Apple, Google, and Microsoft joins forces for Passwordless Standard

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May 10, 2022

Apple, Google, and Microsoft team up to accelerate the availability of passwordless sign-ins. The companies announced intentions to increase support for a common passwordless sign-in standard designed by the FIDO Alliance and the World Wide Web Consortium in a cooperative effort to make the web more safe and usable for everyone.

In the long run, the partnership will make it much simpler for websites and applications to provide end-to-end authentication through passwordless methods like fingerprints, face recognition, and pins. The FIDO Alliance published a white paper explaining this concept in March.

FIDO’s passkey technology also allows users to authenticate with one of their other existing devices by sending a Bluetooth unlock request to that device, making the authentication process hassle-free.

With this new development, passwords will soon be obsolete for users of Android and iOS mobile operating systems, Edge, Safari, and Chrome browsers, and Windows and macOS.

According to the announcement, users will be able to utilize FIDO authentication on their device to sign in to an application or website on another device nearby, regardless of the OS platform or browser they are using.

Executive Director and CMO of the FIDO Alliance, Andrew Shikiar, said, “Ubiquity and usability are critical to seeing multi-factor authentication adopted at scale, and we applaud Apple, Google, and Microsoft for helping make this objective a reality by committing to support this user-friendly innovation in their platforms and products.”

He further added that along with the continued and expanding use of security keys, this new capability is expected to usher in a new wave of low-friction FIDO implementations, allowing service providers a full spectrum of alternatives for installing modern, phishing-resistant authentication.

“We look forward to making FIDO-based technology available across Chrome, ChromeOS, Android, and other platforms, and encourage app and website developers to adopt it, so people around the world can safely move away from the risk and hassle of passwords,” said Senior Director of Product Management at Google, Mark Risher.

Blocktickets to enter Indian Market, appoints Jaspreet Bindra to its Board

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Dipayan Mitra

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May 10, 2022

NFT and blockchain ticketing platform Blocktickets is all set to launch itself in the Indian market. With this development, Blocktickets plans to expand its presence in India as the country increases the adoption of blockchain-based technologies.

The company has appointed Jaspreet Bindra, who is the managing director and founder of Tech Whisperer Limited, to its board. Bindra was previously the group chief digital officer at Mahindra Group and a regional director at Microsoft India.

“India is a growing market for NFT, and I believe that Blocktickets, with its early mover advantage, strong founder product fit, MOAT of cinemas, and Indian content, will become the name synonymous with NFT based tickets in the country and across the globe,” said Bindra.

Web3 ticketing platform Blocktickets was founded by Abhinav Garg and Nishant Chandra. Blocktickets turn boring tickets that would otherwise be rejected into a pleasurable experience. According to the company, it is the world’s first decentralized and transparent NFT ticketing marketplace, allowing users to create, browse, buy, and sell NFT tickets.

Blocktickets sold over 2000 NFT tickets in less than half an hour for the World’s First Holi Event on Metaverse on March 17th and is already collaborating with India’s largest event organizers and film industry.

It is making the ever-evolving event sector more entertaining for all stakeholders through smart contracts, tokens, and NFTs. Several sectors, including sports, cinema, concerts, expos, airlines, hotels, and marketing and sponsorships, can leverage Blocktickets technology.

“Metaverse and Defi have opened up new ventures and have expanded the scope further. NFTs are essential to this whole universe, and that’s why we feel it can be used to transform the ticketing industry entirely. There’s so much that we can do by selling tickets as NFTs.” said the founders of Blocktickers. They further mentioned that Blocktickets is built on that vision, and we are confident in the Indian market’s support.

China plans to build AI-powered 3D Printed Hydroelectric Dam in Tibet

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Dipayan Mitra

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May 10, 2022

China is now working on a new project to build an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered 3D printed hydroelectric dam in Tibet.

According to reports, the dam will be constructed in just a period of two years on the Tibetan plateau. The dam will be built entirely by AI-powered robots that will act as a big 3D printer to produce the 180-meter construction layer-by-layer.

This new development makes China’s new hydroelectric plant the first-ever AI-aided 3D printed dam in the world. The dam named Yangqu hydropower plant will reportedly provide electricity to Henan province.

Though not much information has surfaced regarding the implementation of this project, the scientists claim that the technology had matured enough for mass “large, filled infrastructure” applications.

