Polygon joins ‘Join Innovation Center’ for aviation industry advancement

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June 10, 2022

Polygon, a decentralized Ethereum scaling platform, has joined hands with the Joint Innovation Centre (JIC) to introduce technological advancements to the aviation industry and enhance the passenger experience. The center is a joint venture of Bangalore’s Kempegowda International Airport, Amazon Web Service (AWS), and Intel India.

Previously known as Matic Network, Polygon is the first well-organized, user-friendly Ethereum scaling and infrastructure creation platform. Polygon SDK, the core component of the software, is a modular and flexible framework that supports the development of various types of applications.

Currently, Bangalore International Airport Limited (BIAL) is working with Amazon Web Services to establish the Joint Innovation Center by the end of 2022. Now, with Polygon as a part of the initiative, the development of JIC is expected to pick up the pace.

The first initiative dedicated to advancing the aviation industry, the JIC will focus on incorporating digital innovations at airports, enhancing passenger experience, and creating a positive impact on the community.

The Joint Innovation Centre will help strengthen BIAL’s digital roadmap by developing custom solutions for Bengaluru airport using a combination of technologies. The Internet of Things (IoT), Blockchain concepts, cloud computing, analytics, machine learning (ML), augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), artificial intelligence (AI), and robotics are some of the technologies to be used.

AI for India backed by AWS and the Govt to teach Artificial Intelligence to 25 lakh Indian Students

By

Dipayan Mitra

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June 10, 2022

The Data Tech Labs launches its new AI for India program to train and upskill over 25 lakh Indian students in artificial intelligence. AI for India is powered by AWS and backed by the Ministry of Education (GOI) and AICTE, with the goal of training, practicing, allocating projects, certifying, and employing Indian citizens.

Minister of Education Dharmendra Pradhan launched the program in the presence of more than a hundred MNCs, MSMEs and Startups in Delhi.

The AI for India campaign is a component of the GOI’s ABCDEFGHI program, which aims to impact and train students in the areas of Artificial Intelligence, BlockChain, Data analytics and intelligence, Full stack developer, Cyber Security, Extended Reality (XR), Electronics, Energy solutions, Gamification, GitHub, HTML5, Human-computer interaction, and IoT.

According to officials, the program is divided into the following five events –

National Future Engineering Scholarship Examination: Aimed for class 8th to 12th students, undergrad/postgrad students, and others looking to upskill on developing technologies.
All India Skill to Scale Avenue: This is open to all students who graduated during the pandemic years and have gaps in their skill sets compared to industry requirements.
AI Ideathon: This event encourages students and citizens to generate ideas for solving any human-centric national issue using AI, Data, Cloud, and associated sciences.
All India Data Engineering Quiz intends to diversify data knowledge across fields and verticals.
All India Jobathon for Cloud, Data, and AI Aspirants, in which participants will be allowed to apply for 100000 jobs from Indian enterprises.

CCO of AICTE, Chandrashekhar Budha, said, “AI for India Initiative is trying to bridge the gap between the supply and demand matrix in worldwide tech talent, with Indian students. We are changing our educational policies to skill and upskill students to make them future-ready.”

He further added that AI for India would provide digital education for employment and entrepreneurship to the 21st-century generation in the arts, commerce, science, architecture, engineering, and other fields.

WhatsApp initiative SMBSaathi Utsav helps small businesses go digital

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Sahil Pawar

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June 10, 2022

WhatsApp India has recently launched an initiative, SMBSaathi Utsav, to support small local businesses by providing them with training to run their business on digital platforms such as Whatsapp Business App.

Currently running on a pilot basis in Jaipur’s Johri Bazaar and Bapu Bazaar, WhatsApp has rolled out the training program in collaboration with Josh Talks, a social media platform.

At the SMBSaathi Utsav, a team of volunteers trained in the various aspects of online business management is pitching the sessions. The training involves lessons on using the WhatsApp Business App for managing incoming leads, organizing policies, building product/service showcases, and marketing to a specific audience.

