The hackers claimed to be The Chuckling Squad, also broke into the account of Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and actress Chloe Grace Moretz.
India will launch Chandrayaan-3 in 2020, Union Minister Jitendra Singh said on Tuesday, asserting that the mission cost will be less than Chandrayaan 2.
Singh, who is the Minister of State in the Prime Minister's Office, said it is wrong to term Chandrayaan 2 as a disappointment since it was India's maiden attempt to land on the lunar surface and no country could do so in its first attempt.
"Yes, the lander and rover mission will mostly likely happen in 2020. However, as I have said before, the Chandrayaan 2 mission cannot be called a failure as we have learnt a lot from it. There is no country in the world that has landed on its first attempt. The US took several attempts. But we will not need so many attempts," Singh said.
He added that the experience gathered from Chandrayaan 2 and available infrastructure will bring down the cost of Chandrayaan-3.
He, however, declined to specify the month of the third lunar mission launch.
Chandrayaan 2 mission was India's first attempt to land on lunar surface. The ISRO had planned the landing on the South Pole of the lunar surface. However, the lander Vikram hard-landed.
In a written response to a question in the Winter session of Parliament, Singh said, "The velocity was reduced from 1683 m/s to 146 m/s. During the second phase of the descent, the reduction in velocity was more than the designed value. Due to this deviation, the initial conditions at the start of the fine braking phase were beyond the designed parameters. As a result, Vikram hard landed within 500 m of the designated landing site."
From India, as many as 107 legal requests were sent to TikTok, of which 8 were categorized as emergency requests.
Gloria Rivera likes the freedom of freelance.
She moved to San Diego from Peru in 2005 and has a bustling career as an interpreter and translator for doctors, courts and conferences.
Now, as a new California law governing freelancers is set to take effect Wednesday, her clients are wary. They are asking for more paperwork. Some services are hitting pause on hiring Californians at all.
“Everyone’s scared in California,” Rivera, 42, said. “Who’s going to hire me as an employee for three assignments a month?”
The new law, Assembly Bill 5, will radically reshape freelance work in California. Prompted in part by frustration with the treatment of workers by companies like the ride-hailing behemoths Uber and Lyft, the bill was created to extend workplace legal protections to roughly 1 million people in the state.
On Monday, Uber and Postmates filed a lawsuit in federal court in California seeking to block the law from being enforced against them. But the suit is unlikely to stop the law from going into effect in other professions.
Those other industries include a wide variety of freelance workers, such as writers, translators, strippers and clergy. Many said they were now discovering that the law could make earning a living much more difficult.
The idea behind the law, signed in September, is that many workers are misclassified as contractors so companies can save money. Unlike contractors, employees are protected by minimum-wage and overtime rules and are entitled to workers’ compensation and unemployment insurance. Their employers pay half their payroll taxes for Social Security and Medicare.
Assembly Bill 5 codified and extended the reach of a 2018 State Supreme Court ruling that said workers must be classified as employees if the work they did was a regular part of the company’s business. Under the ruling, a plumber who fixes a leak at a store may be a legitimate contractor. But workers who sew dresses at home using cloth and patterns provided by the manufacturer are likely to be employees.
The new law also means a company must treat workers as employees if it controls how they do their work, or if the workers don’t run independent businesses in the same line of work that they do for the company. A plumber who worked only at the store would most likely be deemed an employee.
The law has a host of so-called carve-outs. It exempts certain white-collar workers like doctors and accountants, but it extends legal protections to tens of thousands of low-paid workers in fields like construction, janitorial services and hairstyling.
But complexities cropped up quickly. For example, marketers and grant writers were exempted, but journalists were not.
So a weekly columnist for a newspaper must now be considered an employee, since under the new law a freelance writer can publish only 35 so-called submissions a year with a publication. (A video and a text article on the same event would count as one.) The intention was to require newspapers to put these workers on staff. The result in some cases has been layoffs.
Vox Media cut more than 200 California freelancers, citing the new law. The transcription service Rev told its freelancers that it would be leaving California.
Emma Gallegos, 34, has been freelancing while saving money to start a local news website, Hwy 99, covering her hometown, Bakersfield, located in California’s agricultural heartland. She recently took a copy-editing test to get a significant contract that would help pay her bills. Afterward, the potential client emailed her, apologising and explaining that it would not be able to hire her because she lived in California.
“There aren’t many full-time writing jobs in Bakersfield, so these kinds of remote editing contracts are important for me,” Gallegos said. “I just feel really frustrated and like I’m getting set back from my goals.”
