Education on technology

Social media app maker Snap on Thursday said it will roll out in-app warnings and other safeguards globally to offer enhanced protection to users between the age group of 13-17 years against online risks.  The safeguards will enable safer communications and search, and show teenage users age-appropriate content. It will also launch a new Strike System for inappropriate accounts with increased education about common online risks, Snap said in a statement . According to Statista, India has the highest number of Snapchat users, and a large number of its users are Gen Z or millennials who were born after 1996. The in-app warnings feature sends a pop-up warning to a teen user if someone tries to add them as a friend when they do not share mutual contacts or the person isn't in the contact list. The Strike System will remove accounts that market and promote age-inappropriate content based on them being detected internally, or that get reported. If an account is repeatedly trying t...

UNESCO on Thursday published its first guidance on use of Generative AI (GenAI) for education, urging governmental agencies to regulate the use of the technology, including protection of data privacy and putting an age limit for users. Launched by Microsoft -backed OpenAI in November, GenAI chatbot ChatGPT has become the world's fastest growing app to date, and its emergence has prompted the release of rivals, such as Google 's Bard . Students have also taken a liking for GenAI, which can generate anything from essays to mathematical calculations with just a few line of prompts.  "We are struggling to align the speed of transformation of the education system to the speed of the change in technological progress and advancement in these machine learning models," Stefania Giannini, assistant director-general for education, told Reuters. "In many cases, governments and schools are embracing a radically unfamiliar technology that even leading technologists do ...

Global securities regulators set out on Thursday their first blueprint to make participants in "decentralised finance" ( DeFi ) accountable for their actions and safeguard market stability. DeFi platforms allow users to lend, borrow and save in digital assets , using the blockchain technology that underpins cryptoassets to bypass the traditional gatekeepers of finance such as banks and exchanges. The collapse of crypto exchange FTX and of the Terra USD stablecoin during 2022 showed how shocks in one part of the crypto market can trigger billions of dollars in outflows from DeFI applications, said IOSCO, the global umbrella body for securities watchdogs from across the world. Such events have seen DeFi shrink from about $180 billion (nearly Rs. 14,96,780 crore) in late 2021 to about $40 billion (nearly Rs. 3,32,600 crore) currently, and the sector is also being used for moneylaundering, IOSCO said. "There is a common misconception that DeFi is truly decentralised an...

MediaTek on Thursday announced that it had developed its first chipset that is based on Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company's ( TSMC ) 3nm process. The company's flagship Dimensity chipset that is set to launch next year with notable improvements in performance and efficiency over current-generation chipsets. The company is yet to reveal which brands it will work with to integrate the new processor. Rivals Apple and Qualcomm are also said to be working on launching chips with the cutting-edge chip technology. The chipmaker announced in a press statement that it had successfully built its first 3nm chipset based on TSMC's advanced 3nm technology. The Taiwan-based firm also stated that its 3nm MediaTek chips will debut on smartphones, tablets, smart cars, and other devices in H2 2024. According to previous reports, Qualcomm is planning to launch a 3nm chipset this year that could arrive at its annual Snapdragon Summit event. The company also shared details of th...

Japan launched its lunar exploration spacecraft on Thursday aboard a homegrown H-IIA rocket, hoping to become the world's fifth country to land on the Moon early next year. Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) said the rocket took off from Tanegashima Space Center in southern Japan as planned and successfully released the Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM). Unfavorable weather led to three postponements in a week last month. Dubbed the "Moon sniper", Japan aims to land SLIM within 100 meters of its target site on the lunar surface. The $100-million (roughly Rs. 831 crores) mission is expected to start the landing by February after a long, fuel-efficient approach trajectory. "The big objective of SLIM is to prove the high-accuracy landing ... to achieve 'landing where we want' on the lunar surface, rather than 'landing where we can'," JAXA President Hiroshi Yamakawa told a news conference. The launch comes two weeks after India b...