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Showing posts from June, 2023

US SEC Said to Have Raised Concerns About Bitcoin ETF to Asset Managers

The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has said recent applications by asset managers to launch spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) were not sufficiently clear and comprehensive, a source familiar with the matter said. The SEC has communicated its concerns to the exchanges Nasdaq and Cboe Global Markets which filed the applications on behalf of asset managers including BlackRock and Fidelity, the source added on Friday. Bitcoin, which has jumped since BlackRock filed its application on June 15, fell after the Wall Street Journal first reported the SEC rejection on Friday. The world's largest cryptocurrency was last down 1 percent at $30.142 (nearly Rs. 2,500). The SEC, Fidelity, BlackRock and Nasdaq declined to comment on the report, while Cboe was not immediately available. The ETF filings by such major firms had sparked renewed investor hopes that a bitcoin ETF would finally be approved by the SEC, and revived interest in cyptocurrencies , which have been hit ...
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Meta Google Advised in Vietnam to Use AI to Detect Toxic Content on Social Media: Report

Vietnam has told cross-border social platforms to use artificial intelligence (AI) models that can detect and remove "toxic" content automatically, the latest requirement in its stringent regime for social media firms, state media reported on Friday. Vietnam has repeatedly asked companies like Meta 's Facebook , Google 's YouTube and TikTok to coordinate with authorities to stamp out content deemed "toxic", such as offensive, false and anti-state content. "This is the first time Vietnam has announced such an order," state-run broadcaster Vietnam Television (VTV) reported from the information ministry's mid-year review event, which was opened to selected newspaper. The report did not give details on when and how cross-border platforms had to abide by the new requirement. During the first half of this year, in accordance with government requests, Facebook removed 2,549 posts, the ministry said in a statement. YouTube removed 6,101 videos ...
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Meta Now Allows Secure Chat Transfer Between Devices on WhatsApp Using QR Code

Meta chief executive officer Mark Zuckerberg on Friday announced a new feature on the platform's instant messaging app,  WhatsApp . According to the Meta CEO, users will now be allowed to transfer their chat history between devices conveniently and in a secure way. Currently, both the devices need to work on the same OS (operating system) for the transfer to take place. The new feature makes the process easier and faster to transfer messages as well as larger attachments from one device to another. In a post shared by Meta CEO on his official Facebook handle, Zuckerberg wrote, "If you want to move your WhatsApp chats to a new phone, you can now do it more privately without your chats ever leaving your devices." Apparently, now the users will be able to share the chat history with the help of QR code authentication. He also shared a demonstration video to explain the new process.  While WhatsApp already allowed users to transfer their chat history from one phone to ano...
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Microsofts Acquisition of Activision Blizzard Likely to Lessen Competition Says Canadian Justice Department

Canada's Department of Justice has concluded that Microsoft's deal to buy Call of Duty maker Activision Blizzard "is likely to" lead to less competition in some aspects of gaming, according to a court filing on Thursday. In a letter dated Wednesday to Microsoft's US lawyers, the department said it had communicated to Microsoft's and Activision's lawyers in Canada that the deal would likely lead to less competition in "gaming consoles and multigame subscription services (as well as cloud gaming)." On Thursday, the letter was put on the docket of a US federal court proceeding in which the US Federal Trade Commission is asking a judge to temporarily stop the proposed transaction so that an FTC judge will have time to assess it. Closing arguments in the proceeding are set for later on Thursday. Microsoft has pressed for a decision in the court fight before the July 18 termination date for the deal. A ruling could come as early as next week. I...
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Byju'sClose to Achieving Profitability at the Group Level Claims CEO

Edtech major Byju's  is growing slowly but sustainably and is close to achieving profitability at the group level, the company's CEO Byju Raveendran said on Thursday. The company organised a town hall with Raveendran to allay apprehensions about the uncertainty around the company's growth and its future. According to sources, who attended the town hall, Raveendran said that issues with $1.2 billion (nearly Rs. 9,852 crore) Term Loan B lenders are being resolved through discussion and hopeful of a positive outcome in the next few weeks without the court's intervention. "Byju shared that Byju's is close to achieving profitability at the group level, demonstrating the company's commitment to financial management and optimization of operations," a source said. He said that despite the challenges faced by tech companies globally, Byju's has made substantial progress towards this significant milestone. Byju's had set a timeline to achieve profit...
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OpenAI Sued in US for Allegedly Misusing Artists' Work to Train ChatGPT