Proponents of the new law argue that many companies are playing on worker anxieties and that many of the arrangements that employers are abandoning were illegal even before AB 5.
“A lot of these employers are sending out these fearmongering emails,” said Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez of San Diego, the bill’s author. “I guess in this day and age of Twitter, that’s an easy thing to do — create a kind of mass hysteria.”
Gonzalez, a progressive Democrat, has in recent weeks become a fierce Twitter presence pushing back at critics, sometimes with profanity.
When asked about some of Gonzalez’s tweets, a spokeswoman said by email: “The assemblywoman is incredibly angry at an economic system that has caused a permanent underclass in her community of working men and women who are constantly being squeezed by corporate greed.”
Gonzalez has said the problems facing companies that rely on freelancers preceded the new law.
SB Nation, the sports website owned by Vox Media, which cited AB 5 as the reason it recently let go about 200 freelancers, was already sued by freelancers before the law changed. In one lawsuit, freelancers claimed that they worked as many as 40 hours a week but earned less than $150 a month.
A spokeswoman for Vox Media declined to comment but cited a post from SB Nation’s executive director in which he said the change was also “part of a business and staffing strategy that we have been exploring over the past two years.”
Even in situations where the new law might hurt workers, Gonzalez said, the reality is more nuanced than opponents let on. She pointed out that some media outlets, including SB Nation and The Los Angeles Times, were hiring more employees because of the new law.
While acknowledging concerns among journalists, Gonzalez attributed the media angst over the law partly to journalistic ethics: Those who lose their jobs feel free to complain loudly. But those who may benefit from the law by becoming employees, she said, “think it’s not appropriate to be engaged in something affects them, that they have a conflict.”
Some freelancers said the new law would force them to change the way they worked. And some said they preferred or needed their flexible schedules. Many companies limit their employees’ flexibility for practical reasons, though there is nothing that requires them to impose a rigid schedule.
Nancy Depper, a copy editor and proofreader in Oakland, has multiple sclerosis. So “setting my own hours makes life infinitely better for all the reasons,” she said. She said she had lost a set of contracts for 2020 worth $120,000.
“I’ve barely had time to process the information,” Depper, 53, said. “I don’t know what my options are going forward.”
The National Press Photographers Association, which represents photographers who could lose freelance work because of the law, has filed a lawsuit challenging AB 5.
“Photographers and writers are stuck between the rock of dwindling to nonexistent employment opportunities and the hard place of AB 5,” said Mickey H Osterreicher, general counsel for the association.
The politics of the bill were messy. There was significant support on the left for regulating Uber and Lyft, which use incentives to encourage drivers to work when and where the companies need them while avoiding any of the protections offered by employment. Gonzalez focused partly on those companies.
But many of those who could end up losing freelance work consider themselves progressives, so it has been confusing to find themselves disagreeing with a progressive lawmaker over a union-backed law.
Vanessa McGrady, a writer in Los Angeles who runs a feminist clothing brand, planned to volunteer for Sen Elizabeth Warren’s presidential campaign next year. But then Warren endorsed AB 5. Now McGrady, who is anxious about how the law will affect her career, is conflicted.
“I feel so strongly that workers need protection,” McGrady said. “But this bill is killing cockroaches with a cannon.”
Nellie Bowles and Noam Scheiber c.2019 The New York Times Company
From India, as many as 107 legal requests were sent to TikTok, of which 8 were categorized as emergency requests.
As of December 15, the government says that 1.15 crore FASTags have been issued.
The New Year's special Google doodle has Froggy seated on a high-rise watching the skyline and the magnificent and symbolic sunrise signifying the dawn of a new morning.
I often look back in wonder at the horrors of humanity’s past, marvelling at the primitive barbarity of Spartans that tossed young Leonidases out to survive in the untamed wilds, of Indian tribes that skewered the muscles of their young and hung them upside down till they fainted as a rite of passage, of the Amazonian people that forced boys to be bitten by bullet ants and girls to have every strand of their hair individually plucked out at their roots.
When I think about it though, I would imagine that Generation Alpha — the successor to Gen Z — would ascribe that same horror to parents who sent their kids to school sans smartphone, to students who had to endure college without YouTube, and to the 20-somethings of yore forced to find mates without Tinder.