Yangkou Hydropower Station will be erected at the height of 180 meters above the Yellow River, with a capacity of generating five billion kilowatt-hours of power and providing electricity to 50 million people when completed in 2024.

AI-enabled robots will be deployed at the construction site independently along with the human workforce over the course of 2 years to build the dam.

China is heavily reliant on hydropower, which is the country’s second-largest source of energy after coal. This new dam is a step towards the country’s aim of reducing the dependence on coal for power.

3D printing has gained immense popularity over the last few years, with researchers building bizarre objects using the technology. For instance, Tsinghua University’s School of Architecture developed a 3D-printed concrete library in Shanghai’s Wisdom Bay Innovation Park last year. A 3D printed retractable bridge was also launched in the city that is capable of launching in less than a minute.

GitHub Launches new Education Features for 2M Student Developers

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Dipayan Mitra

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May 10, 2022

GitHub new Education Features Student Developers

GitHub has announced an expansion of Global Campus to provide a single dashboard for teachers to connect with one another, create and grade assignments, and more.

GitHub Global Campus is used extensively by schools and universities in India, including the University of Mumbai, Shivaji College (University of Delhi), Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU), Manipal Institute of Technology (MIT), and Chandigarh University.

This expansion continues GitHub Education’s mission to offer nearly 2M+ students real-world experience and allow researchers and educators to work more effectively inside and outside of the classroom.

By joining Global Campus, teachers using GitHub Classroom get access to GitHub’s groundbreaking, browser-based IDE, Codespaces at no cost. Codespaces allows users to use a Visual Studio Code-backed editor, terminal, and debugger along with GitHub version control in the browser or on a desktop.

Integrating Codespaces into your GitHub Classroom experience can provide a scalable solution for quickly getting CS students started using virtually any device, including Chromebooks and iPads.

The new features make it easier for students to begin their development careers and for teachers to manage their classrooms, including:

Global Campus for Teachers. Teachers can now access a single dashboard to connect with one another, create and grade assignments, and more.
Free Codespaces for Classrooms. Codespaces provides a fully-featured development environment that can be hosted on any device.

The Global Campus teacher status with GitHub gives 1,250 hours of Codespaces at no cost, which is enough for a class of 50 students completing five assignments per month on a 2-core machine with one Codespace stored per student.

This easy access to Codespaces is the first step towards improving early access and ultimately bringing more software developers online. Much like the calculator accelerated and augmented what could be taught in a classroom, access to developer tools will open up myriad opportunities for students to solve increasingly complex challenges.

Teachers can join Global Campus by completing a short application for teacher benefits. Once accepted, applicants will be officially welcomed as a Global Campus teacher. GitHub says that its Global Campus will continue to grow and become a place for teachers to access the best resources and industry tools to incorporate in their classroom.

Apple’s Director of Machine Learning Quits Over Company’s Return to Work Policy

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Dipayan Mitra

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May 10, 2022

Apple’s Director of Machine Learning Quits

Smartphone manufacturing giant Apple’s director of machine learning, Ian Goodfellow, quits his job as the company passes a return to work policy for its employees.

Goodfellow had been with Apple for nearly three years, having joined the company’s Special Projects Group in April 2019 after leaving Google.

The incident of him leaving the company is a big deal for Apple as it currently operates multiple features like FaceID and others that involve artificial intelligence and machine learning.

According to a Tweet from Zoë Schiffer, Goodfellow mentioned, “I believe strongly that more flexibility would have been the best policy for my team.”

Ian Goodfellow, Apple’s director of machine learning, is leaving the company due to its return to work policy. In a note to staff, he said “I believe strongly that more flexibility would have been the best policy for my team.” He was likely the company’s most cited ML expert.
— Zoë Schiffer (@ZoeSchiffer) May 7, 2022

Moreover, Goodfellow is also referred to as the father of general adversarial networks (GAN), which can be used to create deepfake videos.

As a response to battle the COVID-19 pandemic, Apple had earlier adopted a work-from-home model for its employees to be safe.

However, as steadily the world is getting back to normal, Apple changed its policy last September and asked its employees to return to the office. Last month, Apple employees returned to their offices under a hybrid home/office work policy, capping off a two-year-long working from home.