Two US authors sued OpenAI in San Francisco federal court on Wednesday, claiming in a proposed class action that the company misused their works to "train" its popular generative artificial-intelligence system ChatGPT . Massachusetts-based writers Paul Tremblay and Mona Awad said ChatGPT mined data copied from thousands of books without permission, infringing the authors' copyrights. Matthew Butterick, an attorney for the authors, declined to comment. Representatives for OpenAI, a private company backed by Microsoft , did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Several legal challenges have been filed over material used to train cutting-edge AI systems. Plaintiffs include source-code owners against OpenAI and Microsoft's GitHub , and visual artists against Stability AI, Midjourney and DeviantArt. The lawsuit targets have argued that their systems make fair use of copyrighted work. ChatGPT responds to users' text prompts in a conversational way. I...
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Indian Government Met Foxconn Samsung Electronics Others to Discuss PLI Scheme

The Indian government met large global firms such as Foxconn , Samsung Electronics and Reliance Industries to find ways to boost manufacturing in the country with its production-linked incentive (PLI) scheme. The meeting, addressed by India's Trade Minister Piyush Goyal on Tuesday, comes amid concerns that some of the businesses were facing delays in availing the incentives from New Delhi amid complicated procedures. The discussions included ways to improve local manufacturing at competitive costs, higher domestic value-adds in production, and quick grievance redressal, the government said in a statement on Wednesday. The meeting was also attended by executives from iPhone maker Wistron , laptop maker Dell , telecommunications firm Nokia Solutions and others that benefited from the scheme's incentive payouts. The PLI scheme, introduced in late 2020, is Prime Minister Narendra Modi's main industrial policy to boost manufacturing. The government has so far announced i...
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Activision Blizzard to Set Up Shop in Barcelona Following EU's Approval for Microsoft Acquisition

Activision Blizzard said its studio that developed Call of Duty  would set up shop in Barcelona, putting into action its pledge to invest in Europe after Brussels approved Microsoft 's $69 billion (nearly Rs. 5,66,000 crore) acquisition of the company in May. The US company said on Wednesday its game developer Infinity Ward, which created the blockbuster first-person shooter game, would join its Digital Legends mobile games unit in the Spanish city. The decision comes after Britain blocked the Microsoft takeover, prompting Activision, which has studios in Guildford and Warrington in England, to say it would "reassess" its growth plans in the country. In contrast, it said it would "meaningfully expand" its investment and workforce in the European Union after the deal received the green light there. Microsoft and Activision Blizzard are battling antitrust regulators on both sides of the Atlantic to clinch the deal, the biggest ever in video gaming. Activisio...
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Nvidia AMD Other US Chipmakers Face Fall in Shares as US Plans Curbs on Export to China

Shares of US chipmakers fell on Wednesday following a report that the Biden administration was planning new curbs on export of computing chips for artificial intelligence to China as early as July. Companies such as Nvidia , Advanced Micro Devices and Intel , which rely on the world's second largest economy for at least a fifth of their revenue, fell between 0.8 percent and 1.8 percent, caught in the US-China crossfire. The Philadelphia chip index dropped 0.9 percent. Last year, US officials had ordered Nvidia to stop exporting its top two AI chips to China to limit the country's technological capability. Months later, Nvidia launched a new advanced chip called A800 in China to meet export control rules. The new restrictions being considered by the Commerce Department would also include a ban on the sale of Nvidia's A800 chip without a special US export license, the Wall Street Journal report said. Curbs on sales of datacenter graphics processing units to China wou...
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US House Panel Critical of Twitter Privacy Investigation to Question FTC Chair at Hearing

US Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan is set to testify on July 13 before the House Judiciary Committee led by Republicans who have sharply criticized her leadership of the antitrust enforcement agency, the committee, and commission confirmed on Friday. This will be her first appearance before the committee since Republicans assumed control. Republicans have been especially critical of the FTC's privacy investigation into Twitter since it was purchased by billionaire Tesla CEO Elon Musk . In March, the FTC confirmed it was conducting an investigation into Twitter's privacy practices. The agency has been concerned whether Twitter had the staffing to abide by a May 2022 settlement with the FTC in which it agreed to improve its privacy practices. In April, the committee subpoenaed Khan for documents related to the Twitter privacy probe following Musk's $44 billion (roughly Rs. 3,61,687 crore) purchase of the social media company in October. House Judiciary Commit...
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Apple Releases visionOS Developer Tools to Create Apple Vision Pro Applications: Details

