Next week, scientists working on artificial intelligence (AI) and games will be watching the latest human-machine matchup. But instead of a single pensive player squaring off against a computer, a team of five top video game players will be furiously casting magic spells and lobbing (virtual) fireballs at a team of bots called OpenAI Five. They’ll be playing the real-time strategy game Dota 2 at The International in Vancouver, Canada, an annual e-sports tournament that draws professional gamers who compete for millions of dollars. In 1997, IBM’s Deep Blue AI bested chess champion Garry Kasparov. In 2016, DeepMind’s AlphaGo AI beat Lee…
Author: Loknath Das
Turkey’s lira continued its recovery on Thursday, ahead of a crucial conference call between the country’s finance minister and international investors. It rose 2.5% in early trading, with one dollar buying 5.8 lira. A diplomatic spat with the US helped send the lira into a tailspin last week and it hit a record low of 7.2 to the dollar on Monday, sending tremors through emerging markets. However, the lira remains about 20% below where it was a month ago. European stock markets pushed higher on Thursday, with the FTSE 100 index in London up 0.6%. China’s announcement that it would send a trade delegation to…
Virtual pedagogical agents and intelligent tutoring systems (ITSs) have been used for many years to deliver education, with comprehensive reviews available for each field (1, 2). The use of social robots has recently been explored in the educational domain, with the expectation of similarly positive benefits for learners (3–5). A recent survey of long-term human-robot interaction (HRI) highlighted the increasing popularity of using social robots in educational environments (6), and restricted surveys have previously been conducted in this domain (7, 8). In this paper, we present a review of social robots used in education. The scope was limited to robots that were…
WhatsApp has expanded its partnership with Google to start offering Android users added benefits to use WhatsApp backups on Google Drive. The Facebook-owned company has revealed that WhatsApp backups will no longer count towards the Google Drive storage quota starting November 12, 2018. It is also important to note that WhatsApp backups that haven’t been updated in more than one year will be automatically removed from Google Drive storage. Users are recommended to manually back up their WhatsApp chats before November 12 to avoid the loss of any dated backups. The latest move is quite valuable for the Android users who don’t have plenty of storage…
Facebook will broadcast Champions League matches in Latin America through 2021, UEFA announced Wednesday, in the latest bid by online platforms to tap into the lucrative live sports market. The deal will make Facebook “the exclusive free-to-air home for certain UEFA Champions League live matches across Spanish-speaking territories during the 2018-21 cycle,” UEFA said in a statement. The social network giant will show 32 matches per year, including the final, on UEFA’s Champions League Facebook page. The first match featured in the pact is Wednesday’s UEFA Super Cup, which sees Real Madrid face rivals Atletico Madrid. “We look forward to the launch…
Micro-blogging platform Twitter has been asked by the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) to comply with its requests to block objectionable content or face a shutdown in the country, the media reported on Thursday. According to a report in Dawn, Twitter is in danger of being banned in Pakistan because of the government’s inability to force the tech giant to bend to its notions of what is suitable for public consumption or falls within the constitutional realm of legitimate free speech. The PTA on Wednesday informed the Senate Standing Committee on Cabinet Secretariat that while Facebook, YouTube and other social media platforms complied with…
Photo-messaging app Instagram is facing criticism for not removing an advertisement of a paid photo editing app Facetune that is targeted at women under 25 years of age. The social media users have slammed the Facebook-owned Instagram as well as the app for promoting the idea of altering faces for better pictures, AdNews.com reported on Sunday. The paid app allows users to “refine” their smiles, modify their skin, reshape faces with higher cheekbones and refined jaw lines with the provision to add make-up to the picture, the app description reads on Google Play. Instagram users have displayed their anguish towards the encouragement of such…
Spain’s top flight soccer division La Liga announced on Tuesday a landmark deal with Facebook which will allow viewers in the Indian sub-continent to watch every game over the next three seasons free of charge on the social network. A statement from La Liga said all 380 league matches for the new season, which begins on Friday, would be available to viewers in India, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal, Maldives, Sri Lanka and Pakistan. “We are really happy to be on a free to air service in such an important territory as the Indian sub continent,” Alfredo Bermejo, La Liga’s head of digital…
Micro-blogging platform Twitter has made its data-friendly Twitter Lite Android app available in 21 more countries, including India, which can be downloaded from Google Play Store. Built for 2G and 3G networks which are still in use in several parts of India, Twitter Lite has an install size of 3MB, saves data and space and loads quickly on unreliable networks. “While using the app on 2G or 3G, you’ll notice that content will load quickly on Twitter Lite. We want to make sure you can see what’s happening no matter what network you’re on,” Twitter said in a statement late on Monday. Twitter Lite is now available in…
Fincare Small Finance Bank (SFB) aims to grow its loan book size to Rs 10,000 crore by 2020-21 and targets to gain 40 lakh customers by then, its managing director and chief executive Rajeev Yadav said today. “Our FY’21 vision is to be a Rs 10,000 crore assets company and 4 million customers. We believe once we reach Rs 10,000 crore, we will have a reasonable mass of customers and size,” Yadav said in an interaction. Fincare SFB was earlier known as Dish Microfin as an NBFC and it forayed into Delhi market by opening a branch here today. “So…