General Awareness

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY - June 2017

Jun 2017

Sep 06, 2019

YouTube To Pay USD 170M Fine After Violating Kids' Privacy Law

Google agreed to pay USD 170 million to settle charges that it illegally collected and shared data from children on its YouTube video service.
The company agreed to work with video creators to label material aimed at kids and said it will limit data collection when users view such videos, regardless of their age.
Some lawmakers and children's advocacy groups, however, complained that the settlement terms aren't strong enough to rein in a company whose parent, Alphabet, made a profit of USD 30.7 billion 2018 on revenue of USD 136.8 billion, mostly from targeted ads.
Google will pay USD 136 million to the Federal Trade Commission and USD 34 million to New York state, which had a similar investigation.
The fine is the largest the FTC has levied against Google, but it's tiny compared with the USD 5 billion fine against Facebook in 2019 for privacy violations.

Chinese Shoppers Adopt Facial Payments in Cashless Drive

No cash, no cards, no wallet, and no smartphones: China's shoppers are increasingly purchasing goods with just a turn of their heads as the country embraces facial payment technology.
China's mobile payment infrastructure is one of the most advanced in the world, but the new systems -- which require only face recognition -- being rolled out nationwide could make even QR codes seem old-fashioned.
Customers simply make a purchase by posing in front of point-of-sale (POS) machines equipped with cameras, after linking an image of their face to a digital payment system or bank account.

Sep 03, 2019

1st De-Orbit Manoeuvre For Lander Vikram of Chandrayaan 2 spacecraft Performed Successfully

As a prelude to the landing of Chandrayaan-2 on the lunar South Pole, its Lander Vikram has undergone its first de-orbit manoeuvre. It helped the Lander to arrive at a 104 by 128 kilometres orbit around the moon.
The second and final de-orbit mission scheduled for tomorrow would bring it further closer at 36 kilometres at the closest point and 110 kilometres at the farthest. It would pave way for its soft-landing near the lunar South Pole on 7th of September.
The Lander Vikram was successfully separated yesterday from the Orbiter of Chandrayaan-2, which in effect is the mother-craft. During the separation, the Lander also acquired almost the same orbit of the mother-craft.

Google Hire Is The Next Google Tool To Be Shut Down

Google says it will shut down Google Hire, its G Suite tool built for recruiters at small and midsized companies, on September 1st, 2020, despite launching only two years ago. Google did not give a specific reason as to why it's shutting down the tool beyond saying that it's "focusing our resources on other products in the Google Cloud portfolio."
Hire is the latest of several Google products that have shut down recently, joining social network Google+, chat app Allo, and email app Inbox in the Google graveyard. It's good that Google is trying to hone its product offerings, but it's getting hard to trust that new Google services will stick around for more than a couple of years.
Google says that it will no longer be adding new features to Hire, but existing users can keep using the tool until their contract runs out or on September 1st, 2020, whichever comes first. In a small gesture of goodwill, Google says it will stop charging users for the service after their next bill.

KVIC Launches 'Terracotta Grinder' To Reuse Broken, Wasted Pottery

Khadi and Village Industries Commission (KVIC) launched first-ever 'Terracotta Grinder' at Sewapuri in Varanasi. This machine can be used to grind wasted and broken pottery items for re-use in pottery-making.
KVIC Chairman Vinay Kumar Saxena said, "The wasted pottery items were earlier ground in normal Khal-musal (mortar and pestle) and its fine powder was mixed with the normal clay. Mixing this powder in stipulated ratio to normal clay makes the resulting pottery items stronger.''

