Category: Tech

Swiggy to Begin Drone Delivery Trial in Delhi-NCR, Bengaluru, Says Garuda Aerospace

Swiggy has entered into a partnership with Garuda Aerospace to begin trial runs using drones to deliver groceries in Delhi-NCR (National Capital Region) and Bengaluru, Karnataka.
The pilot project will assess the viability of using drones in Swiggy’s grocery delivery service Instamart.

The drones will be used to replenish inventory between seller-run dark stores and a “common customer point.”

Swiggy, in a blog post, said that a delivery partner will then pick up orders from the “common point” and deliver them to the customer.

Garuda Aerospace, in a statement, said that the development came in response to the request of the Swiggy Proposal (RFP) that had floated a few weeks ago. “The food delivery platform says that they receive 345 registration in total, and select four.”

Founder CEO of Garuda Aerospace Agnishwar Jayaprakash called this partnership a “dawn of a new era in drone deliveries” and added that with cities getting more crowded, startups like Swiggy have understood how Advanced Garuda Aerospace drones can play a role in urban mobility and logistics via air to cut down-time of deliveries.

Currently, as per the company’s statement, valued at $250 million (roughly Rs. 1,910 crore), Garuda Aerospace is India’s most valuable drone startup with plans to manufacture 1,00,000 indigenous made-in-India drones by 2024.

The company further said that it also provides a wide array of drone tech services that aim to increase efficiency and reduce costs.

Garuda Aerospace Manufacturing Facilities in Gurgaon and Chennai were recently inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi during the launch of the Garuda Aerospace Kisan Drone Yathra, a Monumental spectacle that saw 100 drones taking off simultaneously in 100 villages across the country.

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NASA, Boeing Say Starliner Capsule Ready for Test Launch to ISS on May 19

Boeing’s Starliner capsule is finally ready to reattempt a key test launch to the International Space Station on May 19, officials said Tuesday.

The uncrewed flight, named OFT-2, is a vital step towards certifying the spaceship for eventually carrying passengers, giving NASA a second taxi provider alongside SpaceX.

Aerospace giant Boeing, which was awarded a $4.2 billion (roughly Rs. 32,150 crore) contract for the purpose in 2014, initially attempted the test in 2019, but failed to rendezvous with the ISS after experiencing software glitches that caused flight anomalies.

The programme has since experienced several delays. It was last supposed to fly in August 2021, but the mission was aborted just hours before launch because high humidity led to corrosion within Starliner’s valves.

“It’s been a hard eight months I would say, but very fulfilling that we’ve resolved the problem,” said Steve Stich, manager of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program on a call with reporters.

NASA is targeting 6:54pm (4:24am IST) for lift-off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

If OFT-2 succeeds, Boeing will have to complete another crewed test before it is officially certified, with the company aiming for the end of 2022 for this mission, Boeing’s Mark Nappi said.

In the meantime, Elon Musk’s SpaceX has already ferried more than 20 people to the ISS on its Crew Dragon capsule since its first crewed flight in 2020.

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Musk-Twitter Takeover: Activists Reportedly Ask Advertisers to Boycott Twitter if It Spreads Misinformation

Activist groups called on Twitter advertisers Tuesday to boycott the service if it opens the gates to abusive and misinformative posts with billionaire Elon Musk as its owner.

The Tesla chief’s $44-billion (roughly Rs. 3,36,210 crore) deal to buy the global messaging platform must still get the backing of shareholders and regulators, but he has voiced enthusiasm for dialing back content moderation to a legal minimum and no longer banning people for using the platform to instigate real-world harm.

“Your brand risks association with a platform amplifying hate, extremism, health misinformation, and conspiracy theorists,” said an open letter signed by more than two dozen groups including Media Matters, Access Now, and Ultraviolet.

“Under Musk’s management, Twitter risks becoming a cesspool of misinformation, with your brand attached.”

The groups urged advertisers to require that Twitter maintain its content moderation policies as a non-negotiable term of doing business with the platform.

Twitter makes most of its revenue from ads, and that could be jeopardised by advertisers’ reaction to content posted on the platform, the San Francisco-based tech firm said in a filing with US regulators.

