Thursday, July 2, 2020
Draft ecommerce policy seeks to set up regulator, restrict data storage
E-tailers must label 'country of origin' at earliest: Govt
Streaming TV services' inability to negotiate their way out of the bundle system that has dominated regular cable for years is resulting in higher prices (Chaim Gartenberg/The Verge)
Streaming TV services' inability to negotiate their way out of the bundle system that has dominated regular cable for years is resulting in higher prices — YouTube TV's price hike is part of a larger problem — YouTube TV announced yesterday that it'd be raising its prices by 30 percent to $65 per month.
TikTok CEO writes to government to share India expansion plans
Reliance Jio officially launches Zoom rival JioMeet
Indian traders on Alibaba seeing more discounts
Realme Narzo 10A to Go on Sale in India Today via Realme Site, Flipkart
EVO 2020 game tourney canceled, co-founder fired [Updated]
EVO—the long-running video game tournament dedicated to fighting-game series like Street Fighter and Tekken—was rocked by departures on Thursday in the wake of startling allegations lodged against its co-founder.
Shortly afterward, the man in question, Joey Cuellar, apparently acknowledged these accusations of sexual assault against a minor in a brief, frank post on social media. This was swiftly followed by EVO firing Cuellar from the organization and canceling EVO 2020's online tournaments outright.
After accusations came departures
Capcom announced its decision to withdraw all participation from EVO 2020 on Thursday evening, minutes after NetherRealm Studios, the developers of the Mortal Kombat and Injustice series, did the same. That means tentpole games Street Fighter V and Mortal Kombat 11 will no longer be played; the latter game figured largely into EVO's transition to an online-only event, owing to its reputation for superior netcode. Mane6, the developers behind new EVO participant Them's Fightin' Herds, followed suit shortly after.
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India's Reliance Jio launches JioMeet, a Zoom-like video-conference service, offering unlimited free calls in 720p with up to 100 participants and no time limit (Manish Singh/TechCrunch)
India's Reliance Jio launches JioMeet, a Zoom-like video-conference service, offering unlimited free calls in 720p with up to 100 participants and no time limit — India's Reliance Jio Platforms, which recently concluded a $15.2 billion fundraise run, is ready to enter a new business: Video conferencing.
Caffeine, which aims to compete with Twitch but focuses on content like rap battles, has raised $113M, led by Fox Corp, Cox Enterprises, and Sanabil Investments (Lucas Shaw/Bloomberg)
Caffeine, which aims to compete with Twitch but focuses on content like rap battles, has raised $113M, led by Fox Corp, Cox Enterprises, and Sanabil Investments — - Fox, Cox Enterprises among investors leading funding round — Music competitions have helped attract 2 million users
Festo’s latest biomimetic robots are a flying feathered bird and ball-bottomed helper arm
You could be excused for thinking that German robotics company Festo does nothing but put together fabulous prototype robots built to resemble kangaroos, jellyfish, and other living things. They do in fact actually make real industrial robots, but it’s hard not to marvel at their biomimetic experiments; Case in point, the feathered BionicSwift and absurd BionicMobileAssistant motile arm.
Festo already has a flying bird robot — I wrote about it almost 10 years ago. They even made a flying bat as a follow-up. But the BionicSwift is more impressive than both because, in an effort to more closely resemble its avian inspiration, it flies using artificial feathers.
Image Credits: Festo
“The individual lamellae [i.e. feathers] are made of an ultralight, flexible but very robust foam and lie on top of each other like shingles. Connected to a carbon quill, they are attached to the actual hand and arm wings as in the natural model,” Festo writes in its description of the robot.
The articulating lamellae allow the wing to work like a bird’s, forming a powerful scoop on the downstroke to push against the air, but separating on the upstroke to produce less resistance. Everything is controlled on-board, including the indoor positioning system that the bird was ostensibly built to demonstrate. Flocks of BionicSwifts can fly in close quarters and avoid each other using an ultra wideband setup.
Festo’s BionicMobileAssistant seems like it would be more practical, and in a way it is, but not by much. The robot is basically an arm emerging from a wheeled base — or rather a balled one. The spherical bottom is driven by three “omniwheels,” letting it move easily in any direction while minimizing its footprint.
The hand is a showcase of modern robotic gripper design, with all kinds of state of the art tech packed in there — but the result is less than the sum of its parts. What makes a robotic hand good these days is less that it has a hundred sensors in the palm and fingers and huge motility for its thumb, but rather intelligence about what it is gripping. An unadorned pincer may be a better “hand” than one that looks like the real thing because of the software that backs it up.
Not to mention the spherical movement strategy makes for something of an unstable base. It’s telling that the robot is transporting scarves and not plates of food or parts.
Of course, it’s silly to criticize such a machine, which is aspirational rather than practical. But it’s important to understand that these fascinating creations from Festo are hints at a possible future more than anything.
Companies have little to lose from joining a Facebook boycott during a slow month for ads amid a pandemic; they'll be back, and Facebook will emerge stronger (Jack Shafer/Politico)
Companies have little to lose from joining a Facebook boycott during a slow month for ads amid a pandemic; they'll be back, and Facebook will emerge stronger — Every day, it seems, another major corporation joins the advertiser boycott against Facebook. First came The North Face, REI and Patagonia.
Mobility cos may downsize fleet as rides thin out
Wednesday, July 1, 2020
SSC CGL Result 2020 – Tier I Result & Cutoff Released
SSC Result 2020 – CGL Tier I Result & Cutoff Released
Tesla plans a software update for ~1.2M cars in China, around half its fleet in the country, to address power steering and rear-view camera issues (Bloomberg)
Bloomberg : Tesla plans a software update for ~1.2M cars in China, around half its fleet in the country, to address power steering and re...
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Jake Offenhartz / Gothamist : Since October, the NYPD has deployed a quadruped robot called Spot to a handful of crime scenes and hostage...
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Lorena O'Neil / Rolling Stone : A look at the years of warnings about AI from researchers, including several women of color, who say ...