Employees are now required to be present at the office for three days a week, according to Apple’s new hybrid work structure. Though Apple has offered the choice to some of its teams to work remotely, unfortunately, Goodfellow was not the lucky one to receive that benefit.

A sigh of relief for Apple is that no other news of high-profile employees quitting the organization has emerged as of now.

Prevalent AI to set up Security Data Science Academy in Kerala

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Dipayan Mitra

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May 9, 2022

Prevalent AI Security Data Science Academy kerala

Cybersecurity startup Prevalent AI announces that it plans to set up a new Security Data Science (SDS) Academy in Kerala.

This new development is a step toward the company’s goal of making Karala a talent hub for emerging new-age technology sectors, including cybersecurity, big data engineering, and data science.

Prevalent AI’s new academy will be located in t Kochi and will also launch a new center of excellence that will operate from the Infopark Campus, Kochi. Prevalent AI, which has a workforce in Kerala, aims to harness more talent in SDS from Kerala based on the confidence it has gained after emerging as a significant force in the industry.

Co-founder and CEO of Prevalent AI, Paul Strokes, said, “In Kerala, we set up this team of over 100 people and are doing a lot of experimentation in security data science. So we really believe that Kerala is at the fore, certainly within India, among the leading places to do security data science.”

He further added that they serve some of the world’s largest corporations outside of this office, which comes to Kerala for data science and security needs. According to the company, the idea behind SDS Academy is to take talented people with technological skills and teach them how to apply science-based methods to data to better understand things.

Kochi-UK-based technology startup Prevalent AI was founded by Andy France, Arun Raj, Iain Lobban, and Paul Stokes in 2017. The company specializes in assisting organizations in gaining control of their cyber technology by unifying their data and developing customized solutions to help them better manage risk.

“Cyber attacks are becoming very prevalent throughout the entire digital economy. Cyber attacks are pervasive in any aspect of supply chains. From a defensive standpoint, if you look at technologies like artificial intelligence and machine learning, they have also become prevalent,” said Co-founder and COO of Prevalent AI, Arun Raj.

Vodafone to use Google Cloud For AI-Powered 5G Data Hub

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Dipayan Mitra

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May 9, 2022

Global mobile telecommunications service providing company Vodafone announces the launch of its cloud-native Unified Performance Management (UPM) platform that uses Google Cloud’s analytics, artificial intelligence, and machine learning capabilities, reports sdxcentral.

According to the company, this new development will help it increase the reliability of its mobile experience to European customers.

The company will use Cardinality.io’s cloud-native DataOps and analytics platform, in addition to Google Cloud, to update Vodafone’s pan-European networks more efficiently via hybrid cloud architecture.

Vodafone wants to use its platform to process eight billion mobile network performance events per day. The gathered information will then be used to monitor, manage, and improve its mobile network by focusing on 5G investments.

CTO of Vodafone, Johan Wibergh, said, “It is a global data hub that gives us a real-time view of what is happening anywhere on our network, uses our global scale to manage traffic growth cheaper and more efficiently as customer data consumption grows by around 40% per year, and supports the full automation of our network by 2025.”

Vodafone says that its newly announced UPM platform will allow operating companies to collect network performance data points, effectively replacing over 100 other network performance apps. The operator’s UPM platform will be deployed in eleven European countries according to the current plan.

Moreover, Vodafone has assured its users that all the collected data will be stored in European servers, which will be protected using encryption and adhere to other security parameters, minimizing the chances of any data breach.

By simplifying data processes at scale and delivering real-time insights, the operator hopes to address 80 percent of all incidents end-to-end without any human intervention over the coming years.

Landing AI joins NVIDIA Metropolis Partner Program

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Dipayan Mitra

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May 9, 2022

Landing AI joins NVIDIA Metropolis Partner Program

Artificial intelligence and deep learning startup Landing AI joins the NVIDIA Metropolis Partner program to accelerate AI performance and edge deployment.

This new development will help the company improve its quality control in manufacturing and industrial applications.

NVIDIA Metropolis is an initiative that aims to develop and commercialize a new generation of applications and solutions that use AI vision to make operations safer and more efficient across multiple industries.