Would Gen Alpha even be able to comprehend travel without Uber or Airbnb, navigation without Google Maps, and a social life without Instagram? How would one even survive in a world without information just a tap away, where the pace of communication is defined by our ability to swipe on glass screens? Unborn babies of the future won’t be kicking mothers in their wombs, they’ll be tapping mommy’s bellies with their fingers.
The ability to communicate with machines is already intrinsic to the human condition and an inevitable link in the evolutionary chain. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that the ability to communicate defines the pace of evolution.
Communication allowed the first cells to band together to form organisms, allowed organisms to come together to form packs, packs to tribes, tribes to societies, societies to civilisations.
Communication allowed individual entities to band together under common ideals, to share information and feedback that allowed the whole to evolve faster than the individual.
Organic means of communication can only get us so far, however, and it’s only this past decade that, for better or worse, we truly learnt how to communicate with, and via, machines.
It was in this decade that battle lines were drawn not around the flow of oil, but of data. Facebook became emblematic of all that was wrong with Big Tech, Twitter a mirror of humanity’s hatred, Google of its indifference.
This was the decade when governments scrambled for control of the information superhighways of the nations they were governing, where internet shutdowns became a means of control, where genocides were orchestrated via social networks.
But it’s not all doom and gloom. While oppressors fought for control, there were those who fought back.
Apple emerged as a staunch guardian of privacy, the Arab Spring would never have happened without social media, the Hong Kong protests would not still be alive if it wasn’t for the internet.
This was also the decade that the power of the internet allowed science to go global. We saw the birth of the first planet-scale telescopes, documented the shockwaves of cosmic collisions, imaged our first black hole, confirmed the existence of the God particle, and made advances in gene-editing that were, up until a decade ago, only described in science fiction.
Fast and easy access to the internet is revolutionising education and empowering a new generation of entrepreneurs, uplifting entire sections of an oppressed society.
The ability to communicate is what brought humanity to this point, this hyper-connected reality where the survival of an entire species is now contingent on the efficiency with which it can talk to supercomputers.
These are exciting times, revolutionary even, but the thing is, we’re still learning, and we've made mistakes. We need to tread with caution.
Whatever the next decade holds for us, it’s the learnings from this past decade that will define our future.
Former Nissan chairman Carlos Ghosn, who is awaiting trial in Japan on charges of financial misconduct, has arrived in Beirut, a close friend said Monday. He apparently jumped bail.
It was not clear how Ghosn, who is of Lebanese origin and holds French and Lebanese passports, left Japan where he was under surveillance and is expected to face trial in April 2020.
Ricardo Karam, a television host and friend of Ghosn who interviewed him several times, told The Associated Press Ghosn arrived in Lebanon Monday morning.
“He is home,” Karam told the AP in a message. “It’s a big adventure.”
Karam declined to elaborate. Local media first reported Ghosn arrived in Lebanon but didn’t offer details.
There was no immediate comment from Japan or from Lebanese officials.
Ghosn, 65, has been on bail in Tokyo since April and is facing charges of hiding income and financial misconduct. He has denied the charges. He had been under strict bail conditions in Japan after spending more than 120 days in detention.
Lebanon-based paper Al-Joumhouriya said Ghosn arrived in Beirut from Turkey aboard a private jet. AP has not been able to confirm those details or how he was able to leave Tokyo.
A house known to belong to Ghosn in a Beirut neighborhood had security guards outside with two lights on Monday night, but no sign otherwise of anyone inside. The guards denied he was inside, although one said he was in Lebanon without saying how he knew that.
Ghosn was arrested last year in Japan and has been charged with under-reporting his compensation and other financial misconduct. He denies wrongdoing and was out on bail. His trial had not started.
Ghosn’s lawyers say the allegations are a result of trumped-up charges rooted in a conspiracy among Nissan, government officials and prosecutors to oust Ghosn to prevent a fuller merger with Nissan’s alliance partner, Renault SA of France.
Ghosn, one of the auto industry’s biggest stars before his downfall, is credited with leading Nissan from near-bankruptcy to lucrative growth.
Even as he fell from grace internationally, Ghosn was still treated as a hero in Lebanon, where many had long held hopes he would one day play a bigger role in politics, or help rescue its failing economy.
Politicians across the board mobilized in his defense after his arrest in Japan, with some suggesting his detention may be part of a political or business-motivated conspiracy.
Realme could simply rebrand Oppo's VOOC 4.0 and Super VOOC fast charging systems and use them in its upcoming smartphones in 2020 as Dart and SuperDart systems.
This is it, the last day of 2019 has already arrived!
