 1 billion transactions in the 3rd quarter of 2018. That’s triple the number from a year ago, and more mobile transactions than Square and PayPal, he noted.

 

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Spotify now offers motion comics starring Archie

Spotify has been experimenting with incorporating non-musical formats over the last couple of years, including videos and multimedia podcasts. Next up: Motion comics based on new Archie stories.

For those of you who haven’t been keeping track of the comics incarnations of Archie and his friends, the title was recently rebooted by writer Mark Waid (Kingdom Come) and artist Fiona Staples (Saga). While I was initially skeptical about the need to mess with the characters’ classic designs, I found the first collection to be a perfectly enjoyable combination of teen comedy and soap opera.

Now, as announced in Nerdist, the first six issues have been transformed by digital comics startup Madefire with music and voice acting.

It’s still a comic book, and you can still see Staples’ gorgeous art, but it’s a story that you hit a “play” button to experience, rather than turning any pages. (Madefire and its CEO Ben Wolstenholme prefer the term “motion books” to distinguish the format from the cheesy motion comics of the past, but I suspect the distinction is lost on most readers.)

You can find them on Spotify as Spotlight: Archie — The New Riverdale.

Archie Comics CEO Jon Goldwater said told Nerdist that “Archie has always been about trying to find new ways to get comics to fans and readers,” and said that working with Spotify was “a perfect match.”

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Apple's "other products" revenue was $3.74B in Q3, up 37% YoY, and wearables revenue, which includes Apple Watch and AirPods, grew 60% YoY (Juli Clover/MacRumors)

Juli Clover / MacRumors:
Apple's “other products” revenue was $3.74B in Q3, up 37% YoY, and wearables revenue, which includes Apple Watch and AirPods, grew 60% YoY  —  Apple's “Other Products” category, which includes AirPods, Apple TV, Apple Watch, iPod touch, HomePod, Beats products …

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Apple Pay had 1B+ transactions in Q3, and will launch in Germany and at US-based CVS and 7-11 stores later this year (Juli Clover/MacRumors)

Juli Clover / MacRumors:
Apple Pay had 1B+ transactions in Q3, and will launch in Germany and at US-based CVS and 7-11 stores later this year  —  During today's earnings call for the third quarter of 2018, Apple CEO Tim Cook said that Apple plans to bring Apple Pay to Germany later this year.

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More Profits Could Send Apple Over $1 Trillion

By JACK NICAS from NYT Technology https://ift.tt/2LISkms

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DHS launches a new cyber hub to coordinate against threats to US infrastructure

Among the many things the current administration has been criticized for is its lack of a unified strategy to combat cyber threats, especially in light of ongoing election interference and psy ops perpetrated by Russia. The Department of Homeland Security is advancing the ball with the creation of the National Risk Management Center, intended on protecting critical infrastructure from attacks and subversion by online adversaries.

The NRMC was announced today at a cyber summit in New York held by the agency, where DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen explained the purpose and justification for this new entity. Remarkably, she directly contradicted the ongoing soft-pedaling by the Executive of Russian operations targeting the country.

“Let me be clear: Our intelligence community had it right. It was the Russians. It was directed from the highest levels. And we cannot and will not allow it to happen again,” she said.

DHS Secretary Nielsen in 2017.

Thus the creation of the NRMC, which will work directly with various entities and federal agencies to protect infrastructure like banking systems and the power grid (not to mention election systems). These are such obvious targets for foreign intelligence to attack, either for destructive or informative purposes, that they merit especial attention from our side as well, and DHS is in fact the one to provide it.

The new center will be online and staffed tomorrow, though it will take some time to spin up completely as DHS allocates space, personnel, and resources. Its exact duties, jurisdictions, and connections with other units will no doubt be made clear as well.

Vice President Pence spoke at the event too, but naturally chose to lash out at the Obama administration, which he said “often chose silence and paralysis over strength and action.”

This is a strange thing to say when several prominent cybersecurity-related posts and offices have been abandoned and a report by the Office of Management and Budget found agencies around the country are utterly unprepared for even elementary cyber attacks.