Ad revenue at Twitter increased 16 percent to $1.2 billion (roughly Rs. 9,170 crore) in the recently ended quarter, while revenue from subscriptions and other means decreased to $94.4 million (roughly Rs. 720 crore), the company said in the filing.

While Musk has not revealed nitty-gritty details of how he would run the business side of Twitter, he has expressed a preference for making money from subscriptions.

Analysts doubt that Twitter users would flock to pay for premium content or features such as retweeting posts when social media platforms such as Facebook are free of charge.

As of the end of March, an average 229 million people used Twitter daily, an increase of nearly 16 percent from the first three months of last year, Twitter said in the filing.

The user growth was driven in part by the war in Ukraine, with people using the service to find news and support, the company told regulators.

“We believe that our long-term success depends on our ability to improve the health of the public conversation on Twitter,” the company said in the filing.

Efforts toward that goal include fighting abuse, harassment, spam and “malicious automation,” or when software instead of people manages accounts, Twitter told regulators.

Musk has said he would make fighting such automated “bots” at Twitter a priority.

Twitter estimated that false or spam accounts made up less than five percent of its daily active users in the first quarter of this year, the filing said.

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Eight New Echoing Black Hole Binaries Discovered in Our Galaxy: MIT Researchers

Black holes are intriguing and mysterious objects. They are dreaded, too, because their gravitational pull is so strong that they do not allow anything to pass through them, not even light, except on the rare occasions when they feed. When a black hole pulls in gas and dust from an orbiting star, it sends out spectacular bursts of X-ray that bounce and echo off the gas spiralling inwards. During this phase, the back hole illuminates its extreme surroundings. Researchers from MIT have now found eight new echoing black hole binaries — systems with a star orbiting, and occasionally being eaten away by, a black hole — in our galaxy Milky Way. Previously, only two were known.

The researchers looked for flashes and echoes from nearby black hole X-ray binaries, using a new automated search tool, called the “Reverberation Machine”. This research was supported, in part, by NASA.

By comparing the echoes, they created a general picture of how a black hole evolves during an outburst. They found a black hole first undergoes a “hard” state, whipping up a corona of high-energy photons along with a jet of relativistic particles that is launched away at close to the speed of light. A final, high-energy flash is emitted by the black hole at a given point. The system then enters a low-energy (soft) condition.

This final flash could indicate that a black hole’s corona extends briefly before disappearing completely. These findings, published in the Astrophysical Journal, could help explain how larger, supermassive black holes at the center of a galaxy shape its formation.

 

“The role of black holes in galaxy evolution is an outstanding question in modern astrophysics,” said Erin Kara, assistant professor of physics at MIT, in a statement. Kara said by understanding the outburst in these small black hole binaries they hope to understand how similar outbursts in supermassive black holes affect their native galaxies.

For their study, the team picked up 26 black hole X-ray binary systems known to emit X-ray outbursts. Of these, the team found that 10 systems were close and bright enough that they could discern X-ray echoes amid the outbursts. Eight of the 10 had never been known to produce echoes before.

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Gravity Telescope Conceptual Imaging Technique Described by Stanford Scientists: What It Can Do

The first exoplanet was discovered in 1992. Since then, astronomers have discovered almost 5,000 planets orbiting other stars. However, whenever a new exoplanet is discovered, little information is available about it. All that is known is that the exoplanet exists and it has a few characteristics. Everything else, though, remains a mystery. To address this issue, Stanford University astrophysicists have been working on a new conceptual imaging technique that would be 1,000 times more precise than the strongest imaging technology now in use. Scientists could theoretically manipulate the warping effect of gravity on space-time, known as lensing, to develop imagery far more advanced than any currently available.

The researchers appear to have figured out how to use solar gravitational lensing to see planets outside our solar system. The scientists’ prospective technology could permit significantly more advanced astronomical imaging than is currently possible.

Scientists could use the Sun’s gravitational field to magnify light from an exoplanet passing by aligning a telescope, the Sun, and the exoplanet in a line, with the Sun in the middle.