Now, most of you must be planning to let your hair down and start the new year with bash by going to fancy parties and while many like me may planning to stay back at home in pyjamas and greet the new year with a peaceful vibe. One thing that is common in both the scenarios is everyone wants to celebrate it around their friends and family.
But some of us cannot be with our close ones during this time of the year for whatever reason, you can always wish them in your own ways. Wishing people via text is now so old-school, that I would suggest you go ahead with themed WhatsApp stickers.
All you need to do is go to the Play Store and search for apps like "WhatsApp stickers for New Year 2020" or something on the same lines and you will see a huge list of apps.
Select any app and install it in your device. Once it is installed, open it and select the preferred stickers and tap on the "Add to WhatsApp" option. Now you can head to WhatsApp and open the stickers option and the stickers that you selected will be present in the already existing options.
You can download apps like WAStickers Happy New Year Stickers, New Year Stickers for WhatsApp, and Happy New Year stickers 2020.
It wasn’t the smoothest year for Microsoft, but the groundwork seems to be in place for a solid showing in 2020.
Communications Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad on Monday said that the government will allow all market players to perform 5G trials in India.
This essentially means that Ericsson, Nokia, Samsung and Huawei will now get to perform 5G trials in India, however this does not assure an approval for commercial roll out
As 2019 comes to an end, Netflix announced the list of most popular titles of 2019 in India.
Last month, Instagram announced that it will be making alliances with fact-checkers around the world to expose deception in shared photos or videos. Starting today, the social media platform has started to roll out the feature.
I spotted the fact-checker pop-up on Instagram Stories today. For any post that is found by fact-checkers to be 'factually incorrect', the images are blurred with a 'False Information' warning. Right below the warning is an option to see why the image has been blocked. If you tap on that, you will be shown details on who the fact-checker, what is the conclusion on the authenticity of the content in the post, and more information that will explain why the content may not be true.
After been warned that the content is false, you can still see the image by shutting the fact-checker pop-up and tapping on 'See Post' at the bottom of the image/video.
The fact-checker pop-up shown to me was by Agence France Presse APAC.
Instagram says that it uses "image-matching technology to find further instances of this [false] content and apply the label, helping reduce the spread of misinformation." "In addition, if something is rated false or partly false on Facebook...we'll automatically label identical content if it is posted on Instagram (and vice versa)."
Facebook already uses third-party fact-checkers in more than a dozen countries, according to its website. Posts reviewed by Facebook fact-checking teams include content flagged by users, as well as material tagged by software that is continually being refined by the company.
There are fireworks, there's a cityscape, there's a tiny boat, and there's Froggy the weather frog wearing a party hat, next to its pigeon friend (also wearing a hat) celebrating the New Year's Eve 2020. That's the Google Doodle for the day.
For anyone who has used the Google weather app on mobile, you'd know of Froggy. And if you are thinking why is Froggy in the New Year's Eve doodle, well the connection is interesting because it's a leap year! Get it? Leap year, frogs leap, Froggy leaping into the leap year, New Year 2020?! I'm sure you get it.
New Year's Eve 2020 Google doodle
Another significance of Froggy in the doodle could be a dedication to all the "party animals" this New Year's Eve.
Google has also shared a little message from Froggy on its blog: "Froggy is gearing up for New Year's celebrations in any weather. He says he’s most excited about it being a Leap Year. “The 2020s are sure to be ribbitting!”
Once the clock strikes midnight, the new decade begins! Time sure is fun when you’re having flies… Ready to jump in?"
Along with the doodle on the main search page, on its blog, Google has also shared doodles of "a few of the Weather scenes you might catch Froggy in today."
Different weather scenes with Froggy in it.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) released images of a 'burning' cloud or the Perseus Molecular Cloud captured by its Spitzer Space Telescope.
The fiery image showcased a gigantic collection of gas and dust that stretched over 500 light-years.
The image of the Perseus Molecular Cloud is actually 'infrared radiation' of the warm dust and it makes it seem like the outer space is ablaze.
According to Fox News, the cloud consists of more than 10,000 gas and dust solar masses and has been a reason for astronomers' fascination for years.
The Perseus Molecular Cloud hosts an abundance of young stars. It was imaged here by the NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope.
Image credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech
"Clusters of stars, such as the bright spot near the left side of the image, generate even more infrared light and illuminate the surrounding clouds like the sun lighting up a cloudy sky at sunset," Fox News quoted NASA as saying.
