Education on technology

Alphabet's Google LLC won a jury trial on Tuesday in a long-running patent lawsuit in Delaware federal court over features in Google's smartphones and apps. The jury decided that Luxembourg-based patent owner Arendi SARL's patent was invalid and that Google did not infringe it, according to the verdict made public on Wednesday. Attorneys for Arendi did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Google spokesperson José Castañeda said the company was pleased with the decision and appreciated the jury's "careful attention to the extensive evidence presented in this case." Norwegian inventor Atle Hedloy's Arendi sued Google in 2013 over the patent, which relates to retrieving information like names and addresses from a database and entering it into word processors and spreadsheets. Arendi alleged that Google's mobile devices and apps including Gmail , Chrome , Docs, and Messages infringed. It asked the court for $45.5 million (roughly Rs. 37 ...

Bhutan's investment arm and Nasdaq-listed company Bitdeer Technologies Group plan to seek investors for a fund worth up to $500 million (roughly Rs. 4,100 crore) that will be used to develop green crypto mining in the Himalayan kingdom. Fund raising targeting institutional investors will begin at the end of May and the goal is to set up carbon-free digital mining that taps Bhutan's abundant hydroelectric power, according to a joint statement Wednesday. Mining is the least risky way for Bhutan to tap crypto opportunities and for now the nation will focus on Bitcoin , Ujjwal Deep Dahal, the chief executive officer of the investment arm, Druk Holding & Investments, said in an interview. “It's important for us to look at assets that are low volume, high value, or digital assets for that matter, and try to position ourselves in a way that we can be competitive globally over time to build our economy,” Dahal said. Economic Strategy Forest-laden Bhutan, sandwiched betw...

Apple will likely report a more than 4 percent drop in revenue, its second straight quarterly decline, weighed down by consumers shunning non-essential purchases such as iPhones and Mac computers and slowing growth at its services business. The results on Thursday from the world's most valuable company will follow better-than-expected earnings from U.S. technology peers, which had raised hopes that the worst may be over for a sector that has laid off tens of thousands this year. Apple, an industry outlier with no mass layoffs so far, is set to post its first ever revenue declines across product lines, even as iPhone demand and production recovered in China after pandemic-driven disruptions last year. "Apple is seeing moderate headwinds in its hardware businesses as iPhones face modest contraction in premium device demand and the iPad and Mac businesses could be weighed down by consumer and enterprise trends," analysts at Cowen said. Hardware sales are set to decline...

Journalism is being battered by propaganda and increasingly sophisticated fakes, aided by AI software and a failure of oversight from tech companies, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said Wednesday. Overall, the environment for journalists was rated as "bad" in 70 percent of the 180 countries in the NGO's annual ranking, and "good" in just eight countries. Norway and North Korea remain best and worst, respectively, for press freedom, according to the 21st annual report, which was published on World Press Freedom Day. This year, RSF put a spotlight on the myriad forms of misinformation that are "drowning out" trustworthy news -- a problem compounded by the rapid evolution of artificial intelligence . "It is the tech industry that allows disinformation to be produced, distributed and amplified," RSF secretary-general Christophe Deloire told AFP. "Reliable information is drowned in a deluge of disinformation," Deloire added. ...

Of the dozens of listed companies talking up the potential of ChatGPT -like technologies, Chegg is among the first to publicly state just how deleterious the trend could be for its business. It needn't be, though management seems ready to ride the wave of this new innovation rather than swim against the current. Chegg describes itself as a “student-first connected learning platform.” With annual revenue of just $767 million (roughly Rs. 62,76,500 crore) last year, it is nowhere near the scale of behemoths jumping on the artificial intelligence bandwagon, such as Alphabet , Microsoft and Amazon . Yet online education is a huge industry, estimated by researcher Statista at $167 billion (roughly Rs. 13,66,600 crore) this year and climbing to $239 billion (roughly Rs. 19,55,700 crore) by 2027. Chegg's slice of that market is centered around helping college students with homework and cramming for exams, and charges subscriptions starting at $14.95 (roughly Rs. 1,200 per month. T...