A gravitational lens, unlike a magnifying glass with a curved surface that bends light, has a curved space-time that allows it to image far away objects.

The researchers published their findings in the May 2 edition of The Astrophysical Journal.

The proposed method, though, would necessitate more advanced space travel than is now possible. Nonetheless, the researchers believe that the concept’s promise, as well as what it could tell about other worlds, merits further investigation, and development.

It wasn’t until 1919, during a solar eclipse when gravitational lensing was experimentally detected. Scientists were able to spot stars near the Sun offset from their known positions due to the Moon blocking the Sun’s light. This was the first observational evidence that Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity was right, and it was unequivocal proof that gravity could bend light.

Bruce Macintosh, a physics professor at the School of Humanities and Sciences at Stanford and deputy director of the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology, said that using this technology, they want to be able to take photos of planets orbiting other stars that are as good as the photos they can take of planets in the solar system. The researchers hope to take a photo of a planet 100 light-years away that has the same impact as a photo of the Earth taken by Apollo 8.

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Bacteria Change Swimming Pattern While Navigating Through Tight Spaces: Researchers

A new study has found that bacteria change their swimming pattern while moving through tight spaces. The researchers, from the University of Hawaii in the US, said the sudden change in the behaviour of bacteria has come as a surprise. They found that the bacteria made a beeline, and swam in a straight line, to escape from the confinement as opposed to open spaces. In open spaces, they appeared to meander with no noticeable pattern, changing their direction arbitrarily and at random points in time. Bacteria live symbiotically on or within the bodies of nearly all organisms.

The researchers hope their findings could help understand how bacteria live in the human microbiome. Microbes frequently take complex pathways, even squeezing through narrow openings in tissues. This study demonstrates that tight spaces may serve as a cue for bacteria on how to navigate complex environments.

For their study, the researchers used Vibrio fischeri, a rod-shaped bacterium found globally in marine environments. The Hawaiian bobtail squid, Euprymna scolopes, forms an exclusive symbiotic relationship with Vibrio fischeri, which has a whip-like tail that it uses to swim to specific places in the squid’s body. The researchers designed controlled chambers to observe the Vibrio bacteria swimming.

The study has been published in the peer-reviewed Biophysical Journal.

Differences in Vibrio fischeri swimming patterns when in open spaces or tight spaces
Photo Credit: University of Hawaii/ Lynch et al.

 

Using microscopes, the team found that the bacteria showed different swimming patterns as they moved between open areas and tight spaces. Their objective appeared to avoid getting stuck in confined spaces, the researchers said.

“This finding was quite surprising,” said Jonathan Lynch, a postdoctoral fellow and researcher on the project.

Lynch said they wanted to study how bacteria cells changed their shape in tight spaces, but it was difficult to find them in tight spaces. “After looking more closely, we figured out that it was because the bacteria were actively swimming out of the tight spaces, which we did not expect.”

In open spaces, bacteria appeared to meander with no discernible pattern. Upon entry into confined spaces, they straightened their swimming paths to escape from confinement.

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Telegram Premium Spotted on Latest iOS Beta, Offers Premium Stickers, Reaction Emojis

Telegram recently rolled out its version 8.7.2 beta for iOS, which included a new range of reaction emojis and stickers, as spotted by the Telegram beta channel. These new stickers and emojis are said to be premium features available only for the Telegram Premium users. All users will reportedly receive a prompt asking them if they want to sign up for the Telegram Premium subscription plan when viewing these reactions or stickers on the instant messaging app. It appears that Telegram is looking for new ways to monetise its platform by adding a premium plan that is said to offer special stickers and reactions as a start.

Telegram has not shared much information about the pricing and its exact availability, but as mentioned, the subscription will give users the access to unlock premium stickers and exclusive reaction emojis. This service has been spotted on the iOS beta app for the time being. There are no hints as to when and if the feature will be available on Android. As per the findings of the Telegram beta channel, the premium stickers won’t be visible to the free users in conversations on the platform. Instead, they will see a banner telling them to “unlock additional reactions by subscribing to Telegram Premium.”