According to the space agency, most of the dust particles that could be seen in the image emits no or very little visible light and hence, it was revealed using the Spitzer.
The image was taken by the Spitzer's Multiband Imaging Photometer (MIPS) during the 'cold mission' of the telescope which was from 2003 to 2009.
That application collected personal data from millions of Facebook users worldwide, which were then transferred to British consultancy Cambridge Analytica and used without consent in political campaigns.
In recent days, Trump shared an unsubstantiated media report and a second post that appeared to name the intelligence community member.
Researchers have identified a key protein that supports the growth of many bowel cancers, an advance that may lead to new therapies against the malignant disease.
The study, published in the Journal of Cell Biology, revealed that a protein called Importin-11 transported the cancer-causing protein Beta-catenin into the nucleus of bowel cancer cells, where it can drive cell proliferation.
According to the scientists, including those from University of Toronto in Canada, inhibiting this transport step could block the growth of most of such cancers caused by elevated Beta-catenin levels.
They said about 80 percent of these cancers are associated with mutations in a gene called APC which result in elevated levels of the Beta-catenin protein. High levels of this protein are followed by its accumulation in the cell nucleus, where it can activate numerous genes behind cell proliferation.
The scientists added that the protein also promotes the growth and maintenance of tumours in the large intestine and its concluding part, rectum. But, the researchers said, how the protein enters the cell nucleus after its levels rise is poorly understood.
"Because the molecular mechanisms underlying Beta-catenin nuclear transport remain unclear, we set out to identify genes required for continuous Beta-catenin activity in colorectal cancer cells harbouring APC mutations," said Stephane Angers, study co-author from the University of Toronto.
The researchers developed a new technique using CRISPR gene editing technology to screen the human genome for genes supporting Beta-catenin's activity in bowel cancer cells after its levels are elevated by mutations in APC.
One of the genes they identified was IPO11, which codes for a protein called Importin-11. According to the researchers, Importin-11 is involved in importing proteins into the nucleus.
Angers and his colleagues found that Importin-11 binds to Beta-catenin and escorts it into the nucleus of colorectal cancer cells which have mutations in APC.
They said removing Importin-11 from these cells prevented Beta-catenin from entering the nucleus and activating its target genes.
Importin-11 levels, the scientists said, are often elevated in human colorectal cancers, and removing this protein inhibited the growth of tumours formed by APC mutant cancer cells.
"We conclude that Importin-11 is required for the growth of colorectal cancer cells," Angers said.
According to the scientists, learning more about how Importin-11 transports Beta-catenin into the nucleus may help researchers develop new therapies which block this process, and reduce the growth of colorectal cancers caused by mutations in APC.
A US astronaut set a record Saturday for the longest single spaceflight by a woman, breaking the old mark of 288 days with about two months left in her mission.
Christina Koch, a 40-year-old electrical engineer from Livingston, Montana, arrived at the International Space Station on March 14. She broke the record set by former space station commander Peggy Whitson in 2016-2017.
Koch is expected to spend a total of 328 days, or nearly 11 months, onboard the space station before returning to Earth. Missions are typically six months, but NASA announced in April that it was extending her mission until February.
The US record for the longest space flight is 340 days set by Scott Kelly in 2015-2016. The world record is 15 months set in the 1990s by a Russian cosmonaut aboard the former Mir space station.
Koch’s extended mission will help NASA learn about the effects of long spaceflights, data that NASA officials have said is needed to support future deep space exploration missions to the Moon and Mars.
Before breaking the endurance record for a woman in space, Koch set another milestone as part of the first all-female spacewalking team in October. It was Koch’s fourth spacewalk.
She previously said she took a lot of helpful advice from Kelly’s 2017 autobiography "Endurance."
Apple’s market cap is around $1.26 trillion. And that isn’t only because it sold a lot of iPhones.
Huawei is preparing to announce a refresh of its Mate X foldable smartphone at MWC 2020. The Mate Xs has been given certification, revealing that the device will support 65 W fast charging.
The details come from XDA Developers, reporting that the device has successfully gone through the CCC which is China’s regulatory agency. It displays a model number TAH-AN00m and also shows support for 5G. Another important update to the device is 65 W fast charging support. On the contrary, Mate X supports 55 W charging.
High-wattage fast charging is quickly becoming mainstream via OnePlus’ Warp Charging (formerly known as Dash Charging) and Oppo’s SuperVOOC fast charging. Other manufacturers have also started packing in higher wattages such as Huawei and Xiaomi.
