General Awareness

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY - December 2014

Dec 2014

Jul 25, 2023

AST SpaceMobile Opens Research Centre in Hyderabad's Sattva Knowledge City

AST SpaceMobile, a company building the first and only space-based cellular broadband network accessible directly by standard mobile phones, opened a new research and development (R&D) services hub and space technology development centre in Hyderabad.
The state-of-the-art facility will focus on next-generation hardware, software, space-related technologies and operations. Narayana Pidugu, a veteran of the technology and space industries, will direct the new facility as general manager and vice president of global R&D services. Vodafone, Rakuten, American Tower, Samsung NEXT and Bell Canada are also investors in AST SpaceMobile.

Twitter Replaces Iconic Bird Logo with 'X'

Elon Musk, owner of Twitter launched the new logo of Twitter 'X' by replacing the iconic bird logo. The 'X' logo was in the pipeline for a while with Musk's strong want of an 'everything app'. Before he bought Twitter for $44 billion, Musk described the platform as an accelerant to creating 'X', the 'everything app'.
This rebranding of Twitter is not just an aesthetic exercise. 'X' logo is a part of a larger effort to convert Twitter into an 'everything app', based on China's WeChat, that allows users to do everything from making payments to hotel bookings.

Jul 24, 2023

Government Cautions Internet Users against Ransomware 'Akira'

The government cautioned against an Internet ransomware called 'Akira' which steals important information and encrypts data which can lead to extortion.
CERT-In, the government's technology arm which guards against cyber attacks, issued an advisory regarding 'Akira', a computer malware targets Windows and Linux-based systems.
Akira steals information and then encrypts data on their systems. Once this is done, the malware conducts double extortion, thus forcing the victim into paying the ransom amount.
In case the victim does not pay, they release their victim's data on their dark web blog.
CERT-In thus suggested that Internet users should use basic online hygiene and protection protocols to protect themselves from such attacks. It also recommended that users should maintain offline backups of critical data and keep them updated, to prevent its loss in case of an attack.

Jul 22, 2023

Meta Collaborates with Microsoft to Launch Llama 2 AI Language Model

Mark Zuckerberg's Meta partnered with Microsoft to introduce Llama 2, its next-generation open-source language model.
Llama 2 was created within a research lab in Meta, by a team led by Yann LeCun who is hailed as one of the founding fathers of neural networks. Reportedly, Llama 2 has outperformed GPT-3 and is similar to ChatGPT when it comes to chat model quality. However, it lacks the ability to code.
Llama 2 is a large language model (LLM) that can be used to create chatbots such as ChatGPT. LLMs are trained on humongous amounts of data that allow them to replicate human language and even programming. Now that Meta is making Llama 2 open-source, its content will be available for people to access for free and use and tweak to create their own AI chatbots for other purposes.
The objective behind making Llama 2 open source is so that start-ups and other businesses can access it and tweak it to create their own AI products. This could potentially add to the ever-increasing list of chatbots that can rival OpenAI's ChatGPT or Google Bard.

Jul 21, 2023

Gujarat to Get Country's 1st 'Satellite Network Portal Site'

Gujarat will get the country's first 'Satellite Network Portal Site'. An MoU was signed between OneWeb and the state government in Gandhinagar for the establishment of the satellite network portal site near Mehsana. The satellite network portal will be set up at two places in Jotana taluka of Mehsana district, Gujarat with an estimated cost of over Rs. 100 crore for Phase-1. This project under Digital India, aims to provide affordable, secure and high speed internet access to villages, district panchayats, local administrative bodies, government departments, and other entities throughout the country. It is also expected to create approximately 500 direct and indirect employment opportunities in the state.

Jul 18, 2023

ISRO Prepares for a PSLV Mission

After the spectacular start to the Chandrayaan-3 moon mission, scientists at the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) were back in Sriharikota for another important launch later this month.
The Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle, C56 (PSLV-C56) mission is expected to lift off from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre towards July-end, July 26 as per the latest updates.
ISRO will be using a 'core alone' variant of the PSLV for this mission, S. Unnikrishnan Nair, Director of the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC), ISRO's lead facility for launch vehicles said.
The PSLV-C56 will have seven payloads in all including the 351.9 kg earth observation satellite DS-SAR (short for Synthetic Aperture Radar) from Singapore. The others are Arcade (23.58 kg), Velox-AM (23 kg) and Orb-12 Strider (12.8 kg). The remaining three are nanosatellites weighing less than 10 kg each. They are the Galassia-2 (3.84 kg), SCOOB-II (4.1 kg) and NuLIon (3.05 kg), according to a list provided by the VSSC. These satellites will be placed in a Low Earth Orbit (LEO).

Share on

TCY Analytics (View Subscription Plans)

Subscribe to GK Updates

I want to receive

GK Tags

July GK, June GK, May GK, INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS, ENVIRONMENT, BUSINESS AND ECONOMY, SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY, SPORTS, NATIONAL AFFAIRS, DEFENCE, PERSONS IN NEWS, DAYS AND EVENTS, AWARDS AND HONOURS, GOVERNMENT POLICIES AND SCHEMES, GENDER/ HEALTH/ EDUCATION, ART AND CULTURE, BOOKS AND AUTHORS, TOURISM AND HOTEL INDUSTRY AWARENESS, ART AND CULTURE, LAW AND CONSTITUTIONAL AFFAIRS

Start Discussion

On any topic

Take Tests

Compiled from GK updates

Login

Sign Up

Forgot Password

Download TCY App

Unlock All Services And Enjoy The Premium Benefits

US$ 10

US$ 13

US$ 15

US$ 17

US$ 19

US$ 20

US$ 21

US$ 22

US$ 23

US$ 24

US$ 25

US$ 26