Apple on Wednesday released the visionOS SDK, a set of tools that will enable developers to build apps for the Apple Vision Pro mixed reality headset. The Cupertino company's first spatial computer will go on sale in the US next year and Apple is providing app developers with the tools required to build apps for the device. Unlike other Apple products, the company's upcoming mixed reality headset will use a combination of three different modes of interaction using a person's eyes, hands, and voice. The visionOS SDK will allow developers to tailor their apps around this functionality while making use of the specialised hardware on the device.   The company announced  on the Apple Developer website that the visionOS SDK is now available to developers. In order to create spatial computing apps for the Apple Vision Pro, developers will have to download Xcode 15 Beta 2 that includes the latest visionOS SDK along with a tool to visualise and preview 3D content for the heads...
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Explained: Why Are Facebook Instagram Cutting News Access in Canada

Meta Platforms plans to cut off access to news on Facebook and Instagram for all users in Canada once a new law requiring internet giants to pay news publishers takes effect, arguing news has no economic value to the company and that its users do not use the platform for news. Canada drafted new rules after legacy media companies complained about internet companies elbowing news businesses out of the online advertising market. Why are technology companies against the law?  The Canadian parliament passed "Bill C-18" into law, requiring internet giants to pay news publishers. The Online News Act forces platforms like Facebook and Alphabet 's Google to negotiate commercial deals and pay news publishers for their content. Both Meta and Google had warned they would withdraw access to news articles on their platforms in Canada if the legislation is passed into law without amendments. Facebook says links to news articles make up less than 3 percent of the content on it...
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Google Said to Have Urged Supreme Court to Quash Android Antitrust Directives

Google has urged India's Supreme Court to quash antitrust directives against it for abuse of the Android market, two sources said, as its presses its legal battle against the competition watchdog in one of its most important markets. The Competition Commission of India (CCI) said in October that Google, whose Android mobile operating system powers 97 percent of the 600 million smartphones in India, had exploited its dominant position. It ordered Google to remove restrictions imposed on device makers, including those related to the pre-installation of apps , and fined the US firm $163 million (nearly Rs. 1,300 crore), which it paid. In March, an Indian tribunal gave partial relief to the Alphabet  unit by setting aside four of the 10 directives in the case. The tribunal said CCI's findings of Google's anti-competitive conduct were correct, but gave Google some relief by quashing some of the directives that forced it to alter its business model. Google is now asking ...
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IndiaisNextKey LocationforSemiconductorManufacturers: AshwiniVaishnaw

Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw on Monday said current Central Government has succeeded in attracting investments in emerging technology, and stated that India is the next important location for semiconductor manufacturers. Congress has attempted to do so since the 1980s but was not successful.  During Prime Minister Narendra Modi's State visit to the US last week,  Micron  Technology announced a massive India-specific investment plan. On Thursday, hours after PM Modi met Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra in the US and invited him to boost semiconductor manufacturing in India, the global  semiconductor  major announced plans to build a new assembly and test facility in Gujarat in India with an investment of $825 million (nearly Rs. 6,800 crore). Once set up, the facility will address demand from domestic and international markets. Micron ...
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Xiaomi Pad 6: Is This the Best Mid-Range Android Tablet Under Rs. 30000?

Xiaomi Pad 6  was recently  launched in India as the successor to the Xiaomi Pad 5 that made its debut in 2022. Just like last year's model, Xiaomi has attempted to equip its latest tablet with a range of features and a Qualcomm Snapdragon chipset, while keeping the price of the device under Rs. 30,000. The Xiaomi Pad 6 sports a 11-inch LCD display, runs on Android 13 out-of-the-box, and Xiaomi claims it can offer up to two days of battery backup. It is equipped with a 13-megapixel primary camera and an 8-megapixel selfie camera. This week on Orbital, the Gadgets 360 podcast, resident device expert  Pranav Hegde , who has spent some time with Xiaomi's latest tablet, talks to guest host Sheldon Pinto  about the device. Pinto reviewed the Xiaomi Pad 5 last year, and the duo discuss some of the changes and upgrades that have made their way to this year's model and how it fares against the competition. The Xiaomi Pad 6 isn't exactly a new device — it was l...
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Motorola Razr 40 Razr 40 Ultra India Launch Scheduled for July 3: Expected Specifications Features