Sep 02, 2019

ICICI Bank Deploys 'Robotic Arms' To Count Currency Notes

The robots are taking over one more function at the country's second largest private lender. ICICI Bank announced the deployment of industrial 'Robotic Arms' to digitise operations at its currency chests. With this move it has become India's first commercial bank - and among a few across the globe - to customise and deploy industrial robots to automate repetitive high volume steps in handling cash processing on high-end note sorting machines.
They have undertaken a large deployment of 14 industrial robotic arms at prominent currency chests across 12 cities to digitise the currency sorting process and the bank will continue to invest in further mechanisation of note sorting technology and the next generation machines across all its currency chests.
The RBI has authorised select banks' branches - called currency chests - to receive stock rupee notes and coins from the mints and stock them, before onward distribution to all their other branches for dispensing to customers. The currency chests also remit soiled currency notes back to the apex bank. As per the RBI's annual report of 2017-18, there are 3,975 currency chests spread across the country.
The cities where ICICI Bank has deployed the robotic arms are Delhi, Jaipur, Chandigarh, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Bhopal, Sangli, Mangaluru, Raipur, Siliguri and Varanasi, and they will help sort 1.8 billion banknotes annually. That's over 6 million notes in a single working day. Each industrial robotic arm feeds unprocessed cash in three high-end note-sorting machines simultaneously, picks up processed cash from the output stackers, aligns the loose notes, binds the packets and finally drops them in separate trays as per quality of the note.

Indian Oil To Build 1GW Electric Vehicle Battery Plant

State-run oil refiner Indian Oil Corporation Ltd will set up a 1 Giga Watt (GW) plant to make batteries used for running electric vehicles (EVs) in partnership with an overseas start-up using a non-lithium ion raw material that is locally available.
The move fits well with the government's strategy to facilitate the adoption of EVs in the country's energy basket, and cut the fuel import bill. It also supports a key element of the EVs industry — batteries and their recharge.

Chandrayaan 2 Makes One Last Orbit Around The Moon

Chandrayaan-2 completed its final manoeuvre and achieved an orbit of 119 km x 127 km.
The final and fifth lunar-bound orbit manoeuvre for Chandrayaan-2 spacecraft was performed successfully on September 1, 2019. The orbit achieved is 119 km x 127 km. All spacecraft parameters are normal.
The next move for Chandrayaan 2 will be the separation of the lander Vikram and the orbiter which is scheduled to happen on September 2, 2019. The lander will no longer be controlled by the orbiter after the separation. It is scheduled to happen between 12:45 pm and 1:45 pm.

Sep 01, 2019

IT Ministry Partners Google On 'Build For Digital India'

The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) entered into a partnership with Google with the aim of rolling out "Build for Digital India", a programme that will give engineering students a platform to develop market-ready, technology-based solutions that address key social problems.
The programme will invite ideas from students to focus on areas of healthcare, agriculture, education, smart cities and infrastructure, women safety, smart mobility and transportation, environment, accessibility and disability and digital literacy.
Applicants will take part in online and offline learning opportunities on key technologies such as Machine Learning, Cloud and Android.
These will be offered through Google's Developer Student Club network and other Google Developer networks. Google will also offer mentorship sessions in product design, strategy and technology to the most promising products and prototypes.

IIT Kharagpur To Develop National AI Resource Platform

IIT Kharagpur has collaborated with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to develop a resource portal to promote learning and development in the artificial intelligence (AI).
Powered by Amazon SageMaker, a cloud machine learning platform, the National Artificial Intelligence Resource Portal (NAIRP) is aimed at making the search for AI learning resources simpler and more accessible to learners, practitioners and researchers in India.
The initiative has got funding from the Ministry of Human Resources Development, as part of the National Digital Library of India (NDLI) project which is being spearheaded by the premier institute.
With the launch of NAIRP, machine learning practitioners will be able to search quickly and get access to myriads of learning resources.

Aug 31, 2019

Wipro to Use Google Cloud for Digital Shift of Enterprises

Global software major Wipro widened the partnership with search engine behemoth Google to speed up digital transformation of enterprises through cloud adoption.
By collaborating with Google Cloud, Wipro will catalyse innovation for enterprises in industry verticals like consumer goods, banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI), semiconductor and healthcare.
Google's cloud platform is a suite of computing services that runs on the infrastructure it uses internally for its end-user products Google Search and YouTube.
Wipro also aims to enable its customers to migrate faster, enhance their digital experiences and optimise business outcomes.
Wipro's expertise in digital transformation solutions will be an asset for enterprise customers as they look to move critical workloads to our cloud platform.

Chandrayaan-2 Completes 4th Orbit Change

The Indian space agency successfully completed the fourth lunar-bound orbit change for the Chandrayaan-2 spacecraft.
The spacecraft's manoeuvre began at 6.18 pm, using its onboard propulsion system for 1,155 seconds. The next lunar-bound orbit manoeuvre is scheduled on September 1, 2019.

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