According to NVIDIA, its Metropolis application framework makes it easier for developers to combine standard video cameras and sensors with artificial intelligence-powered video analytics to provide operational efficiency and safety applications in sectors such as retail analytics, city traffic management, airport operations, and automated factory inspections.

Senior Director of Customer Success and Strategic Partnerships at Landing AI, Carl Lewis, said, “Having successfully deployed the NVIDIA Jetson platform at customer sites, we are thrilled to be part of NVIDIA Metropolis.”

He further added that they are looking forward to working closely with NVIDIA and their system integration partners as LandingLens becomes the choice for manufacturers looking to optimize efficiency.

United States-based technology startup Landing AI was founded by a former Chief Scientist at Baidu and founding lead of the Google Brain team, Andrew Ng, in 2017. Recently, Andrew Ng also announced the launch of his new course in machine learning, which Stanford and DeepLearning.ai jointly developed.

Landing AI is best known for its core product called LandindLens. It is an end-to-end AI platform specifically designed for industrial customers to build, deploy and scale AI-powered visual inspection solutions. To date, the startup has raised %57 million from several investors like McRock Capital, Intel Capital, Insight Partners, Samsung Catalyst Fund, and others over two funding rounds.

IIIT Hyderabad Ph.D. Scholars Develop AI tool to replace Subtitles on OTT

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Dipayan Mitra

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May 9, 2022

IIIT Hyderabad AI tool replace Subtitles OTT

Ph.D. scholars from the International Institute of Information Technology (IIIT) Hyderabad are developing a novel artificial intelligence (AI)-powered tool that can be used to replace subtitles on OTT platforms.

Two Ph.D. scholars from IIT Hyderabad’s Center for Visual Information Technology have come up with an AI-powered online tool named Way2Lip that can drastically change the use of subtitles on online video streaming platforms.

In today’s time, when the gen-z is shifting towards OTT platforms such as Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney+ Hotstar, and are readily consuming entertainment pieces from various parts of the globe, it sometimes becomes difficult to cope with the visuals and subtitles simultaneously. Therefore, the overall viewing experience of multimedia consumers gets hindered.

In a couple of minutes, the patented tool NeuralSync AI can morph authentic-looking dialogues utilizing a single video clip of a human or digital avatar in the viewer’s preferred dialect, making it a potential replacement for traditional subtitles.

According to the developers of this unique AI application, it can automatically dub foreign languages into a language chosen by viewers to help them better consume video content online.

Under the leadership of Prof CV Jawahar and Prof Vinay Namboodiri, Rudrabha Mukhopadhyay and Prajwal KR created this US-patented technology. When Way2Lip gets integrated into an OTT platform, subscribers in any part of the country will be able to watch a video in any language of their choice with dubbed dialogue.

Co-developer Rudrabha claims that except for Mandarin, almost all European and Asian languages can be easily dubbed, and with AI integrating with video production, mismatched lip motions will be a thing of the past.

Sonos to launch new Voice Assistant

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Dipayan Mitra

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May 9, 2022

Wireless multi-room music system developing company Sonos announces that it plans to launch its own new voice assistant for its range of audio products, reports The Verge.

According to the company, the new voice assistant will be launched in the coming week, allowing users to play and control music on Sonos’ whole-home audio platform. Initially, Sonos will roll out this new feature in the United States, followed by a global launch.

Sonos Voice will provide users a third option in addition to Alexa and Google Assistant on the company’s compatible speakers. The company had earlier accused Alexa and Google Assistant of their pricing schemes and patent infringement.

This new development is a step for Sonos to tackle this challenge by launching an in-house developed voice assistant option for its customers. Sonos Voice Control will be activated by saying “Hey Sonos,” and internal tests indicate it to be faster than other available assistants at core music functions.

However, an interesting piece of information is that YouTube Music and Spotify will reportedly not work with Sonos Voice at launch. In addition to this assistant, Sonos is also working on a “Home Theater OS,” which the company will supposedly offer with its televisions.

United States-based music systems developing firm Sonos was founded by Craig Shelburne, John MacFarlane, Thomas Cullen, and Trung Mai in 2002. The company is best known for the Sonos Multi-Room Music System, a wireless multi-room music system that plays all kinds of music. Sonos also partnered with audio services like Audible.com, Last.FM, Napster, Pandora, RadioTime, Rhapsody, and others, to offer users computer-free access to millions of songs.