Although Huawei hasn’t confirmed the launch of the Mate Xs, it’s likely that the Chinese manufacturer will reveal the device during MWC 2020 at Barcelona. The next-generation of the company’s foldable smartphone could arrive in the second half of the year, according to XDA.
Cloud computing services have transformed businesses large and small across all sectors in recent years and this is only set to increase into the new year. IDC predicts that by 2023, public cloud spending will more than double, growing from $229 billion in 2019 to nearly $500 billion. However, despite mass adoption, the issue of cloud security remains a key concern among business leaders – especially with data breaches making national headlines on a near daily basis.
So, what can businesses do to address this? A big part of the answer lies in emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) and automation, which will drive new ways of securing the cloud in 2020 and beyond.
The accelerated technical infrastructure change, digital transformation, and increased storage adoption has significantly altered the challenges faced by businesses to secure their critical assets. The benefits of cloud are clear, from increased speed and agility to advanced cloud analytics. However, these must be considered alongside the potential for an expanded threat surface associated with a broader network.
Security is one of the major concerns for businesses looking to migrate their infrastructure to the cloud, as moving significant amounts of data opens up clear security risks. However, some businesses then fall into the trap of thinking that once the migration project is complete, the major security risks are overcome. This certainly isn’t the case, with the threat surface constantly evolving and taking on a new dimension.
Businesses must also consider the challenge of securing the cloud against internal threats. Employees can unknowingly compromise their organisation’s security, with a recent study suggesting that every four in ten cybersecurity professionals see cloud storage and file sharing apps as most vulnerable to insider attacks.
This insider threat means that an attacker can be presented with the keys to the cloud through internal access to an organisation. With threats coming from all angles, it’s clear that businesses need to be putting security first. However, with only a third of organisations employing an endpoint security-first approach to data storage in the cloud, there is still work that needs to be done.
Further compounding these challenges is the need for cybersecurity training, with the shortage of skilled cybersecurity professionals across EMEA recently reaching 291,000.
AI opens new ways of managing cybersecurity. For example, it recognizes, learns, and models behavioral patterns to adapt systems to the most sophisticated of threats. This enhances the role cybersecurity specialists play, allowing them to react more rapidly, allocate more manual tasks such as scanning, and focus their attention on larger, more complex threats.
Intelligence-driven automation will create a shift in the traditional detection of, and protection against, threats. It will provide deeper visibility into attacker behavior, reducing the dependency on detecting pre-configured attack alerts. It does this by learning and registering what is normal, to increase the probability of identifying abnormal behavior in an environment. This will empower analysts to triage threats such as malware and react to attacks more rapidly.
However, AI inevitably poses additional challenges for cybersecurity. When it comes to AI, we often see a game of cat and mouse, with adversaries seeking to use the technology and techniques to their advantage. AI presents an opportunity for threat actors to deliver larger scale and more complex attacks, with the ability for adversaries to confuse defensive AI models and circumnavigate them.
Therefore, adopting new technologies will need to be carefully considered. There is no doubt that automation through AI and machine learning is an enabler for analysts. However, over-reliance on technology can be the downfall of an organisation. Analysts still require deep security expertise and this should be enhanced through technologies, such as automation, rather than replaced by it, as this can have the opposite effect and actually put infrastructure at greater risk.
Cloud and security will continue to change just as they have done year-on-year. Organisations should ensure they are embedding a security-first approach as they digitally transform their business. Through adopting emerging technologies to augment security, businesses can reduce the dependency on human intervention and increase efficiency, effectiveness, and scalability. This will enable them to optimize cybersecurity resources, both human and technology, to better protect their business.
Businesses should explore how working with a third party can provide additional expertise that augments their existing capabilities by proactively monitoring and mitigating attacks. When it comes to the “not if, but when” scenario that characterizes cloud security, a trusted partner can make all the difference.
With the ever-evolving threat landscape and data growing in volume and value by the day, organisations need to constantly adapt their security and processes to ensure their systems are not compromised. Going into 2020, businesses will need to think and evolve with security at the forefront of their plans and operations.
China on Friday launched its heaviest and most advanced communications satellite on the country's largest new carrier rocket Long March-5 that will lay the foundation for the development of highly sensitive space probes. Aboard the third Long March-5 rocket, Shijian-20, a new technology test and verification satellite, successfully entered its orbit Friday night, state-run Xinhua news agency reported. Launched from the Wenchang Space Launch Centre in south China's Hainan Province, Shijian-20, weighing more than eight tonnes, is the country's heaviest and most advanced communications satellite in geosynchronous orbit, according to its maker, the China Academy of Space Technology (CAST) under the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC).