In the meantime, we are expecting to hear more from the company about the latest subscription plan unlocking price and what other perks it offers because Telegram has not fully detailed the program yet, as mentioned already.

Moreover, Telegram recently launched a few more features in this year’s second spring update, including custom notification tones, setting custom durations for muting chats or auto-deleting messages, and improved forwarding that preserves replies. Through these features, all users can send and receive new animations as well as animated emojis. Another major feature is the capability for bots that will allow developers to offer website-like experiences through the instant messaging app.

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Fast X: Louis Leterrier Reportedly Set to Replace Justin Lin as Director

Samsung Says it Expects 40 Percent Share in Premium Mobile Segment in H1 2022 in India



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Samsung Galaxy Watch 5 Said to Skip Body Temperature Tracking Feature: Ming-Chi Kuo

Samsung Galaxy Watch 5, the next smartwatch in the South Korean tech giant’ smartwatch range, has been rumoured to come with a thermometer feature that can be used to track skin temperature, which is useful to detect early signs of infection and track ovulation cycles. However, it seems like Samsung might not be able to add this feature to its upcoming smartwatch. Apple is also trying to bring this feature to its next-gen smartwatch, but hasn’t had any success yet, according to noted analyst Ming-chi Kuo. Therefore, he believes that that if Apple could not do the same with their smartwatch, Samsung too can’t do it.

Reportedly, Samsung is facing difficulties coding the temperature-reading algorithm for the Galaxy Watch 5, almost similar to what Apple had gone through while adding this feature to Apple Watch 7 Series. However, this process is said to be necessary to enable the hardware sensors to deliver accurate readings. Previous reports, once again by TF International Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, have hinted at Apple working to include the same feature to measure body temperature in the Apple Watch Series 8. Kuo said due to lack of a qualifying algorithm, Apple didn’t add the body temperature feature to Apple Watch Series 7.

Kuo, through a tweet, claims that “Apple has already given up on implementing body temperature readings for this year’s 7th-gen Apple Watch (it looks like a “better luck next year” scenario) and speculates that Samsung won’t be able to do the same for the Watch 5.”

The challenge both Samsung and Apple are facing somehow relates to the fact that surface skin temperature can vary depending on external factors. Meanwhile, both the companies are trying to work on hardware that is capable of reading surface temperatures in order to allow their smartwatches to take accurate readings.

Moreover, Apple might win by solving this puzzle with the Apple Watch 8 Series before Samsung and can bring this feature to the market. Samsung’s Galaxy Watch 5 may offer other new features and design, but if recent claims are to go by, then the smartwatch may not come with a body temperature sensor.

A recent report claimed that the Samsung Galaxy Watch 5 may launch with slightly larger batteries for the 40mm and 44mm models compared to the Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 series. The report said the Galaxy Watch 5 40mm (EB-BR900ABY) will have a 276mAh battery, up from 247mAh (+29mAh). The larger Watch 5 44mm (EB-BR910ABY) will have a 397mAh battery, up from 361mAh (+36mAh). The Galaxy Watch 5 generation won’t be unveiled until the second half of this year, the report added.



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Wordle Creator Promotes Knotwords, a New Everyday Puzzle Challenge

Knotwords, a crossword-like puzzle game without a clue list, is an evolution of Wordle with complex puzzles and easy structure. Wordle, a five-word puzzle challenge created in October 2021, has been a favourite for many who love to put their brains to test every day. Developed by Welsh software engineer Josh Wardle, the game is now owned and published by The New York Times Company, which took over the rights in January 2022. Three months later, Wardle is now recommending Knotwords, an everyday puzzle challenge, which is said to give a tough competition to Wordle. While Wordle led to set inspiration for creation of several puzzle games like Lewdle, Sweardle, Heardle or Globle, nothing has managed to get attention of Wardle before as Knotwords.

Knotwords has been developed by Zach Gage and Jack Schlesinger. Gage, earlier a designer for spaceship-in-crisis sim Tharsis, announced the new game Knotwords on Twitter last week, describing it as “a minimal, elegant logic puzzle — with words.” His tweet was endorsed by Wardle, who mentioned Knotwords as an “incredibly elegant daily word game.”

