There’s good news and bad news for students planning to pursue careers in research in India. The union HRD ministry’s Kewal Kumar Sharma, secretary in the department of higher education, has announced that the Centre plans to grant monthly fellowships of Rs 70,000 each, to 2,000 PhD scholars across IITs and IISC. That’s great news, and the move has been welcomed by faculty and educationists, who say that it will encourage more students to take up research. “The move will also enhance competitiveness among researchers and spur them on to produce quality work,” says Subhendu Sarkar, associate dean for research…
Author: Loknath Das
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Steam engines are passé. Bullet trains are in. So are artificial intelligence (AI), big data analytics and Internet of Things (IoT). These latest technological advancements will be part of a revised engineering syllabus — to be introduced from the academic session starting next July — in an attempt to make Indian engineers more employable through practical learning and new courses. The changed syllabus is aimed at addressing the problem of falling placements of fresh engineering graduates, said a top official of the All India Council of Technical Education (AICTE), the body that regulates technical education in the country. India has…
Angry senators warned attorneys for Facebook, Twitter and Google on Wednesday that they must do more to prevent Russian manipulation of their social media platforms or Congress will be forced to impose new rules. “I must say, I don’t think you get it,” Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., told the attorneys at a hearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee focused on Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. “What we’re talking about is a cataclysmic change. What we’re talking about is the beginning of cyber warfare…You have a huge problem on your hands.” “You created these platforms, and now they are…
For some parents, understanding the pressure of social media can be difficult, and as a result, some teens may feel they cannot talk to their parents about cyberbullying, body image problems and other struggles they face in their day-to-day life. “One of the hallmarks of adolescence is to make mistakes, part of adolescence is figuring out who you are,” Dr. Logan Levkoff, an expert in parent-child communications, told ABC News. “Sometimes you make choices that aren’t so great, but … those choices are an opportunity for growth.” How social media ‘pressure’ and depression may be linked in teens Teens react…
Privacy Matters is an attempt by artistes, activists and writers to take the debate to the grassroots “For more information, read the Constitution,” says the last scene of the recent Privacy Matters video, featuring musician TM Krishna, rapper and activist Sofia Ashraf, writer Perumal Murugan and Dalit rights activists Shital Sathe and Sachin Mali. The video, which is a Justice Rocks production, conceptualised by Krishna and Nityanand Jayaraman, a city-based activist, breaks down the Supreme Court’s landmark judgement on Right to Privacy, with assistance from Usha Ramanathan, an internationally recognised legal scholar. Jayaraman, one of the producers of the video, says “Especially…
Mersal is the most anticipated Tamil release this year. Much like every Vijay film, Mersal opened to fabulous response from fans across the state. However, the film is in news for all the wrong reasons. On Thursday, the Tamil Nadu BJP’s president Tamilisai Soundrajan objected to scenes that criticised the Centre’s GST regime and asked for cuts. She also slammed Vijay and director Atlee for spreading ‘factually incorrect’ information. Thanks to the BJP, now the controversial GST is trending on several social media platforms. In the video, Vijay says that Singapore has a GST of 7% and yet provide free medical services.Whereas in India, he…
PAPERCLIPS, A NEW game from designer Frank Lantz, starts simply. The top left of the screen gets a bit of text, probably in Times New Roman, and a couple of clickable buttons: Make a paperclip. You click, and a counter turns over. One. The game ends—big, significant spoiler here—with the destruction of the universe. In between, Lantz, the director of the New York University Games Center, manages to incept the player with a new appreciation for the narrative potential of addictive clicker games, exponential growth curves, and artificial intelligencerun amok. “I started it as an exercise in teaching myself Javascript. And then it just took…
THE MIRAI BOTNET, a collection of hijacked gadgets whose cyberattack made much of the internet inaccessible in parts of the US and beyond a year ago, previewed a dreary future of zombie connected-device armies run amuck. But in some ways, Mirai was relatively simple—especially compared to a new botnet that’s brewing. While Mirai caused widespread outages, it impacted IP cameras and internet routers by simply exploiting their weak or default passwords. The latest botnet threat, known as alternately as IoT Troop or Reaper, has evolved that strategy, using actual software-hacking techniques to break into devices instead. It’s the difference between checking for open doors and…
A hack at global accounting firm Deloitte disclosed in September compromised a server with emails of some 350 clients, including US government agencies and large corporations, the Guardian reported on Tuesday, citing unnamed sources. Deloitte disputed the story, saying “very few” clients were affected in a statement emailed to Reuters. “We take any attack on our systems very seriously,” the statement said. “We are confident that we know what information was targeted and what the hacker actually did.” After the news broke in September, Deloitte said it had launched a thorough investigation into a cyber-attack that hit its email system. The statement came after…
Google has quietly launched Google Domains, its Web domain registrar service, in India. The service is available in beta phase in the country, and the company is at present not offering any incentive or other deals to customers – as is popular among registrar services. Spotted first by Labnol, Google Domains competes with BigRock, GoDaddy, Hostgator, Bluehost, Namecheap and other registrar services. Google Domains is known for its simple user interface, perhaps the toughest thing a customer has to go through when setting up a domain. From purchasing the domain, to setting it up, Google Domains lists all the specifics in a…