Wednesday, June 3, 2020
Samsung Galaxy A31 to Launching in India Today: Watch Livestream
Nokia Smart TV 43-Inch to Launch in India Today: Expected Price, More
OnePlus 8 to Go on Sale Today at 12 Noon via Amazon, OnePlus Website
SpaceX launches 60 more Starlink satellites and achieves a reusability record for a Falcon 9 booster
SpaceX launched its second Falcon 9 rocket in the span of just four days on Wednesday at 9:25 PM EDT (6:25 PM PDT). This one was carrying 60 more satellites for its Starlink constellation, which will bring the total currently in operation on orbit to 480. The launch took off from Florida, where SpaceX launched astronauts for the first time ever on Saturday for the final demonstration mission of its Crew Dragon to fulfill the requirements of NASA’s Commercial Crew human-rating process.
Today’s launch didn’t include any human passengers, but it did fly that next big batch of Starlink broadband internet satellites, as mentioned. Those will join the other Starlink satellites in low Earth orbit, forming part of a network that will eventually serve to provide high-bandwidth, reliable internet connectivity, particularly in underserved areas where terrestrial networks either aren’t present or don’t offer high-speed connections.
This launch included a test of a new system that SpaceX designed in order to hopefully improve an issue its satellites have had with nighttime visibility from Earth. The test Starlink satellite, one of the 60, has a visor system installed that it can deploy post-launch in order to block the sun from reflecting off of its communication antenna surfaces. If it works as designed, it should greatly reduce sunlight reflected off of the satellite back to Earth, and SpaceX will then look to make it a standard part of its Starlink satellite design going forward.
Part of this launch included landing the first stage of the Falcon 9 rocket used for the launch, which has already flown previously four times and been recovered – that makes this a rocket that has now flown five missions, and today it touched down safely once again on SpaceX’s drone landing barge in the ocean so it can potentially be used again.
SpaceX will also be attempting to recover the two fairing halves that form the protective nose cone used during launch at the top of the rocket to protect the payload being carried by the Falcon 9. We’ll provide an update about how that attempt goes once SpaceX provides details.
Tomorrow, June 4, actually marks the 10-year anniversary of the first flight of a Falcon 9 rocket – between this reusability record, and the much more historic first human spaceflight mission earlier this week, that’s quite the decade.
Google and Walmart’s PhonePe establish dominance in India’s mobile payments market as WhatsApp Pay struggles to launch
In India, it’s Google and Walmart-owned PhonePe that are racing neck-and-neck to be the top player in the mobile payments market, while Facebook remains mired in a regulatory maze for WhatsApp Pay’s rollout.
In May, more than 75 million users transacted on Google Pay app, ahead of PhonePe’s 60 million users, and SoftBank-backed Paytm’s 30 million users, people familiar with the companies’ figures told TechCrunch.
Google still lags Paytm’s reach with merchants, but the Android-maker has maintained its overall lead in recent months despite every player losing momentum due to one of the most stringent lockdowns globally in place in India. Google declined to comment.
Paytm, once the dominant player in India, has been struggling to sustain its user base for nearly two years. The company had about 60 million transacting users in January last year, said people familiar with the matter.
Data sets consider transacting users to be those who have made at least one payment through the app in a month. It’s a coveted metric and is different from the much more popular monthly active users, or MAU, that various firms use to share their performance. A portion of those labeled as monthly active users do not make any transaction on the app.
India’s homegrown payment firm, Paytm, has struggled to grow in recent years in part because of a mandate by India’s central bank to mobile wallet firms — the middlemen between users and banks — to perform know-your-client (KYC) verification of users, which created confusion among many, some of the people said. These woes come despite the firm’s fundraising success, which amounts to more than $3 billion.
In a statement, a Paytm spokesperson said, “When it comes to mobile wallets one has to remember the fact that Paytm was the company that set up the infrastructure to do KYC and has been able to complete over 100 million KYCs by physically meeting customers.”
Paytm has long benefited from integration with popular services such as Uber, and food delivery startups Swiggy and Zomato, but fewer than 10 million of Paytm’s monthly transacting users have relied on this feature in recent months.
Two executives, who like everyone else spoke on the condition of anonymity because of fear of retribution, also said that Paytm resisted the idea of adopting Unified Payments Interface. That’s the nearly two-year-old payments infrastructure built and backed by a collation of banks in India that enables money to be sent directly between accounts at different banks and eliminates the need for a separate mobile wallet.