The Long March-5, China's most powerful rocket and a critical ingredient in the nation's ambitious space programme, can carry a maximum payload of 25 tonnes into low Earth orbit and 14 tonnes into geosynchronous orbit. The successful launch is a major step forward for its planned mission to Mars in 2020. The satellite will carry out orbit experiments for a series of key technologies, the CAST said in a press release.
It will demonstrate in orbit its heat transfer technology based on cryogenic loop heat pipes, an efficient thermal control device for space applications, to lay the foundation for the development of highly sensitive space probes. The satellite will test the controllable deformation of shape memory polymers, a type of smart material that can switch between temporary shapes, to pave the way for the development of large variable space structures.
It will also carry out satellite-ground communication tests using Q/V bands, which lie between 33-75 GHz, within the extremely high frequency (EHF) area of the radio spectrum. These frequencies are used mainly for satellite communications. "The major way to improve satellite communication capacity is to expand the bandwidth of the available frequency bands. If we liken the geostationary orbit to an expressway, which is now the most crowded in space, the use of Q/V bands will help to widen the expressway by four to five times," said Li Feng, chief designer of the satellite with the CAST. The test is key to the development of the next generation of high throughput satellites capable of delivering 1Tbps bandwidth for ultrafast speeds, he said.
Year after year, we see sports, literature, startups, politics, business and religion take centre stage in the news, on television and on social media. Science, however, is limited to the confines of universities, companies and academia in India. Rarely does science and scientific endeavour get the centre-stage attention.
Those keen to know more about the latest and greatest happenings under the broad umbrella of science, are having to seek them out, through digital resources, old-school conferences and seminars. Rarely has science ever been seen as the relatable, engaging and universally-binding language that it is. India and its youth are engaging in science in schools because they're obligated to – little engagement follows once their education is behind them.
Many of us are unfamiliar with how science happens, why it's even necessary or the advances made by brilliant Indian scientists who have put India on the world map. The India Science Festival 2020 is hoping to tackle some of these long-held challenges to science progress in India, says Varun Aggarwal, co-founder of Aspiring Minds, the Festival's key organiser.
"We wished to celebrate science, connect scientists and society in a fun, engaging way. Our imagination of the science festival is akin to that for a cricket match, a Bollywood star show or a Diwali Mela...It isn't a boring talk program in a conference room, it's a festival of science," Aggarwal added.
"We are in a time where innovation is happening at an exponential speed – be it artificial intelligence, biotechnology, neuroscience, quantum physics, medicine – the fields are exploding with new knowledge and methods. India, too, needs to participate in this revolution and frame the right policies to bring the benefits of the science to society."
In his view, mass public engagement in science and science policy is an indispensable means of making this shift.
Varun Aggarwal (VA): The Festival itself will be spread out over many outdoor and indoor spaces. Walking through the front lawn, one might hear conversation on the ethics of artificial intelligence – why some algorithms are biased against a section of society, eg, women, and how this can be addressed. Later, when Nisheeth Vishnoi from Yale University takes the stage, he will tell you whether you should or should not trust an AI system with important tasks when it interprets your medical scan or handles your financial investments.
You can head on over to another space and find yourself levitating balls using your brain waves, with a little band around your head to detect when you're concentrating. This is just a taste of the infinite possibilities that modern neuroscience opens up. From the future, the festival will also transport you to the past – with fascinating discussions in a Roman-style amphitheatre – where you'll be asked to consider a range of things: Did ancient Indians really know organ transplantation? What is India’s contribution to global science? What is "evidence"? Are the scientific works of our ancestors relevant today?
After some contemplation, you should treat yourself to some of the food – but careful! Don't run into the driverless vehicle that's been finding its own way from one end to the other avoiding all obstacles in its path. It automatically veers around an interactive digital Rangoli that has been laid on the ground. And speaking of Rangoli, there's an exhibition of AI-generated paintings by Harshit Agarwal that's certainly worth checking out.
And if you're there to hear from the brilliant minds in attendance, there are 40+ scientists from around the world giving super interesting talks and demoing exhibits, including TED-like talks by undergrads and PhD students, our scientists of today and tomorrow. They need to understand the society’s questions/problems and the society needs to understand their innovations and uses. I'm happy to that ISF can provide a platform to make this exchange happen.
