VARINDIA IT MAGAZINE

The big bets placed on machine learning by Kai-fu Lee the former Apple, Microsoft and Google executive turned as investor, a key figure in the Chinese technology industry leading the way for China With a portfolio of 300 companies. Lee is among the leading investors in Chinese AI startups through his venture fund Sinovation Ventures, a $1.8bn dual currency fund, which also invests in the US. “The State Council paper laid out China’s desire to be a hub of AI innovation by 2030, and these papers have teeth in terms of very strong local execution,” says Kai-Fu Lee. This isn’t a divination by a researcher or academic, it’s government policy from Beijing. A State Council document, issued in July last year, resolved to position China as the world’s pre-eminent practitioner of artificial intelligence (AI) in both research and application within the next 12 years. Governments across the world are rushing to support innovation in AI, but none has published as coherent a plan as Chin...

UK speed tester, OpenSignal has stated in its recent report that India’s 4G download speeds are slower than that of its neighbours - Sri Lanka (13.95Mbps), Pakistan (13.56Mbps) and Myanmar (15.56Mbps). The average 4G LTE data speed in India has been about 6.1Mbps for more than a year. According to a list prepared by OpenSignal, 4G download speed in India is the slowest among 88 countries spanning 6 continents. The speed in India has been calculated to be a dismal 6.01 mbps, while the fastest in the world is in Singapore at 44.31 mbps. USA also struggles with a lowly rank. 4G speed in America has been calculated to be 16.31 mbps. The methodology used to prepare this report is based on the real-world experience of consumers on mobile networks in their usual, daily lives. However, when it comes to availability of 4G connections, India performs far better. India ranks 14 out of the 88 countries with a very encouraging 86.26%. It does not come as much of a surprise conside...

Finally Twitter says This week : We’ll be removing locked accounts from follower counts across profiles globally. As a result, the number of followers displayed on many profiles may go down... want everyone to have confidence that follower count numbers are meaningful and accurate. An online micro analytical journal published its initial report last month that, the people on Twitter and how it was being used. It is discovered that 5% of users accounted for 75% of all activity. This finding was based on indexing 11.5 million accounts, and then looking at the top 5% users who accounted for most number of Tweets and 32% of all tweets made by the most active Twitter users, who were generated by machine bots that posted more than 150 tweets/day. The actual percentage of machine-generated tweets among the most active users is probably higher than 32% because there are many bots that update less than 150 times/day.The most active users, 24% or one-quarter of all tweets ove...

India and South Korea are expanding their business collaboration with an aim to heighten the bilateral trade to US $50 billion by 2030 by signing 11 agreements on different perspectives, the two countries' leaders said Tuesday. As per estimation the Bilateral trade between the two countries rose by nearly a quarter to $20.8 billion in the 2017/18 fiscal year that ended in March, with $16.4 billion of that in favour of South Korea. Major South Korean companies including Samsung and Hyundai Motors are everyday usual names across the country, and visiting South Korean President Moon Jae-in said he hoped that smaller companies from his country could make a replica of their success here which is an extensive growing up Trading platform in the world. Indian Prime Minister Mr. Narendra Modi enjoined their business communities to step up investments and promote joint ventures. A day before i.e on Monday, these two leaders of both the countries traveled in a metro train to Noida...

The number of Twitter followers determines the popularity of an individual in the digital age and even leaders like Prime Minister Narendra Modi is among those who believe in massive following on Twitter. But the recent study conducted by Twiplomacy revealed that a staggering 60 percent of PM Modi’s Twitter followers are not real. Twitter has since the past few months stepped up its efforts to tackle the rise of fake accounts on its platform. Twitter suspended a whopping number of accounts between May and June this year. The company reportedly shut down as many as 70 million accounts in the said period. The number of suspended accounts went up to 13 million accounts. The drill of spotting a fake account is, when a suspicious account fails to pass the test of verifying their phone number, Twitter shuts down that account. Those accounts which pass are reinstated. PM Modi’s rival and Congress president Rahul  Gandhi's official twitter handle has 3,696,460 fake foll...

For Microsoft Corp. acquiring GitHub Inc. the most admired coding platform where developers share and collaborate on projects, for $7.5 billion worth of Microsoft stock.This deal will intensify the company’s relationship with developers and allow its tools to hold out a broader audience within the world of open-source software, both a fling back to the company’s earliest roots and a sharp turnaround from where it was a decade ago. More than 28 million developers around the world use GitHub, Microsoft said, acknowledging the crucial role that developers have played in revolutionizing the modern economy. “Today, every company is becoming a software company and developers are at the center of digital transformation,” Microsoft said in a news release. Microsoft’s origin story lies in the market for software-development tools. Bill Gates and Paul Allen co-founded the company to give hobbyists a way to program a new micro-computer kit, the MITS Altair. Decades before former Chief...