Paytm’s delays in adopting the standard left room for Google and PhonePe, another early adopter of UPI, to seize the opportunity.
Paytm, which adopted UPI a year after Google and PhonePe, refuted the characterization that it resisted joining UPI ecosystem.
“We are the company that cherishes innovation and technology that can transform the lives of millions. We understand the importance of financial technology and for this very reason, we have always been the champion and supporter of UPI. We, however, launched it on Paytm later than our peers because it took a little longer for us to get the approval to start UPI based services,“ a spokesperson said.
A sign for Paytm online payment method, operated by One97 Communications Ltd., is displayed at a street stall selling accessories in Bengaluru, India, on Saturday, Feb. 4, 2017. Photographer: Dhiraj Singh/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Missing from the fray is Facebook, which counts India as its biggest market by user count. The company began talks with banks to enter India’s mobile payments market, estimated to reach $1 trillion by 2023 (according to Credit Suisse), through WhatsApp as early as 2017. WhatsApp is the most popular smartphone app in India with over 400 million users in the country.
Facebook launched WhatsApp Pay to a million users in the following year, but has been locked in a regulatory battle since to expand the payments service to the rest of its users. Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said WhatsApp Pay would roll out nationwide by end of last year, but the firm is yet to secure all approvals — and new challenges keep cropping up. WhatsApp declined to comment.
PhonePe, which was conceived only a year before WhatsApp set eyes to India’s mobile payments, has consistently grown as it added several third-party services. These include leading food and grocery delivery services Swiggy and Grofers, ride-hailing giant Ola, ticketing and staying players Ixigo and Oyo Hotels, in a so-called super app strategy. In November, about 63 million users were active on PhonePe, 45 million of whom transacted through the app.
Karthik Raghupathy, the head of business at PhonePe, confirmed the company’s transacting users to TechCrunch.
Three factors contributed to the growth of PhonePe, he said in an interview. “The rise of smartphones and mobile data adoption in recent years; early adoption to UPI at a time when most mobile payments firms in India were betting on virtual mobile-wallet model; and taking an open-ecosystem approach,” he said.
“We opened our consumer base to all our merchant partners very early on. Our philosophy was that we would not enter categories such as online ticketing for movies and travel, and instead work with market leaders on those fronts,” he explained.
“We also went to the market with a completely open, interoperable QR code that enabled merchants and businesses to use just one QR code to accept payments from any app — not just ours. Prior to this, you would see a neighborhood store maintain several QR codes to support a number of payment apps. Over the years, our approach has become the industry norm,” he said, adding that PhonePe has been similarly open to other wallets and payments options as well.
But despite the growth and its open approach, PhonePe has still struggled to win the confidence of investors in recent quarters. Stoking investors’ fears is the lack of a clear business model for mobile payments firms in India.
PhonePe executives held talks to raise capital last year that would have valued it at $8 billion, but the negotiations fell apart. Similar talks early this year, which would have valued PhonePe at $3 billion, which hasn’t been previously reported, also fell apart, three people familiar with the matter said. Raghupathy and a PhonePe spokesperson declined to comment on the company’s fundraising plans.
For now, Walmart has agreed to continue to bankroll the payments app, which became part of the retail group with Flipkart acquisition in 2018.
As UPI gained inroads in the market, banks have done away with any promotional incentives to mobile payments players, one of their only revenue sources.
At an event in Bangalore late last year, Sajith Sivanandan, managing director and business head of Google Pay and Next Billion User Initiatives, said current local rules have forced Google Pay to operate without a clear business model in India.
Coronavirus takes its toll on payments companies
The coronavirus pandemic that prompted New Delhi to order a nationwide lockdown in late March preceded a significant, but predictable, drop in mobile payments usage in the following weeks. But while Paytm continues to struggle in bouncing back, PhonePe and Google Pay have fully recovered as India eased some restrictions.
About 120 million UPI transactions occurred on Paytm in the month of May, down from 127 million in April and 186 million in March, according to data compiled by NPCI, the body that oversees UPI, and obtained by TechCrunch. (Paytm maintains a mobile wallet business, which contributes to its overall transacting users.)
Google Pay, which only supports UPI payments, facilitated 540 million transactions in May, up from 434 million in April and 515 million in March. PhonePe’s 454 million March figure slid to 368 million in April, but it turned the corner, with 460 million transactions last month. An NPCI spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.
PhonePe and Google Pay together accounted for about 83% of all UPI transactions in India last month.