Lastly, there are also stimulating policy roundtables planned – on, for example, how to create an MIT in India – that will be a key part of the Festival.
This is how we can bring science to everyone! In a simple, entertaining, immersive way.
VA: Indian science is a sleeping giant! We have the talent, a rich tradition of scientific endeavour and markets that can support innovation. Yet, we follow and don't lead in this regard. We have been reactive to the internet revolution, the mobile revolution and now the AI revolution. India hasn’t produced the largest global companies or scientific breakthroughs in any of these fields.
India can have a very bright future in science, but that will need our science ecosystem to be liberalised and re-oriented. Let's recall for just a moment what happened when we liberalised our economy in the early 90's – our growth rate doubled or more.
The same is possible for science.
VA: India has a rich tradition of science going back to Panini, who is accepted as the world's first linguist. I recommend everyone interested to attend the panel at ISF on India's historic contribution to science.
If you see the period immediately before our independence, there were many science stalwarts in India – CV Raman, JC Bose, Srinivasan Ramanujan, Homi Bhabha among others. JC Bose did exceptional work in electromagnetics and plant sciences out of his lab in Kolkata. Post-independence, we have been massively hit by talented folks not taking up a career in science research – they either joined the industry or went abroad to better opportunities. This needs to change.
Today, there are sporadic bursts of excellence that take the global stage – like the prime number result from IIT Kanpur, Abhay Bang's work in infant mortality or the Simputer from IISc. They caught the world's imagination, and yet, there is no critical mass of scientists to make an impact on the Indian society and economy, let alone the global science scene. This, too, is a dream waiting to be realised.
VA: I would recommend attending the 'How to build an MIT in India?' panel at ISF, where speakers from around the world are addressing this issue.
Here are my two cents. The first issue is intent. We focus a lot on economic growth and social upliftment – and rightly so. But, neither the government nor the public is actively concerned or working to improve India’s standing in science and technology. China, on the other hand, has focused on world-class, cutting-edge science since the early 90's, and today, China is only second to the USA in scientific output in many areas.
India needs a similar laser focus on science and technology to establish itself as a global leader in the field. Once government shows intent, three simple steps need to follow.
The first is a much-needed liberalisation of the science ecosystem – make our universities and researchers autonomous. Let go gladly of government-ordained salaries for researchers, and bureaucratic hurdles to procure equipment and funds! Only when research institutions and researchers have the freedom to do their jobs will they do so to their full potential.
Second, the government is responsible for creating a market in which science can perform. Resources should be allocated based on performance, and accumulated in the highest-performing institutions. The third step will be to rid us of the socialist mindset to science; government and institutions needs to invest in excellence, rather than spreading the money thin on many low-impact projects and institutions. Simply put, if India can create ten world-class research universities, it would usher in a revolution.
VA: With ISF, we are seeking to break the silos, connect the Indian society with scientists, PhD students, policy makers and the international science community. It will attach a name and face to the 'scientists' we read about every now and again, and shed some light on what they work on.
People will experience science through experiments and exhibits. This could be AI-generated art, levitating balls using one's brain waves or experiencing an autonomous vehicle. This will make science cool for everyone. Scientists will also come closer to the problems and aspirations of our society. This connection will get a lot more people to do science, think scientifically and pursue the scientific career.
ISF seeks to set the narrative for science in India. I am confident that when we bring all these different communities together, they will set the roadmap for India's scientific future, and how to get over the current challenges.
You can register for India Science Festival 2020 here.
ISF 2020 will take place on 11-12th January 2020
Apple is reportedly planning to launch upgrades to its 11-inch and 12.9-inch iPad Pro tablets in spring next year. And we already have 3D renders to give us an idea about how they are going to look like.
The first renders of the 2020 iPad Pros come from @OnLeaks and iGeeksBlog. It follows the similar thin-bezel design of the iPad Pro 11 on both the models. However, the newest addition is the triple-camera module on the rear that is similar to the iPhone 11 Pro. Until now, all the iPads have had a single camera module on the rear.
The thickness of the upcoming iPad Pros could be more because of the triple cameras will almost the same dimensions overall. There’s no mention of the material being used on them nor any confirmation of the chipset that it will use. However, considering previous cases, new chipsets launched during September or October are carried over to the iPads.
If Apple follows tradition, then the 2020 iPads will pack the Apple A13X chip. Since Apple tends to release iPads during the March, it’s likely we will get to see the new iPad Pros in the same month next year.