Businesses from various sectors such as traditional arts, handicrafts, fashion, apparel, jewelry, food, beverage outlets, and several more are benefiting from the training offered by WhatsApp.

While elaborating on the initiative’s purpose, the head of WhatsApp India, Abhijit Bose, said that the company wishes to unlock the unlimited potential in local small businesses, which have been acting as the backbone of the Indian economy. As an example, he mentioned how WhatsApp Business App helped small businesses to thrive during the pandemic by keeping the owners connected to their customer base.

High-risk warning issued for Google Chrome and Mozilla by government

By

Sahil Pawar

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June 9, 2022

CERT-in High-risk warning for Google Chrome and Mozilla users

The Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) of the Indian government has flagged several vulnerabilities in Google Chrome and Mozilla products. According to CERT-In, these vulnerabilities gave the hackers access to the users’ sensitive data by allowing them to execute arbitrary codes by bypassing all the security mechanisms in place.

Google Chrome OS versions before 96.0.4664.209 contained vulnerabilities marked as high-risk by CERT-In. Vulnerabilities in this criteria are labeled under CVE-2022-1633, CVE-202-1636, CVE-2021-43527, CVE-2022-1489, CVE-2022-1859, CVE-2022-1867, and CVE-2022-23308 by Google.

In the case of Mozilla, CERT-In has detected and flagged bugs present in the Mozilla Firefox Thunderbird versions before 91.10, Mozilla Firefox iOS versions before 101, Mozilla Firefox versions before 101, and Mozilla Firefox ESR versions before 91.10.

Google acknowledged the bugs and later reported to have fixed them. The company also requested the users to update Chrome OS to the latest version to steer clear of those bugs. Similarly, Mozilla urged its users to download the latest versions, namely Mozilla Firefox iOS 101, Mozilla Firefox Thunderbird version 91.10, Mozilla Firefox ESR version 91.10, and Mozilla Firefox 101 to avoid the vulnerabilities.

According to CERT-In, these vulnerabilities posed a significant threat to the security and privacy of the users by allowing the hackers to start a denial-of-service (DoS) attack. The bugs also allowed the hackers to disclose sensitive information, break security restrictions, execute arbitrary codes, and inflict spoofing attacks.

While explaining the vulnerabilities, CERT-In said that the bugs in Chrome OS are due to heap buffer overflow in V8 internalization, sharesheet, performance manager, and performance APIs. CERT-In added that the bugs reported in dev-libs/libxml2, insufficient validation of untrusted input in data transfer, and out of bounds memory access in UI Shelf contributed to the vulnerabilities.

Bud Raises $80M for its AI-Powered Open Banking Platform

By

Disha Chopra

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June 9, 2022

To develop its international client portfolio, Bud, an open banking platform, raised $80M in a Series B funding round. The company is known for its embedded financial services, where various fintech technologies are applied to enhance the offerings.

The idea of establishing an open banking platform was to provide a single point of access for consumers to learn and benefit from the fintech services. Later, the model became a viable B2B model for collaborating with other institutions and larger banks to help them enhance customer engagement.

Over time, several financial institutions across Europe started betting big on open banking payments by citing several tangible benefits for both merchants and customers.

Bud’s CEO and co-founder, Ed Maslaveckas, said, “There’s lots of open banking aggregation players, but there’s very few people that have built good data intelligence, and what we are allowing for is for businesses that work with existing aggregators to use our intelligence services.”

He also highlighted that Bud would use the investment for international expansion and R&D. Specifically, it will cater to building on AI-based tools. Besides the vital area of focus, Bud will also contribute a part of the raised money to enhance categorization, income verification, and merchant recognition.

Such advances in the banking sector have less to do with banks ingesting more data from external sources but more with them being able to access what is sitting in their corner. Bud believes that the conjugation of open banking data and AI capabilities will enable the lending customers to grow their capacity by around 85% in their affordability assessment.