IBM have the most advanced illustrative employee performance review system around. Rather than simply honour employees on what they’ve already done, the company uses its Watson AI to speculate and advice what they’re going to do in the future. Using artificial intelligence, Watson Analytics looks at an employee’s experiences and projects to infer the potential skills and qualities each person might have to serve IBM in the future. Watson also scours IBM’s internal training system to see if an employee has gained new skills. Managers then take Watson’s assessment rating into account as they make bonus, pay and promotion decisions.  “Traditional models said if you were a strong performer in your current job that was the singular way that you got a promotion,” said Nickle LaMoreaux, vice president for compensation and benefits at IBM. “Well, we certainly still care about performance,” she said. But that now includes hypothetical future performance, too. IBM claims ...

Yes .... the Facebook data collection scandal goes to another extend which is more Interesting …. !!! It turns out that one of the 61 companies that got an augmentation to collect certain kinds of data was a Russian tech firm with ties to the Kremlin.  Before 2015, apps like This Is Your Digital Life - the source of Cambridge Analytica's data on 87 million people - could collect information on the friends of their users.  Basically, if you have used an app, the developers could see what your friends "liked" even if they weren't users. Facebook banned the practice in May 2015, but as it revealed to Congress several weeks ago in 700 pages of written responses, it gave some apps an extension.  Now, Facebook has revealed to Wired and CNN that two of those apps were from Mail.ru Group, which is owned by a company founded by Alisher Usmanov, a billionaire on the U.S. Treasury Department's list of oligarchs with ties to Putin. Mail.ru ...

Red Hat has kicked off its two-day conference - the 2018 Red Hat Partner Conference Asia. The event is taking place in Bali, Indonesia from July 10-12 2018 and has witnessed the attendance of more than 225 Red Hat partners, distributors, system integrators, ISVs, OEMs and solution providers. The conference commenced with the keynote presentations by Red Hat executives - including Dirk-Peter van Leeuwen, senior vice president and general manager for Asia Pacific; Arun Oberoi, executive vice president for global sales and services; and Mark Enzweiler, senior vice president, partners and alliances. Other notable guest speakers include Sandra Ng, group vice president of IDC Asia Pacific practice group, who provided insights into the partner landscape and market opportunities in the region. With the theme “Stronger Together,”  the event featured several  breakout sessions on key focus areas such as application modernization and integration, IT automation, contai...

Red Hat has showcased the uptake of Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform in Asia Pacific by many of the region’s leading independent software vendors (ISV). ISVs such as BoCloud (China), UEC Group Ltd. (China), Yusys Technologies Co. (China), EAB Systems (Hong Kong), Monoplus (Japan) and Biqmind (Singapore) are now offering solutions based on Red Hat OpenShift to help companies in the financial services, IT, and oil and gas sectors accelerate their innovation journey. To help enterprises in Asia Pacific capture emerging opportunities, ISVs in the region are integrating Red Hat OpenShift into products and services that can enable success for cloud-first customers. Red Hat OpenShift is built on open source innovation and standards including Kubernetes, the container orchestration engine, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and is trusted by many companies around the world. It provides a more secure and stable platform for container-based deployments without sacrificing curr...

Red Hat has announced the launch of the Red Hat OpenShift Practice Builder Program in Asia Pacific. The program aims to help system integrators (SIs) build and monetize a modern cloud-native application development and delivery practice using Red Hat OpenShift and Red Hat JBoss Middleware. The Red Hat OpenShift Practice Builder Program is uniquely designed to help SIs build expertise on Red Hat OpenShift and Red Hat JBoss Middleware developer tools and enable them to build and modernize applications for the cloud, to help deliver new services at lower cost and accelerate development for faster return on investment. Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform is an award-winning application development platform that unites developers and IT operations on a single platform to build, deploy, and manage applications more consistently across hybrid cloud infrastructures. An example is the Hong Kong-based international airline, Cathay Pacific, where they have replaced their lega...

Ericsson has established a Centre of Excellence (CoE) and Innovation Lab for 5G in the country at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi. This first-of-its-kind 5G innovation Lab, which has been set up by Ericsson for Indian industry and academia to leverage, is dedicated to the nation by the Hon’ble Minister of State for Communications (I/C) and Minister of State for Railways, Shri Manoj Sinha, together with Börje Ekholm, President & CEO, Ericsson, at the IIT Delhi. Ericsson conducts India’s first 5G over-the-air beam tracking demonstration on 3.5GHz spectrum using a pre-commercial end-to-end system, including 5G-NR, VRAN and VCORE. The demonstration includes 3GPP 5G NR Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) antenna technology with adaptive beam-forming and beam-tracking techniques to deliver robust and sustained mobile broadband communications. By beam steering, a highly-focused beam, a stronger radio signal with higher data throughput is delivered over a great...

