Education on technology

It's hard to feel sorry for Silicon Valley tech workers. From high salaries and generous stock options to nap pods and unlimited time off, they're among the most privileged class of employees in the world. Conversely, there's no denying that these pampered staffers engineered a technology revolution that's brought untold economic and social value to the entire planet. Yet there is a category of people who may lament the coldhearted approach to workforce cuts that have torn through the sector over the past few months: The CEOs who fired them. Almost 100,000 positions have been eliminated this year alone, according to Layoffs.fyi, which tracks the data. At some point in the next few years, those job vacancies will return. We're on the cusp of an artificial intelligence boom, network speeds continue to get faster, cars will be driving themselves, and there'll be more data collected and stored than big tech will know what to do with. Recruiters and hiring managers...

A US judge on Thursday extended a ban on FTX cryptocurrency exchange founder Sam Bankman-Fried's ability to contact employees of companies he once controlled and use encrypted messaging technology while out on bail awaiting trial on fraud charges. US District Judge Lewis Kaplan on February 1 had temporarily barred Bankman-Fried from contacting any current or former employees of FTX or Alameda Research, his hedge fund, after prosecutors raised concerns that the 30-year-old former billionaire may be trying to tamper with witnesses. As a condition of his release on $250 million (nearly Rs. 2,060 crore) bond, the judge also prevented Bankman-Fried from using messaging apps such as Signal that let users auto-delete messages. After rejecting an agreement between defense lawyers and prosecutors to loosen those conditions on Tuesday, Kaplan on Thursday said the restrictions would remain in place until February 21 and instructed both sides to explain by February 13 how they ...

The IT ministry has given 48 hours to banned websites and apps to prove their genuineness, a senior government official said on Thursday.  Another senior official from the ministry said the ban has been imposed on the platforms because their businesses were not genuine. "Why would there be any ban if they were genuine? Action has been taken on them," the ministry official said.  The government last week ordered blocking of 232 apps operated by overseas entities, including Chinese, for being involved in betting, gambling and unauthorised loan services. "They have been given 48 hours under the rule to submit documents. The decision will be taken based on their presentation. It is going on now," another senior official said. The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) issued blocking orders on Saturday, based on an emergency request issued by a nodal officer of the home ministry, against 138 betting and gambling websites and 94 loan apps that wer...

Xiaomi TV Stick 4K, the Chinese electronics company's smart home product, will in India on February 14. The tech giant first released the product in December 2021. It helps transform a regular television into a smart one. The device runs Android TV 11 and supports Dolby Vision technology for improved video playback. The Indian version will include Xiaomi's Patchwall, which the company already uses in its smart TV offerings. The TV Stick 4K is powered by a quad core Cortex A35 chipset. The Xiaomi TV Stick 4K comes with a Mi Voice Remote which has a dedicated Assistant button. It comes pre-loaded with Amazon Prime Video, Netflix, and YouTube, and supports both Dolby Atmos and Dolby Vision. The remote also has shortcut buttons for each of the apps and features a built-in Chromecast. Say hello to a smarter experience with our ??? & ???????? Xiaomi TV Stick 4K. The greatest entertainment experience will now be at your fingertips. Launch on 14.02.2023, 12 Noon! Stay tuned...

Google on Wednesday announced a slew of features powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI), but a mistake in an ad caused its share price to tank. The search engine giant is rushing into the space after the bot ChatGPT caught the imagination of web users around the world with its ability to generate essays, speeches and even exam papers in seconds. Microsoft has announced a multimillion-dollar partnership with ChatGPT maker OpenAI and unveiled new products on Tuesday, while Google tried to steal the march a day earlier by announcing its "Bard" alternative. The bots are quickly being integrated into search engines and Google is battling to preserve its two-decade dominance of the web search industry. But astronomers on Twitter quickly noticed that Google's Bard had given out an error in an ad on Twitter touting its new technology. In the ad, the bot was asked about what to tell a nine-year-old about discoveries from the James Webb Space Telescope. It incorrectly ...

The government neither controls social media intermediaries nor casts any fetters on the freedom of expression of their users, Parliament was informed on Wednesday. Minister of State for Electronics and IT Rajeev Chandrasekhar in a written reply to the Lok Sabha said that the IT Rules, 2021, cast specific obligations on the intermediaries that no intermediaries shall violate the rights accorded to citizens under the constitution. "The government does not interfere or control social media intermediaries and also does not cast any fetters on freedom of expression on their users. The IT Rules, 2021, casts specific obligations on the intermediaries that no intermediaries shall not violate the rights accorded to citizens under the Constitution," the minister said. He said that the government's objective is to ensure an open, safe, trusted and accountable internet for citizens. In response to a question of whether the government proposes to appoint an officer to hold the a...

Google published an online advertisement in which its much-anticipated AI chatbot Bard delivered an inaccurate answer. The tech giant posted a short GIF video of Bard in action via Twitter , describing the chatbot as a "launchpad for curiosity" that would help simplify complex topics. In the advertisement, Bard is given the prompt: "What new discoveries from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) can I tell my 9-year old about?" Bard responds with a number of answers, including one suggesting the JWST was used to take the very first pictures of a planet outside the Earth 's solar system, or exoplanets. This is inaccurate. The first pictures of exoplanets were taken by the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (VLT) in 2004, as confirmed by NASA . The error was spotted hours before Google hosted a launch event for Bard in Paris, where senior executive Prabhakar Raghavan promised that users would use the technology to interact with inform...