MongoDB 6.0 introduces encrypted queries and time-series data collection

By

Sahil Pawar

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June 9, 2022

MongoDB introduces encrypted queries and time-series data

The creators of MongoDB and its commercial service counterpart MongoDB Atlas have made the document database more developer-friendly by introducing encrypted queries and time-series data collection in the upgraded MongoDB 6.0. MongoDB is a source-available cross-platform document-oriented database program.

The primary purpose behind MongoDB was to provide developers with an easier way to store, index, and retrieve documents as objects and not to translate the work to SQL. The due release of MongoDB has various news features for boosting developer productivity. All the latest developments will be discussed at the MongoDB World, a conference being held in New York this week.

According to MongoDB, the Queryable Encryption, now available in preview, provides the ability to query encrypted data, allowing the entire query transaction to be encrypted. Organizations with a vast amount of sensitive data, such as banks, hospitals, and government organizations, will be able to benefit from this development. This fact also eliminates the requirement for developers to be encryption experts, said Andrew Davidson, MongoDB vice president of cloud products.

The new end-to-end client-side encryption employs novel encrypted index data structures. The data being searched for stays encrypted on the database server, including in the CPU and the memory. The application never loses the keys, and the company maintains the query speed. Thus overall application performance is impacted by the latest advancements.

MongoDB will also consist of time series data collection, vital for monitoring physical systems, rapidly-changing financial data, and other temporary datasets. Time-series collections in MongoDB 6.0 have secondary indexes on measurements, and the optimized database system will sort time-based data more efficiently.

Google Cloud Marketplace Launches DataRobot AI Cloud

By

Disha Chopra

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June 9, 2022

datarobot now available on google cloud marketplace

DataRobot AIX 2022: Cloud leader DataRobot announced its launch on Google Cloud Marketplace to make it easier for customers to thrive in the ever-evolving markets with the help of AI. The President and COO, Debanjan Saha, shared, “To thrive in today’s market, customers must have the ability to deliver AI where their data resides.”

The strategic expansion of the partnership between DataRobot and Google Cloud will enable the existing customers to avail services and meet the vendors where they are. This will make accelerating and innovating the industry across cloud platforms easier.

DataRobot customers can now benefit from Google Marketplace by streamlining the deployment phase, generating better business solutions, and constructing & training AI-based models. The cloud conjugation deploys such services in production on-premises and manages them from a single glass plane.

The partnership seems to be a great move because a growing market demands to utilize most of its data, no matter where it is stored. It allows customers to experience the following:

Enhanced time to value: DataRobot services can be conveniently purchased using the Marketplace and operated from that moment.
Complementary with Google Cloud Services: Several DataRobot services can seamlessly integrate with Google’s services like BigQuery, Looker, etc. They can also conveniently leverage the pool of vast libraries like Vertex AI.
Flexibility: The partnership offers the perks of a multi-cloud data source that can also incorporate third-party models.

As said by Dai Vu, MD, Marketplace & ISV GTM Programs, Google, “Enabling AI to be accessible to a broader set of users has become a key driver of growth for organizations today.” The unified platform will bring data together and suit nearly users, from IT experts and data scientists to business analysts.

Quantum computer Borealis achieves computational advantage using photonic machine

By

Sahil Pawar

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June 9, 2022

A group of researchers from the National Institute of Standards and Technology, US, and Xanadu, Canada, claim that Borealis, their quantum computer, has successfully achieved computational advantage in taking boson sampling challenge using a photonic machine. A research paper published in Nature describes the quantum computer and its exceptional performance.

In a quest to create a perfectly usable quantum computer machine, researchers give more power to devices they work on before subjecting them to computational advantage tests. The desired output is that the devices can process the problem, which on the other hand, would take typical computers an impractical amount of time.

In a recent experiment, the team of researchers used a photonic machine, which uses photos to represent qubits, to take on the boson sampling challenge. The Gaussian boson sampling challenge involved the preparation of states of light and their direction through a beam splitters’ network and then counting the number of photons arriving at the detector.

