TikTok, the explosively popular Chinese social media platform, may be approaching the upper limits of its global popularity. The platform launched in 2016 as a lip-syncing app called Musical.ly before being acquired by ByteDance, now the world’s most valuable startup. Following an international launch in 2017 and an official rebranding, TikTok has since expanded into a unique hybrid somewhere between Vine and YouTube that’s captured the cultural zeitgeist among teenage smartphone owners in unprecedented fashion. In the two and a half years since it launched outside China, TikTok has seen astounding growth, adding more than 500 million users so far this…
Author: Loknath Das
Electric Vehicle (EV) maker Tesla is under scrutiny over battery and security issues after at least two dozen complaints were filed with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), including a Chicago consumer who said his 2014 Tesla lost about 30 miles of range after a software update last May, say media reports. The software update essentially means he needs to charge the vehicle more often — and, he has reportedly said, it also takes longer to charge up. Federal safety regulators have begun looking into Tesla battery fires. The probe covers all Model S and Model X Tesla vehicles manufactured between 2012 and 2019 and…
Apple India reportedly announced that it has registered a new record in its fiscal Q4 2019 and the company claims to have generated an all-time revenue record for the Mac in the country. At the earnings call, on Wednesday, it stated that India is back on Apple’s growth trajectory after some dull quarters in the past. The July-September period saw Apple log record revenue in the country and is set to break the numbers in its fiscal 2020 Q1 (January-March period) as iPhone 11 series has witnessed a good response from the Indian buyers in its first few weeks of sale.…
Social media has transformed the way we debate politics. Donald Trump, the president of the United States, often uses Twitter to announce new policies, attack an opponent or even re-tweet what many consider to be misleading information. Facebook, Twitter and YouTube have been criticised for allowing political hate speech and misinformation to flourish on their platforms. Now, with just a year to go before the US presidential election, Twitter is banning all political advertising around the world from next month. While some Democratic candidates welcomed the move, Trump’s campaign manager called it “a very dumb decision” intended to silence conservatives. So, will the…
Srinagar: Students studying in higher education institutions — all colleges and universities— in Valley will have their exams from November amidst the tense situation. Albeit, the students have not attended classes for more than two months. The official said the University of Kashmir, the largest seat of learning in the Valley, had already announced the dates for the postgraduate courses, semester I and IV, which is starting from November. “We held some classes before August 5 and after that students were provided with the study material to prepare for the exams”, Secretary of the Higher Education Department Talat Parvez said.…
As 2020 frontrunner Elizabeth Warren joins 32,500 Chicago teachers striking for better working conditions today, questions are arising about the details of her plan to raise teacher salaries. As a teacher who has spent my career fighting Washington’s corporate standardized testing and teacher evaluation agenda, I am over-the-moon to see Warren become the last Democratic presidential candidate to release a K-12 education plan. However, in this brief analysis of the education plans from all 19 Democratic presidential candidates, it is notable that Warren’s position on raising teacher salaries lacks the clarity offered by other top-tier candidates, Senators Bernie Sanders and…
Teenagers using social media for more than three hours a day are more likely to go to bed after 23:00 and wake during the night, UK research suggests. This affects one in three teens – with one in five spending five hours or more on apps like Instagram, WhatsApp and Facebook every day, the study said. The University of Glasgow researchers said 13 to 15 year-olds may be delaying bedtime by being on their phones. Psychiatrists say screens should be avoided in the hour before bed. Body-clock changes But the study, of 12,000 teenagers, recognised that getting them off their…
Video game stocks, like Electronic Arts Inc. (EA), Activision Blizzard Inc. (ATVI) and Take Two Interactive Software Inc. (TTWO), have risen spectacularly over the past five years, but have taken a big hit over the past year and have lagged the rest of the market. That underperformance is about to change, however. The release of enhanced new gaming consoles over the next few years will fuel increased demand for video games and help to revive the lagging stocks of their makers, according to Barron’s. What It Means for Investors Sony Corp. (SNE) recently announced the launch of its newest console, the…
WASHINGTON : As part of its goal to become a $5 trillion economy by 2024, India plans to spend $1.4 trillion on its infrastructure in the next five years, Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said on Saturday. Addressing the annual meeting of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) here, Sitharaman said a task force has been constituted in the finance ministry that will draw up a national infrastructure pipeline for the next five years. “As we envisage becoming a five trillion-dollar economy by 2024-25, our focus on creating world-class infrastructure has become even more resolute. If we spent $1.1 trillion on infrastructure in the last 10…
Apple is officially warning users of really old iOS devices to update to the latest available software or upgrade devices totally; as on November 3, these devices may begin to malfunction in regards to GPS location, time, and date. Now luckily enough for most of us, this won’t be an issue, as this warning is for people who are still using devices like the iPhone 5 or earlier, and for users of the iPad 4th Gen or earlier. In order to avoid the forthcoming bug, those iPhone 5 and iPad 4th Gen users need to update to at least iOS…