Government investigation finds federal agencies failing at cybersecurity basics

One of the major moves to improve cybersecurity, elevating CyberCom to Unified Combatant Command level, was an Obama-era plan, and the President’s overall cyber strategy, announced last year, also cribbed liberally from the previous administration.

That said, the Vice President was realistic on other points.

“The fact is Russia meddled in our 2016 elections,” he concurred. “This administration will not tolerate threats from Russia, China, Iran, North Korea or anyone else.”

The other countries on the list, it bears mentioning, have not been found to have interfered with American elections, though admittedly they might if they had the chance.

Pence also acknowledged states’ prerogative in running their elections how they like, but also said the federal government would be providing additional funding and technology for election security. He mentioned the “Albert sensors” being deployed to help monitor online systems, and a “virtual situation room” many states are already using that connects DHS with state authorities.

“I want to urge, with great respect, every state to take renewed action. Take advantage of the assistance offered by our administration,” Pence said.

That seems like a good idea, as Russian operations have already begun ahead of the 2018 midterms. Perhaps that joint Russo-American cybersecurity group proposed by Putin will help.

Putin & I discussed forming an impenetrable Cyber Security unit so that election hacking, & many other negative things, will be guarded..

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 9, 2017

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DocuSign acquires Chicago-based cloud document management company SpringCM for $220M in cash to grow its business beyond electronic signatures (Nat Levy/GeekWire)

Nat Levy / GeekWire:
DocuSign acquires Chicago-based cloud document management company SpringCM for $220M in cash to grow its business beyond electronic signatures  —  DocuSign said it has agreed to acquire SpringCM, a Chicago-based cloud document generation and contract management company, for $220 million in cash.

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Apple reports $9.55B in services revenue, up 31% YoY, vs. $9.21B est., as the company moves toward its goal of $14B in quarterly services revenue by 2020 (Sara Salinas/CNBC)

Sara Salinas / CNBC:
Apple reports $9.55B in services revenue, up 31% YoY, vs. $9.21B est., as the company moves toward its goal of $14B in quarterly services revenue by 2020  —  - Wall Street had expected software and services revenue to remain essentially unchanged from the previous quarter, according to StreetAccount.

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Apple nears a $1 trillion market cap as it clears another quarter ahead of expectations

Apple is inching closer and closer to becoming a $1 trillion company today after posting third quarter results that beat out what analysts were expecting and bumping the stock another few percentage points — which, by Apple standards, is tens of billions of dollars.

The company’s stock is up around 2.5% this afternoon after the report, which at a prior market close with a market cap of around $935 billion, is adding nearly another $20-plus billion to its market cap. A few quarters ago we were walking about how Apple was in shooting distance of that $1 trillion mark, but now it seems more and more like Apple will actually hit it. Apple is headed into its most important few quarters as we hit the back half of the year, with its usual new lineup of iPhones and other products and its accompanying critical holiday quarter.

Here’s a quick breakdown of the numbers:

• Revenue:  $53.3 billion, up 17% year-over-year compared to analyst expectations of $52.34 billion.
• Earnings: $2.34 per share compared to analyst estimates of $2.18 per share.
• iPhones: 41.3 million, up 1% year-over-year though revenue on the iPhone line was up 20% year-over-year. Analysts expected 41.79 million iphones sold.
• iPhone average selling price: $724
• iPads: 11.55 million, up 1% year-over-year but ahead of analyst expectations of 10.3 million.
• Macs: 3.7 million, down 13% year-over-year and behind analyst expectations
• Services: $9.6 billion, up 31% year-over-year.
• Other products: $3.7 billion, up 37% year-over-year.

So in all, the shipment numbers were hit or miss at a granular level, but at the same time the iPhone is generating a lot more revenue than it did last year — implying that there might be a shifting mix toward more expensive iPhones. Apple’s strategy to figure out if it could unlock a more premium tier in consumer demand, then, may be panning out and helping once again drive the company’s growth. It’s then pading out the rest of that with growth in services and other products like it has in the past few quarters as Apple heads into the end of the year.

 

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