Tech Nuggets with the Technology

Friday, October 2, 2020

With the US government circling, Google is starting to play nice with smaller rivals

Several software firms said Google has become more collaborative on data privacy and other changes with them and industry groups, helping these entities instead of ignoring requests as they have done in the past. https://ift.tt/3ncXZjU https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

Airbnb aims to raise roughly $3 billion in IPO: Report

Airbnb will be one of the largest and most anticipated U.S. stock market listings of 2020 which has already been a blockbuster year for IPOs https://ift.tt/3l3Xpms https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

Facebook, Twitter, Google CEOs will testify before U.S. Senate committee

Republican President Donald Trump has made holding tech companies accountable for allegedly stifling conservative voices a theme of his administration https://ift.tt/3ikspgs https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

JioMart pilots milk deliveries in Bengaluru, Chennai

This will pit it directly against online food delivery platform Swiggy’s Supr Daily and Bigbasket’s BB Daily services, besides standalone player Milkbasket. https://ift.tt/3l8PB2V https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

JioMart bets on private labels

JioMart’s daily average order volume is learnt to be inching up from the previously announced 2.5 lakh and private brands, which are typically 10-20% cheaper, could boost that further https://ift.tt/33ryqDC https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

James Bond Film No Time to Die Delayed, Again

The makers of the new James Bond movie -- which has already had its release date pushed back once due to the pandemic -- on Friday said it would not now be released until April 2021. https://ift.tt/3irepl4

Reliance Retail to Receive Rs. 7,350 Crore Investment From GIC, TPG Capital

Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) said on Saturday Singapore sovereign wealth fund GIC and global private equity firm TPG Capital invested a combined Rs. 7,350 crore (about $1 billion) in its retail unit. https://ift.tt/36sYmRx

The Tokyo Stock Exchange's day-long outage on Thursday was caused by a failover glitch after a critical data storage and distribution device had malfunctioned (Bloomberg)

Bloomberg:
The Tokyo Stock Exchange's day-long outage on Thursday was caused by a failover glitch after a critical data storage and distribution device had malfunctioned — - Data storage and distribution device brought down Tokyo market — Stock exchange forced to close trading for the entire day

Smaller brands may be forced to import fully built mobile devices, after latest BCD levy

Smaller smartphone brands may resort to importing completely built devices instead of assembling in India, as the aggregate duty on components has become almost equal to that on a complete unit, a development which may hit the government's plans of expanding local manufacturing. https://ift.tt/3lahw2I https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

Telecom companies seek to get charges for Aadhaar-based e-KYC authentication scrapped

Mobile phone companies have urged the government to scrap the “unreasonably high” charges of Rs 41 for Aadhaar-based electronic-know your customer (e-KYC) authentication, saying it’s limiting the use of the facility for user verification. https://ift.tt/3jqNneX https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

Apple Watch Series 6 and Apple Watch SE go on sale in India: What buyers get by paying Rs 10,000 extra

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Google launches Android Partner Vulnerability Initiative to improve the security of OEM devices and inform users about the security flaws affecting their device (Brandon Russell/XDA Developers)

Brandon Russell / XDA Developers:
Google launches Android Partner Vulnerability Initiative to improve the security of OEM devices and inform users about the security flaws affecting their device — We do more than ever on our smartphones these days, which makes device security incredibly important.

The digital transformation of boomers and beyond during the pandemic

Monthly active users in 55+ age-group have risen considerably for healthcare, grocery apps compared to earlier https://ift.tt/3ndosxF https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

Google research lets sign language switch ‘active speaker’ in video calls

An aspect of video calls that many of us take for granted is the way they can switch between feeds to highlight whoever’s speaking. Great — if speaking is how you communicate. Silent speech like sign language doesn’t trigger those algorithms, unfortunately, but this research from Google might change that.

It’s a real-time sign language detection engine that can tell when someone is signing (as opposed to just moving around) and when they’re done. Of course it’s trivial for humans to tell this sort of thing, but it’s harder for a video call system that’s used to just pushing pixels.

A new paper from Google researchers, presented (virtually, of course) at ECCV, shows how it can be done efficiency and with very little latency. It would defeat the point if the sign language detection worked but it resulted in delayed or degraded video, so their goal was to make sure the model was both lightweight and reliable.

This hand-tracking algorithm could lead to sign language recognition

The system first runs the video through a model called PoseNet, which estimates the positions of the body and limbs in each frame. This simplified visual information (essentially a stick figure) is sent to a model trained on pose data from video of people using German Sign Language, and it compares the live image to what it thinks signing looks like.

Image showing automatic detection of a person signing.

Image Credits: Google

This simple process already produces 80 percent accuracy in predicting whether a person is signing or not, and with some additional optimizing gets up to 91.5 percent accuracy. Considering how the “active speaker” detection on most calls is only so-so at telling whether a person is talking or coughing, those numbers are pretty respectable.

In order to work without adding some new “a person is signing” signal to existing calls, the system pulls clever a little trick. It uses a virtual audio source to generate a 20 kHz tone, which is outside the range of human hearing, but noticed by computer audio systems. This signal is generated whenever the person is signing, making the speech detection algorithms think that they are speaking out loud.

Right now it’s just a demo, which you can try here, but there doesn’t seem to be any reason why it couldn’t be built right into existing video call systems or even as an app that piggybacks on them. You can read the full paper here.