The best conventional computers get quickly bogged down in an attempt to tackle the challenge, whereas theory suggests that a quantum computer should do the opposite. Previous endeavors to take on the challenge used 76 to 113 photons. One significant step is that the new machine built by the research team had access to up to 219 photons, averaging 125.

While attempting the challenge, Borealis was found to be able to perform a specified task in 36 microseconds. According to researchers, the best conventional computer would have taken about 9,000 years to finish the same job. This difference in time and efficiency has led the researchers to state the computational advantage.

The researchers further tested the output Borealis gave and proved that the computer could not be spoofed, thus acting as evidence that it gave the correct answers.

RStudio Workbench is Now Accessible on your Azure Working Environment

By

Disha Chopra

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June 9, 2022

RStudio has collaborated with Azure ML to make RStudio Workbench available on the Azure ML environment. The president, Tareef Kawaf, briefed, “RStudio is very pleased to work with the Azure Machine Learning team on this release, as we collaborate to make it easier for organizations to move their open-source data science workloads to the cloud.”

RStudio Workbench offers an IDE (integrated development environment) for the R programming language. It provides open-source and ready-to-use professional software for research, technical communication, and data science.

On the other hand, Azure ML environments provide an encapsulation where users can train their ML scripts. They define the Python packages, software settings, and environment variables around your scoring scripts.

With Rstudio conjugating with the Azure ML environment, users can conveniently access, analyze, and develop better results. This offering allows one to begin as a single-user instance and effortlessly integrate RStudio benefits into analytics work within the Azure ML environment.

This will be possible with all three broad categories of environments-curated, user-managed and system-managed. Azure ML provides curated environments by default. To access RStudio in user-managed environments, one must set up and manually install all required packages. Lastly, conda will manage all python-based environments after being specified in system-managed environments.

The partnership allows one to use the following functions of RStudio: preferred IDE (VSCode/Jupyter Notebook/RStudio), open multiple Python sessions, access different versions of Python (and R), make use of pre-installed packages and run several scripts in the background.

All of the functions of RStudio Workbench, as mentioned above, are availed within the Azure Platform.

Amazon opens New Technology Hub In Boston

By

Dipayan Mitra

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June 9, 2022

Global eCommerce giant Amazon officially opens its new technology hub located in Boston, United States.

The new Tech Hub was inaugurated by Amazon and Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker, Lieutenant Governor Karyn Polito, and developer WS Development. Amazon says that the tech hub has a capacity of nearly 2000 employees.

The Boston Tech Hub includes additional office space, innovation labs, and mixed-use common areas enabling teams to keep thinking and innovating for consumers.

Additionally, Amazon is collaborating with UMass Boston to guarantee students and alumni have the proper tools, training, and knowledge to effectively access jobs in computer-related professions at Amazon and other tech companies.

Senior Vice President and Head Scientist at Amazon Alexa, Rohit Prasad, said, “Our teams in the Boston area are working on exciting innovations for our global customers—from artificial intelligence and machine learning to cloud computing and robotics engineering.”

He further added that they would like to thank the city of Boston and Massachusetts for allowing them to build their future here, and they look forward to continuing to invest and generate employment throughout the Commonwealth.

At the Boston Tech Hub, Amazon presently offers over 1,000 tech and corporate positions available. Interested candidates can apply for the open positions from the official website of amazon.

Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker said, “From jobs in operations to roles in engineering and machine learning, we are pleased that Amazon continues to create opportunities and expand across Massachusetts.”

Baker also mentioned that Amazon’s Boston Tech Hub and its new location in Boston Seaport would continue to generate excellent employment for the Commonwealth’s exceptional tech talent while also boosting investment in Massachusetts’ innovation economy.

Recently, Amazon Style also announced the launch of its first artificial intelligence (AI)-powered physical retail store in Los Angeles, United States. The newly launched store will sell men’s and women’s clothing, shoes, and accessories in sizes XS-XXL.