Motorola Razr 40 and Motorola Razr 40 Ultra India launch date was announced by the company on Thursday. As per a teaser on Amazon India, the foldable flip phones will launch on next month. Both handsets were launched in China on June 1 and sport 6.9-inch pOLED displays. The Razr 40 Ultra is equipped with a large 3.6-inch outer display with a 144Hz refresh rate, while the Razr 40 has a smaller 1.5-inch cover screen. The Motorola Razr 40 and Motorola Razr 40 Ultra are powered by Qualcomm's Snapdragon 7 Gen 1 and Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 chips, respectively. Unveiled in China earlier this month, the Motorola Razr 40 and Razr 40 Ultra are set to debut in India on July 3, a Motorola spokesperson confirmed to Gadgets 360. The listings for the handsets do not reveal details such as pricing or availability, which are expected to be announced on the launch date. Pricing for the handsets in China starts at CNY 3,999 (roughly Rs. 46,000) for the Motorola Razr 40 and CNY 5,699 (roughly Rs. ...
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Amazon to Invest Additional $15 Billion in India Says CEO Andy Jassy

Amazon.com will invest an additional $15 billion (roughly Rs. 12,297 crore) in India, the company's Chief Executive Andy Jassy told Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his meeting on Friday. The investment will take the e-commerce giant's total India investment across all businesses to $26 billion (roughly Rs. 21,314 crore) by 2030, he said. Modi and Jassy spoke about supporting Indian startups, creating jobs, enabling exports, digitization, and empowering individuals and small businesses to compete globally, an Amazon blog post said. This announcement follows Amazon's cloud computing unit Amazon Web Services (AWS) saying last month it will invest 1.06 trillion rupees ($12.9 billion) in the country by the end of 2030. Separately, Google will open a global fintech operation center in GIFT City in India's western state of Gujarat, CEO Sundar Pichai told reporters in a video shared on Twitter by Reuters partner ANI company. "We shared Google is investing $10 bill...
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Realme Narzo 60 Series Design Teased Ahead of Launch Will Feature a Curved Display With Thin Bezels

Realme Narzo 60 series is confirmed to launch in India soon, the Chinese smartphone company has confirmed via Amazon. The e-commerce website is teasing the design of the smartphones without confirming the exact launch date. The Realme Narzo 60 series is shown to have a curved display with narrow bezels. The upcoming lineup is expected to include the Realme Narzo 60 and Realme Narzo 60 Pro models. The former was recently spotted on Geekbench with a MediaTek Dimensity 6020 SoC and 8GB RAM. Amazon India 's dedicated landing page for the upcoming Realme Narzo 60 series is now teasing the phone's design. The page has three slides so far. They give us a glimpse of the device's shape and features. The lineup is teased to come with a 61-degree curved display with narrow bezels. Further, the upcoming models are confirmed to have a memory capacity to store over 250,000 photos on the phone, suggesting 1TB of storage support via microSD card. Realme has also created a microsite f...
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Facebook Asked to Evaluate Political Violence Promotion on Platform by Parent Metas Oversight Board

Meta Platforms ' Oversight Board has asked the social media firm to evaluate efforts to prevent promotion of political violence on its platforms, after it allowed a video calling for violence post the 2022 Brazilian election to stay online. The board said on Thursday that Meta's original decision to leave up the Facebook video, which featured a Brazilian general calling people to "hit the streets," raised concerns about the effectiveness of the company's election integrity efforts. "In this case, the speaker's intent, the content of the speech and its reach, as well as the likelihood of imminent harm ... all justified removing the post," said the Oversight Board , whose recommendations are not binding on Meta. After initially letting the video stay up, Meta took it down on January 20, after the board selected the case. The company's election preparedness efforts are in focus as the United States prepares for the presidential elections next ...
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Amazon's Acquisition of iRobot Faces EU Antitrust Investigation Sources Say

Amazon's $1.7 billion (roughly Rs. 13,500 crore) acquisition of robot vacuum cleaner maker iRobot faces a full-scale EU antitrust investigation, people familiar with the matter said, weeks after the US online retail giant won UK approval for the deal. Amazon announced the takeover in August last year to expand its portfolio of smart devices, which include the Alexa voice assistant, smart thermostats, security devices and wall-mounted smart displays. IRobot made its first Roomba robot vacuum in 2002. IRobot shares fell about 10 percent, their largest percentage drop since February last year, while Amazon shares trimmed gains after the Reuters story was published. The European Commission is scheduled to launch a four-month investigation following the end of its preliminary review of the deal on July 6, the people said. Amazon is unlikely to offer remedies during this initial phase, one of the people said. It has a final shot in the next few days at convincing the EU competitio...
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Facebook Instagram to End News Access in Canada Over Incoming Law on Paying Publishers

