People should worry about online data collection by technology companies because it gives them unparalleled insight into users lives, the creator of one of the biggest web browsers, Opera, said on Thursday. Jon von Tetzchner said the situation was already comparable to George Orwell’s dystopian novel ‘1984’, since “everyone is being followed and everyone’s information is being collected”. Lack of awareness of the amount of data harvested is “a perfect storm of a really bad idea,” he told Reuters at the Web Summit conference in Lisbon. Von Tetzchner created Opera in 1996 and is now promoting his new browser, Vivaldi, that he…
Author: Loknath Das
Google CEO Sundar Pichai also unveiled a programme called ‘Grow with Google’ aimed at training Americans how to get jobs or grow their businesses. Photo: Reuters Pittsburgh: Google says over the next five years it will spend $1 billion on non-profit organizations helping to raise education levels around the world and commit its employees to a million hours of volunteer work doing the same. CEO Sundar Pichai announced the goal Thursday morning in Pittsburgh, the city where he arrived in the US from India 24 years ago. Pichai also unveiled a programme called “Grow with Google” aimed at training Americans how…
Delhi govt on Tuesday issued health advisory for high risk people, including children, elderly and those suffering from asthma and heart ailments, ask not to step out. Photo: Ramesh Pathania/Mint New Delhi: The Delhi government on Wednesday announced that all schools in the national capital will remain closed till Sunday in view of the “unbearable” air pollution. The air quality in Delhi is turning worse, deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia said. “Can’t compromise with the health of children. All schools including private and government will remain closed till Sunday for all the classes,” Sisodia said in a series of tweets.…
Most of priority sector loans are supposed to serve a social purpose and they are meant to ensure that credit flows to those sections of society whom the banks may otherwise neglect. Photo: AFP It’s not just lending to the beleaguered corporate sector that has slowed—bank credit growth to the priority sector too has fallen considerably in recent months. The priority sector includes lending to agriculture, lending to micro and small enterprises in the manufacturing and services sectors, education and low-cost housing loans, loans to the weaker sections of the population and export credit. Most of these loans are supposed…
In 2015, Intel brought its Maker Lab hardware startup accelerator to India, working with 14 startups. Last year, the company partnered with the Department of Science and Technology (DST) and IIT-Bombay’s startup incubator, Society for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (SINE) to create a program called Plugin, a collaborative incubation program for hardware startups. With four of the startups in the program already having reached market-ready products and several more having completed product development, Gadgets 360 attended a demo day at the Maker Lab in Bengaluru, where we got to see some of the new ideas in action. That said, most people agree that there isn’t a…
The 19.5:9 aspect ratio of the Apple iPhone X is not quite perfect for watching videos when the majority of content out there is at 16:9. Such content covers the equivalent of a 5” screen(a bit less actually) due to letterboxing. The latest YouTube update allows you to get rid of that and use the screen fully, horns and all. You lose a bit from the top and the bottom of the video while the sides lose bits due to the notch and the rounded corners. Still, if you want to, you can. All you need to do is a pinch gesture to…
Edge-to-edge displays might be the talk of the town right now thanks to the iPhone X, but as anyone with even a passing interest in the smartphone industry would know, Apple’s newest flagship is not the first smartphone to embrace this design. That feather belongs in the cap of Xiaomi, which released the Mi Mix last year when the iPhone X when was nothing but a rumour you read about on a site like this one. Xiaomi released the Mi Mix with an all-ceramic body and striking display as a ‘concept’ smartphone, much like the concept cars that manufacturers showcase in the auto world.…
The University Grant Commission (UGC) has asked 12 institutions to get the status of a university to continue offering online and distance learning courses from 2018. According to a notification issued on Tuesday called “UGC (open and distance learning) regulations 2017, (first amendment)”, the standalone institutions can offer courses till 2017-18 the way they have been. However, thereafter, they have to get affiliated to a university, or get the status of a deemed university to continue offering the courses. If they fail to comply, the commission will not give any approval to the courses being offered by the standalone institutions.…
International bodies, politicians, policymakers and researchers have always been interested in the way teachers are prepared for the classroom. This is because the quality of a country’s teachers is an indicator of its developmental level. Distance education is often viewed as a way to speed up the process of producing well qualified, good teachers. This approach involves a model in which students are physically separated from the university or training college in question. Students usually communicate with the institution through emails, online learning support systems or occasional face-to-face tutorials. Distance education tends to be flexible and more affordable than full-time study. It’s useful for…
The Supreme Court on Friday cancelled the engineering degrees of students who earned them through distance learning from three deemed universities after 2005, Live Law reported. The court said the amount paid by these students towards tuition will have to be refunded by the universities by May 31, 2018. The students who had their degrees suspended were from the JRN Rajasthan Vidyapeeth in Udaipur, the Institute of Advanced Studies in Education in Rajasthan’s Churu district and the Allahabad Agricultural Institute in Uttar Pradesh. The Times of India reported that a fourth, Vinayaka Mission Research Foundation in Tamil Nadu, is also included in the list. The…