Security is the foundation of the Network and the malware attack is growing exponentially, globally cybercrime will cost 6 trillion annually by 2021. The attack is mainly target to the BFSI industry, as a No.1 vendor into security vendor, CISCO leads the partner eco-system into security. Vishak Raman, Director, Security speaking at the 5th CISCO India Summit in Goa. Security is running across the core fabrics. In CISCO we bring an unique integrated and orchestration approach to fast detect the attack, Vishak said. He further said on how they integrated the technology into four critical components like Alerts, Events, Threat Intelligence and Broadcast . Alerts- Real-time activities at the endpoint are reported back to the firewall  Events- What happens at the identity service engine, is communicated o the next-gen firewall Threat Intelligence- What we at the detection point of view, is broadcasted to the entire portfolio.... Raed More

RIPS code Security Analysis detects unknown security issues in your PHP application bundles including Wordpress, Mooddle, Prestashop, Joomla and much more without false positive noise. This is More about an unpatched security flaw impacting WordPress, the Internet’s most popular content management system (CMS).RIPS experts said they have told the WordPress team about this particular vulnerability in November last year, but the WordPress Development Team have failed to release a new patch. This flaw can affect the core of the WordPress CMS and not one of its plugins or themes. More accurately, the bug was found in the PHP functions that delete thumbnails for images uploaded on a WordPress site. That’s basically all there is to it. Update WordPress, update your plugins, and update your themes. Vulnerabilities are constantly being exposed, and automated hacks can easily take advantage of them to compromise your site.It’s also critical to check your premium plugins to ensure they a...

Reliance Industries Limited (“RIL” or “Reliance”) will acquire an open telecom solutions provider Radisys Corporation (“Radisys” or “the Company”) for US$1.72 per share in cash. Radisys provides open telecom solutions to service providers worldwide. Headquartered in Hillsboro, Oregon, Radisys has nearly 600 employees with an engineering team based out of Bangalore, India, and sales and support offices globally. Radisys delivers value to service providers and telecom equipment vendors by providing disruptive open-centric software, hardware and service capabilities that enable the migration to next-generation network topologies. “Reliance and Jio have been disrupting legacy business models and establishing new global benchmarks. Radisys’ top-class management and engineering team offer Reliance rapid innovation and solution development expertise globally, which complements our work towards software-centric disaggregated networks and platforms, enhancing the value to custom...

One of the most important agenda highlighted under the recently proposed Telecom policy was addressing the rural connectivity challenge. The Government in the NTP has expressed its desire to introduce new and Innovative solutions and technologies to address this issue. Parallel Wireless a wireless network solutions (A startup by an Indian, Parallel Wireless, Inc. develops a wireless cellular network in New Hampshire. It focuses on developing the architecture of the cellular radio access network), which have claimed to work towards connecting the rural population to the world and provides services to major telcos in India, Africa and Middle East, Parallel Wireless, has devised solutions across these geographies. Addressing rural connectivity challenges with innovative technologies' which have been developed from an Indian standpoint, Rajesh Mishra, Founder, President, and CTO - Parallel Wireless says on how can service providers help government to attain 100% rural t...

With a new direction has come from the power ministry has advised companies to regulate default air conditioner (AC) settings to promote energy efficiency in the area which is expected to be a key driver of global electricity demand in the coming decades , which may also be made mandatory at a later stage. The power ministry also launched an awareness campaign around air conditioning in order to achieve substantial energy savings and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. In a meeting presided by R.K Singh, Power Minister said, manufacturers have been advised to set labels on air conditioners which indicate the optimum temperature settings as part of consumer awareness. The temperature setting will be in the range of 24 to 26 degrees Celsius. The government also plans to send an advisory to establishments and manufacturers in this regard.... Read More

In light of many recent cases of WhatsApp “hacking” , If someone on your contact list has or is asking for your WhatsApp account verification code – BEWARE!! It could be a scammer that is using your contact's WhatsApp account to make that request! After getting many requests to investigate Whatsapp hacking cases and along with several associates, we have spent time researching and have analyzed how criminals are possibly hacking WhatsApp. There is no technology used, however the victims are not managing to identify the criminals who are hiding using the name of the victim’s friend in most cases. This explanation should assist and may help in creating more awareness on how to prevent WhatsApp hacking.... Read More

Paypal is on drive to give further benefit to its 237 million customers by the recent acquisitions of Palo Alto, California-based Simility sells machine-learning-based technology to help online merchants spot fraudsters and improve risk management, a fraud prevention specialist, for $120 million in cash. PayPal had been an investor in Simility (it owns three percent of the company) along with Accel, the Valley Fund, Trinity Ventures and others. The startup had raised just under $25 million and was last valued at $52.75 million, according to figures from PitchBook, making this a decent return for its backers. The deal is expected to close in Q3. Online fraud is increasingly seen as an urgent threat by banks across the world. Fraudsters obtain login credentials with social engineering, by hacking databases or by simply buying them on the Dark Web. With the growth of E-Commerce, organization can spread their business to national and international markets with minimum inves...

One certain prediction we can all make about the “ Global War on Terror” with great confidence is that it is not going to end any time soon, or even dramatically subside. Terrorism is on the rise today and it poses a direct threat to the security of all of us, and to international stability and prosperity we so eagerly desire. Terror is a persistent global threat that knows no borders, nationality or religion and is a challenge that the international community is trying to tackle together however diverse the methods and strategies. The world holds and hosts counter terror think tanks, conferences, seminars and even in some cases share intelligence and other cooperative work on countering terrorism.... Read More