Industry executives working at rival firms said it would be a mistake to dismiss Paytm, the one-time leader of the mobile payments market in India.
Paytm has cut its marketing expenses and aggressively chased merchants in recent quarters. Earlier this year, it unveiled a range of gadgets, including a device that displays QR check-out codes that comes with a calculator and USB charger, a jukebox that provides voice confirmations of transactions and services to streamline inventory management for merchants.
Merchants who use these devices pay a recurring fee to Paytm, Vijay Shekhar Sharma, co-founder and chief executive of the firm told TechCrunch in an interview earlier this year. Paytm has also entered several businesses, such as movie and travel ticketing, lending, games and e-commerce, and set up a digital payments bank over the years.
“Everyone knows Paytm. Paytm is synonymous with digital payments in India. And outside, there’s a perceived notion that it’s truly the Alipay of India,” an executive at a rival firm said.
Cloud data services company NetApp says it's acquiring Israeli cloud storage company Spot.io, sources say for $450M (CTech)
Cloud data services company NetApp says it's acquiring Israeli cloud storage company Spot.io, sources say for $450M — The Israeli cloud services company has previously raised a total of $52 million, and employs 150 people in Tel Aviv, London, and San Francisco
HBO’s latest terrifying trailer for Lovecraft Country couldn’t be more timely
HBO's new horror series Lovecraft Country is adapted from the novel by Matt Ruff.
With impeccable timing, HBO has dropped a new trailer for its upcoming horror series, Lovecraft Country. The series is based on the 2016 dark fantasy/horror novel, of the same name by Matt Ruff, which deals explicitly with the horrors of racism in the 1950s, along with other, more supernatural issues.
As we previously reported, Ruff also found inspiration in a 2006 essay by Pam Noles describing what it was like growing up being both black and, well, a hardcore nerd. Lovecraft Country is a gripping, extremely powerful read, which is why it was one of my choices for the Ars summer reading guide. The book's protagonist is a black veteran of the Korean War and science fiction fan named Atticus, who embarks on a perilous road trip from his home on Chicago's South Side to a small town in rural Massachusetts. He's looking for his estranged father, who purportedly vanished after encountering a well-dressed man driving a silver Cadillac.
Atticus' Uncle George and childhood friend/fellow sci-fi buff, Letitia (aka Leti), comes along for the ride. Because their journey is inspired by Lovecraft, they naturally encounter all kinds of arcane rituals, magic, shape-shifters, monsters, and an alternate reality or two along the way. HBO seems to be sticking pretty closely to the novel, if the official synopsis is any indication:
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A drug that cools the body’s reaction to Covid-19 appears to save lives
In an advance towards conquering covid-19, doctors in Michigan say an antibody drug may sharply cut the chance patients on a ventilator will die.
The problem: The pandemic viral disease is infecting millions and for those who end up on a ventilator in an ICU, the odds are grim. More than half are dying.
The drug: Doctors at the University of Michigan set out to control the haywire immune reaction that pushes some covid-19 patients into a death spiral. To do it, they gave 78 patients on ventilators the drug tocilizumab, which blocks IL-6, a molecule in the body that sets off a reacting to an infection. (The drug is sold by Roche under the tradename Acterma.)
The result: The doctors say in a preprint that patients who got the drug were 45% less likely to die than those who didn’t. But there’s a big caveat to the result, which is that the doctors knew which patients got the drug, and which didn’t. Their picks could have been biased— people more likely to improve anyway, for example—so further studies are needed.
Emerging cocktail: In late May, Roche said it would start a trial to combine its IL-6 blocker combined with remdesivir, an antiviral drug with modest benefits that got emergency approval in the US for treating covid-19. That drug is meant to block the virus from replicating.
By combining the two drugs, doctors may be closing in on a cocktail able to cut the death rate from the virus, a step that would help society return to normal.
https://ift.tt/2AByC7s https://ift.tt/eA8V8JTuesday, June 2, 2020
Remove China Apps Pulled From Google Play
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LanzaJet launches to make renewable jet fuel a reality
Over a fifteen year stretch, LanzaTech has developed technologies that can turn carbon emissions into ethanol that can be used for chemicals and fuel. Today, the company announced the spinout of LanzaJet alongside its corporate partners Mitsui, Suncor, and All Nippon Airways, to bring sustainable aviation fuel to the commercial market.
The new company has launched with commitments from the Japanese trading and investment company, Mitsui & Co. and Canadian oil and gas producer Suncor Energy to invest $85 million to back the first pilot and development scale facilities that LanzaJet will be constructing.
