Education on technology

Countries around the world, including India, have been considering adopting USB Type-C as the uniform charging port for all electronic devices. The European Union has already introduced rules to make USB Type-C connectors, widely used by Android-based handsets, the standard for mobile phones, tablets and cameras and implement it by 2024. Apple said last year that it will comply with the EU law. A new report now suggests that the Cupertino company may introduce limitations similar to its Lightning port for the USB Type-C ports in its upcoming smartphones. According to a MacRumours report  citing a tipster on Weibo, Apple intends to use a custom integrated circuit (IC) interface for the upcoming USB Type-C port, allowing it to authenticate the components involved in the connection. Since their incorporation in 2012, first-party and MFi-certified Lightning ports and connectors have included a small integrated circuit that verifies the authenticity of the elements present in the con...

Microsoft-backed OpenAI has kept its hit ChatGPT app off-limits to users in China, but the app is attracting huge interest in the country, with firms rushing to integrate the technology into their products and launch rival solutions. While residents in the country are unable to create OpenAI accounts to access the artificial intelligence-powered (AI) chatbot, virtual private networks and foreign phone numbers are helping some bypass those restrictions. At the same time, the OpenAI models behind the ChatGPT programme, which can write essays, recipes and complex computer code, are relatively accessible in China and increasingly being incorporated into Chinese consumer technology applications from social networks to online shopping. The tool's surging popularity is rapidly raising awareness in China about how advanced US  AI is and, according to analysts, just how far behind tech firms in the world's second-largest economy are as they scramble to catch up. "There is hu...

ValueAct Capital Management has taken a stake in Spotify Technology SA, at a time when the audio streaming company is looking to cut costs. "We welcome ValueAct as an investor in Spotify ," a spokesperson for the Swedish company said on Friday, without disclosing further details on the investment. Spotify's shares rose 3.5 percent to $125 (nearly Rs. 10,300). ValueAct Chief Executive Mason Morfit disclosed the investment during a presentation at a Columbia University event in New York on Friday, according to Bloomberg News, which first reported the stake. ValueAct, which declined to comment, distinguishes itself from other activist investors by preferring to stay behind the scenes and rarely presents its investment ideas publicly. It has been investing more frequently in Japan in recent years, but has also made investments in US companies including Microsoft and Citigroup. Meanwhile, Spotify has invested heavily in building up its podcast and audiobooks business in...

BJP Rajya Sabha member Sushil Kumar Modi on Friday suggested that big techs like Facebook, Google and YouTube, should be made to share advertising revenue, they earn from posting news reports, with media companies who are the original content creators. Raising the matter during the Zero Hour in the House, he said newspapers and TV channels have been losing on advertising revenue after the entry of big technology companies. He said print and electronic media companies spend thousands of crores of rupees on news content creation. The main source of income of traditional print and electronic media is advertising revenue, he said with the emergence of tech companies, a large chunk of advertising revenue was moving towards them. Citing data, he said Google India's income from advertisement during 2021-22 was Rs. 24,927 crore and that of Facebook was Rs. 16,189 crore, which was 75 percent more over the preceding year. "These big techs do not spend money for content creation. ...

There's a reason why Apple is under less pressure than tech peers to slash jobs during the current slowdown: It hired more efficiently in the first place. During the industry's pandemic-fueled hiring binge, Apple added fewer employees than other big tech firms. On top of that, the company generated far more revenue per new hire than its peers, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. That more cautious approach is paying off now. Though Apple has frozen hiring in some areas and is keeping a lid on spending — especially outside research and development — it hasn't yet resorted to the mass layoffs underway at Amazon.com , Alphabet's Google , Meta and other tech giants. “This signals a better quality of management at Apple compared to other technology companies that clearly read the signals during the pandemic the wrong way,” said Saxo Bank A/S's Peter Garnry. The company announced plans to shore up its human resources this week by hiring its first chief people of...

The surgeon general is the “nation's doctor” in the United States. They are tasked with giving Americans the “best scientific information” about their health. Late last month, the current US surgeon general, Vivek Murthy, warned 13 is too young to join social media. He said it poses a risk to young people's “self-worth and their relationships”, adding: I, personally, based on the data I've seen, believe that 13 is too early […] the skewed and often distorted environment of social media often does a disservice to many of those children. Is 13 too young? What should parents think about when it comes to their kids and social media accounts? Why are we talking about 13? Major social media platforms, including Twitter , Instagram , Facebook , and TikTok , require users to be at least 13. This includes those in Australia and New Zealand. This minimum age requirement stems from 1998 US legislation that banned the collection of children's personal data without parental conse...

iPhone design director Richard Dinh claims that the base iPhone 14 is a better-functioning phone than the higher-end iPhone 13 models and that an upgrade to the iPhone 14 series will be better for users. Dinh says that while the iPhone 14 appears to be extremely similar to the iPhone 13, it has gone through a major design overhaul, with advantages that may not be immediately apparent when compared to an older model. Weight reductions, cheaper and easier repairability, and longer battery life are among the few changes made to the newer model. In an interview with The Sydney Morning Herald, Dinh says that the better performance of the base iPhone 14 model is owed to the fact that the newer model is less susceptible to thermal throttling. Despite sharing the same chip, the standard iPhone 14 models have better consistent performance than the iPhone 13 Pro models, thanks to a certain internal rearrangement. The design of the iPhone 14 was radically changed to incorporate a central alum...