Meta Platforms plans to end access to news on Facebook and Instagram for all users in Canada once a parliament-approved legislation requiring internet giants to pay news publishers comes into effect, the company said on Thursday. The legislation, known as the Online News Act, was approved by the Senate upper chamber earlier on Thursday and will become law after receiving royal assent from the governor general, a formality. The legislation was proposed after complaints from Canada's media industry, which wants tighter regulation of tech companies to prevent them from elbowing news businesses out of the online advertising market. "Today, we are confirming that news availability will be ended on Facebook and Instagram for all users in Canada prior to the Online News Act taking effect," Meta said in a statement. Facebook had telegraphed such a move for weeks, saying news has no economic value to the company and that its users do not use the platform for news. The act ...
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Amazon Duped Millions of Customers Into Signing Up for Prime Says US Regulator in a Lawsuit

The US Federal Trade Commission on Wednesday accused Amazon.com of enrolling millions of consumers into its paid subscription Amazon Prime service without their consent and making it hard for them to cancel, the agency's latest action against the ecommerce giant in recent weeks. The FTC sued Amazon in federal court in Seattle, alleging that the company has "knowingly duped millions of consumers into unknowingly enrolling in Amazon Prime." In a statement, Amazon called the FTC's claims "false on the facts and the law." Amazon has used "manipulative, coercive or deceptive user-interface designs known as 'dark patterns' to trick consumers into enrolling in automatically renewing Prime subscriptions," the FTC said as it seeks civil penalties and a permanent injunction to prevent future violations. The lawsuit is one of several actions taken by President Joe Biden's administration intended to rein in the outsized market power of Big Te...
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5G in India Seen Accounting for About 57 Percent of Mobile Subscriptions by 2028: Ericsson Mobility Report

The 5G subscription in India is estimated to have reached about 10 million by 2022 end, and is seen accounting for about 57 percent of mobile subscriptions in the country by the end of 2028, making it "the fastest growing" 5G region globally, according to Ericsson Mobility Report.  With the launch of 5G services in October 2022, the major 5G Indian market is witnessing huge network deployments under its Digital India initiative, it observed. The geopolitical challenges and macroeconomic slowdown in some markets notwithstanding, communications service providers globally are continuing to invest in 5G, the June 2023 edition of the Ericsson Mobility Report revealed. "5G subscriptions in India reached about 10 million by end of 2022 and are estimated to account for about 57 percent of mobile subscriptions in the country by the end of 2028, making it the fastest growing 5G region globally," it said. The fifth generation mobile subscriptions are growing in every regi...
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Ola Begins Construction Work of 100GWh Gigafactory in Tamil Nadu

Electric vehicle company Ola on Wednesday said it has commenced construction of its 100GWh gigafactory at its manufacturing facility in Tamil Nadu.  The company has installed the first pillar of its cell factory in Krishnagiri, Tamil Nadu today. A gigafactory is a facility where equipment and components related to electrification and decarbonisation technologies are manufactured. In February, Ola signed a memorandum of understanding with the Tamil Nadu government committing investments of Rs. 7,614 crore for manufacturing electric cars, two wheelers and lithium cell gigafactories in the state. Spread across 115 acre, the Ola Gigafactory is expected to commence operations by early next year with an initial capacity of 5GWh (Giga Watt hours). It would be scaled up to 100GWh in phases, a company statement said. On commencement of operations at full capacity, it is claimed that the factory would be one of the world's largest cell manufacturing facilities. "This is a proud m...
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Microsoft Launches New Computing Service Aims to Help Speed Up R&D

Microsoft on Wednesday introduced a new computing service aimed at helping chemical companies speed up the research and development of new materials. Azure Quantum Elements, as the service is called, relies on computing power to help chemical companies simulate huge numbers of possible combinations of atoms. The point is to use computers to explore possible new materials virtually and then simulate how those materials would interact with the real world. The new offering uses a combination of existing quantum computers, artificial intelligence and conventional high-performance computing systems. In a press release, Microsoft said that the system has helped some early customers speed up their development processes by as much as six months. Microsoft said that BASF, AkzoNobel, AspenTech, Johnson Matthey, SCGC and 1910 Genetics have been testing the system. "Our goal is to compress the next 250 years of chemistry and materials science progress into the next 25,” Microsoft Chief...
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