Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has presented the Union Budget 2021-22 in Parliament on 1 February. Here are some highlights. Sitharaman described this as a digital Budget. There has been a manifold increase in digital payments in the recent past. To give a further boost to digital transactions, a sum of Rs 1,500 crore (15bn rupees, … Read more
Amazon has sent a letter to US President Joe Biden offering to help roll out the Covid-19 vaccine to US citizens as he vows to inoculate 100 million people in his first 100 days in office. Dave Clark, chief executive of the online retailer’s consumer business, said Amazon had signed an agreement with a healthcare … Read more
Google has threatened to discontinue its search engine services in Australia over the government’s plans to force the search giant to pay news outlets for their content. Last year, Australia announced the plans as a way to halt the decline of news firms amid falling revenues during the coronavirus pandemic. But Google hit back, saying it was “deeply … Read more
It could prove necessary to vaccinate domestic animals such as cats and dogs against Covid-19 to curb the spread of the virus, scientists have suggested. It has been proven that coronavirus can infect a wide range of species, including cats, dogs, mink and other domesticated animals. Experts from the University of East Anglia (UEA); the … Read more
The UK government has invested £30m in the design and manufacture of a new unpiloted combat aircraft, which will be known as the ‘loyal wingman’. The new aircraft will be designed to fly at high speed alongside Typhoon, F-35 Lightning and eventually Tempest planes. It will be equipped with missiles and unspecified surveillance and electronic … Read more
A study looking into the accuracy and bias of gender and skin colour in automatic face recognition algorithms tested with real-world data has found that some demographics show higher false positive or false negative rates. Facial recognition has been routinely used by both private and governmental organisations worldwide. Automatic face recognition can be used for … Read more
Google is pressing ahead with plans to ditch third-party cookies in its Chrome web browser in favour of its own “privacy sandbox”, despite the launch of an investigation by the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) over whether the practice is anti-competitive. Third-party cookies are created by entities other than the website that the user is … Read more
A US government-appointed panel has concluded that the nation should not agree to an outright ban on the development of use of autonomous weapons, following a public discussion on the issue. The National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence, which is led by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, held a two-day public discussion on how the … Read more
Apple Inc and Hyundai Motor Company are preparing to close a partnership deal to design autonomous electric cars by March, according to Korea IT News. Last week, Hyundai released a statement revealing that it was in early talks with Apple. This announcement came after South Korea’s Economic Daily reported that the two companies were aiming to launch … Read more
General Motors (GM) has unveiled a flying version of its Cadillac that is autonomous and can take off and land vertically. At its digital presentation at CES 2021, GM said the new electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) concept was “reimagining the future of personal transportation”. The concept vehicle, which looks like a combination between … Read more