The first tranche of money, a $25 million commitment from Suncor and Mitsui will be used to build a demonstration plant that will produce 10 million gallons per year of sustainable aviation fuel and renewable diesel starting from sustainable ethanol sources.
For LanzaTech chief executive, Jennifer Holmgren, the launch of LanzaJet is the next step in the process of bringing her company’s technology, which promises to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and curb climate change by creating a more circular carbon economy, to market.
LanzaTech bills itself as a leader in gas fermentation, a process that takes industrial gases and makes sustainable fuels and chemicals from industrial off-gases; syngas generated from any biomass resources like municipal solid waste, organic industrial waste, agricultural waste; and reformed biogas. Through synthetic biology and industrial processing, the company says it can make over 100 different chemicals.
With the LanzaJet spinoff, the focus is squarely on sustainable jet fuels.
“We finished the investment side and the off-take agreements and that’s all committed,” said Holmgren. “Now we’re working on getting the feedstock… We’re making sure that we can source low-carbon intensity ethanol.”
Those suppliers of second generation cellulosic ethanol needs to meet the right carbon footprint criteria and LanzaJet is working with the relevant renewable energy standards organization to make sure that the ethanol its using has the right pedigree.
A history of innovation in second generation biofuels
Of course, some of that feedstock could come from LanzaTech itself. The Chicago-based company has been developing processes to capture emissions from power plants and other sources and convert those emissions into ethanol by injecting them into microbe-filled vats. The microbes convert the gas into ethanol which can then be used as fuel or feedstock for chemical manufacturing.
Once LanzaJet identifies its feedstock supplier, the company expects to begin working on building the demonstration facility, which should be completed by 2022, when production will begin on the first line.
In addition to its corporate partners, LanzaJet received a $14 million grant from the Department of Energy to work on the development of cellulosic ethanol manufacturing processes and the development of a biorefinery at the company’s site in Soperton, Ga.
Indeed, the whole story of LanzaTech’s fifteen year journey is woven with public private partnerships that were conducted alongside government research agencies. The conversion technology at the heart of LanzaJet’s process was the result of years of collaborative research between LanzaTech and the U.S Energy Department’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL).
It was the PNNL that developed the catalytic process to upgrade ethanol to alcohol-to-jet synthetic paraffinic kerosene (ATJ-SPK) that LanzaTech took from the laboratory to pilot scale.
Vintage illustration of couples walking inside chemistry beakers in front of a chemical processing plant, 1952. Screen print. (Illustration by GraphicaArtis/Getty Images)
Investors with benefits
For Suncor and ANA, the development of sustainable alternatives is a strategic necessity. The International Air Transport Association has committed to cut emissions in half by 2050 compared to 2005 levels and to achieve carbon-neutral growth by the end of this year.
While national lockdowns imposed earlier this year to combat the spread of COVID-19 reduced travel and dramatically cut into the emissions causing global climate change, the aviation industry will have to shift its sources of fuel consumption and invest heavily in carbon offsets if it wants to achieve its stated goals.
“ANA is thrilled to work alongside LanzaTech, Mitsui and Suncor on this new venture,” said Akihiko Miura, Executive Vice President of ANA, in a statement. “We believe that this partnership is a great step forward for carbon-neutral growth initiatives. ANA is happy to share in this innovative endeavor and to be a part of a carbon-free future in the aviation industry.”
For its part, Suncor, a Canadian oil and gas company with significant operations in that country’s controversial oil sands region, looks at LanzaTech’s LanzaJet technology as another way to diversify beyond the traditional oil and gas business.
The company has already begun installing charging stations for electric vehicles across its network of filling stations that span the breadth of Canada. With LanzaJet’s fuel, the company can add sustainable jet fuels to its services for customers at airports in Calgary, Denver, Colo., Edmonton, Montreal, and Toronto.
Its diversification comes at a time when even Suncor’s chief executive is acknowledging the transition to a different energy mix.
“While Canadian oil and gas will remain a significant part of the global energy mix for some time, we have to take advantage of new opportunities that offer attractive growth prospects,” Suncor CEO Mark Little wrote in an opinion article for Canada’s Corporate Knights magazine, Reuters reported. “The temporary economic lockdown triggered by the 2020 pandemic is giving us a glimpse into a not-too-distant future where the transformation of our energy system could disrupt demand on a similar scale.”