How to play Knotwords

If you have played Wordle before, Knotwords might appear easy to you. However, instead of just one, this game has several Wordle quizzes arranged in a crossword format. The puzzle is divided into sections, usually Tetris-like parts, which provide a few alphabets. The player needs to fit these alphabets in the particular section in such a way that forms a word perfectly. The task doesn’t end here. To complete a Knotword puzzle, one has to ensure the all the rows and columns end up forming a valid English word each.

If you get stuck in between, Knotwords offers a hint feature that gives a definition of any word that will be somewhere on the board. However, this comes with a three-minute time penalty, which is added to the player’ in-game timer.

 

To watch a quick trailer of the game’s rules, one can check out the YouTube clip provided by the developers on the official game page.

Where to play Knotwords

You can download the Wordle-like yet complex puzzle game Knotwords on the App Store, as well as Google Play Store with 30 puzzles for a month. The game is also available on Steam (Mac/PC) where you can buy the full version for $4.99 (approximately Rs. 380) a year or a one-time purchase of $11.99 (approximately Rs. 920). With a 10 percent discount, the game is available at Rs. 359 in India. The full version gives you access to old Knotwords archives, hints, personal stats, as well as colour themes.

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Instagram Starts Forcing Users to Enter Date of Birth to Access App

Instagram has started forcing users to enter their date of birth before being allowed to use the app. The change comes over eight months after Instagram announced its plans to make age verification mandatory on its platform and started prompting users to fill in their birthday details. The prime purpose of the update is to restrict access for kids below the age of 13. Instagram will also be able to use the given date of birth to offer better targeted ads to users.

To obtain the date of birth, Instagram is showing a screen before allowing access to its content. It asks users to enter their date of birth and has no option to bypass.

“Before you can continue using Instagram, you need to provide your birthday, even if this account is for something like a business or pet,” the screen prompt reads. “This helps us protect younger people in our community. We’ll also use your birthday to help personalise your experience, including ads. It won’t be part of your public profile.”

Several users who have not yet provided their date of birth on Instagram have started receiving the new prompt. A number of them have taken to Twitter and complained about Instagram’s move to forcefully ask for their birth date.

 

Instagram initially started asking for age verification as an optional feature in 2019. The platform last year made it mandatory to provide date of birth details and announced the roll out of prompts to let users fill in the information in the midst of looking at the photos and videos in their feed or uploading a new content for their followers. However, up until now, the Instagram app was accessible to users who did not provide their details and skipped the earlier prompts.

Gadgets 360 has reached out to Instagram for a comment on the update and will update this article when the platform responds.

Some young users are, of course, likely to be able to bypass restrictions by giving their fake birth date details. However, Instagram — and Facebook — both have an artificial intelligence (AI) backed system in place to detect accurate age of its users.

“We look at things like people wishing you a happy birthday and the age written in those messages, for example, ‘Happy 21st Bday!’ or ‘Happy Quinceañera.’ We also look at the age you shared with us on Facebook and apply it to our other apps where you have linked your accounts and vice versa — so if you share your birthday with us on Facebook, we’ll use the same for your linked account on Instagram,” the social networking giant writes on its site to explain its birthday detection technology.

Last year, Facebook and Instagram parent Meta was found to be working on a kids-focussed version of the Instagram app that could be called Instagram for Kids. It was a result of generating growing interest from young users and facing strong criticism from government bodies including the US Congress for increasing Instagram’s use among kids. Advocacy groups and authorities including the US State Attorneys General urged the company to drop its plans. As a result of the outrage, it finally paused the development of the app in September.

Nevertheless, Meta has not yet completely scrapped its plans for developing Instagram for Kids — though it was urged to do so by various religious leaders in February.

The plan with restricting access for kids through the latest development could eventually help Instagram to redirect its young audience to the new app that we may see in the coming future. Meta would also be able to generate more revenue by serving targeted ads after getting the date of birth of its users.



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