The company’s work with LanzaTech can also help move it toward the commitments it has made to hit emissions reductions targets associated with the Paris Accord’s two degrees celsius goals.
“We’re taking a view towards how do we think the energy transition is going to progress,” said Suncor’s vice president of strategy and corporate development, Andrea Ducore. For the company, bio-based, low-carbon fuels is one solution, Ducore said. “As the owner of Petro-Canada gas stations across Canada, we’re asking ourselves what do our customers want today and what do they want ten years from now.”
Photo: Getty Images/ipopba/iStock
Taking Flight
Leading the charge as LanzaJet rockets into the sustainable aviation fuel industry is Jimmy Samartzis, a former United Airlines executive and current boardmember at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory.
With experience in both technology and aviation — including a stint with the International Air Transport Association — Samartzis is well positioned to make the new company’s pitch to potential consumers.
Samartzis and Holmgren, LanzaTech’s founder, initially met when she was working at Universal Oil Products (now a subsidiary of Honeywell). Eventually the two collaborated when LanzaTech began marketing its sustainable jet fuel to companies in the industry for pilot flights nearly a decade ago.
“When we did all of that, he was one of the people at United that was involved in sustainable aviation fuel,” Holmgren recalled.
As LanzaTech searched for an executive who could take the reins at its new jet fuel initiative, Samartzis was one of the first calls that the young company made, Holmgren said.
“The launch of LanzaJet marks an historic milestone in the clean energy transition that is underway globally. I’ve been part of many renewable energy and sustainability firsts over the last decade, and this one is the most exciting,” said Samartzis, in a statement. “The commercialization of LanzaJet – built on the shoulders of LanzaTech, Suncor, Mitsui, ANA and with the support of the U.S. Department of Energy – gives our world, and aviation in particular, an important solution in shaping a cleaner future.”
While Holmgren thinks LanzaTech could be one of the main suppliers for the feedstock that LanzaJet needs to operate, she said the goal in spinning out the company was to ensure that there was broad-based demand for ethanol coming from multiple potential vendors.
One of the reasons we created LanzaJet and decoupled them from LanzaTech was because it will incentivize others to produce the right low-carbon ethanol feedstock,” said Holmgren. “If you want a low-carbon future it cannot be about LanzaTech and LanzaJet. We thought lifting that limitation was the right thing to do.”
Eventually, those fuel sources could include things like ethanol from direct air capture of carbon dioxide and other emissions that cause climate change.
“LanzaJet as an entity can drive that to incentivize producer to drive to the lowest carbon intensity ethanol to provide feedstock for aviation fuels,” said Holmgren.
RUHS Recruitment 2020 – Apply Online for 2000 Medical Officer Posts
Facebook strikes global licensing deal with Indian music label Saregama
Facebook said on Wednesday it has entered into a global deal with Saregama, one of India’s oldest music labels, to license its music for video and other social experiences across its eponymous service and Instagram.
The partnership, which comes weeks after Swedish music giant Spotify also signed a deal with Saregama, will allow users to choose from a wide variety of music to add to their social experiences such as videos, stories via music stickers and other creative content, Facebook said. Users will also be able to add songs to their Facebook profile.
Saregama, one of the oldest music labels in the world, is the best place to find tracks from several India music legends including Lata Mangeshkar, R.D. Burman, Mohammed Rafi, Talat Mahmood, Manna Dey, Kalyanji-Anandji, and Hemant Kumar. The giant says its library contains over 100,000 songs, ghazals, and more in over 25 languages.
Facebook maintains similar deals with other music labels in India, its biggest market by users count, including Yash Raj Films, Zee Music Company, and T-Series, one of the top YouTube channels worldwide. Bloomberg reported last year that Facebook was also in talks with international music labels and had started testing video music in India and Indonesia.
“At Facebook, we believe music is an integral part of self-expression and bringing people closer together and creating memories that last. We are very proud to partner with Saregama that will allow people on our platforms, globally, to use their favourite retro Indian music to further enrich their content on our platforms,” said Manish Chopra, Director and Head of Partnerships at Facebook India, in a statement.
Facebook has also signed deals with music labels such as Universal Music Group in the past to license its recorded music and publishing catalogs for video and other content across its services including Oculus. In 2018, Facebook also signed a deal with Spotify to allow users to share Spotify albums, tracks to Instagram Stories — a feature it added to Facebook Stories last year.
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Russian cryptocurrency payment network A7 expands to Africa, as Moscow builds an alternative payments system amid western sanctions after its Ukraine invasion (Financial Times)
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