The Indian Panorama

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  • June 30 New York & Dallas Print Editions

    June 30 New York & Dallas Print Editions

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  • Iraq declares end of caliphate after capture of Mosul mosque

    Iraq declares end of caliphate after capture of Mosul mosque

    BAGHDAD (TIP): After eight months of grinding urban warfare, Iraqi government troops on Thursday, June 29, captured the ruined mosque at the heart of Islamic State’s de facto capital Mosul, and the prime minister declared the group’s self-styled caliphate at an end, according to a Reuters report, June 29.

    Iraqi authorities expect the long battle for Mosul to end in coming days as remaining Islamic State fighters are bottled up in just a handful of neighborhoods of the Old City.

    The seizure of the nearly 850-year-old Grand al-Nuri Mosque — from where Islamic State proclaimed the caliphate nearly three years ago to the day — is a huge symbolic victory.

    “The return of al-Nuri Mosque and al-Hadba minaret to the fold of the nation marks the end of the Daesh state of falsehood,” Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said in a statement, referring to the hardline Sunni Mulsim group by an Arabic acronym.

    The fall of Mosul would in effect mark the end of the Iraqi half of the IS caliphate, although the group still controls territory west and south of the city, ruling over hundreds of thousands of people.

    Its stronghold in Syria, Raqqa, is also close to falling.

    A U.S.-backed Kurdish-led coalition besieging Raqqa on Thursday fully encircled it after closing the militants’ last way out from the south, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said.

    These setbacks have reduced Islamic State’s territory by 60 percent from its peak two years ago and its revenue by 80 percent, to just $16 million a month, said IHS Markit.

    “Their fictitious state has fallen,” an Iraqi military spokesman, Brigadier General Yahya Rasool, told state TV.

    However, it still occupies an area as big as Belgium, across Iraq and Syria, according to IHS Markit, an analytics firm.

    Islamic State fighters blew up the medieval mosque and its famed leaning minaret a week ago as U.S.-backed Iraqi forces started a push in its direction. Their black flag had been flying from al-Hadba (The Hunchback) minaret since June 2014.

    Much of the mosque and brickwork minaret was reduced to rubble, said a Reuters TV reporter who went to the site with the elite units that captured it.

  • June 23 New York & Dallas Print Editions

    June 23 New York & Dallas Print Editions

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  • Indian American Digital Video Pioneer Arun Netravali awarded 2017 Marconi Prize

    Indian American Digital Video Pioneer Arun Netravali awarded 2017 Marconi Prize

    NEW JERSEY (TIP): The Marconi Society, dedicated to furthering scientific achievements in communications and related technologies, announced that it will present the 2017 Marconi Prize to Dr. Arun Netravali. Dr. Netravali is the former President of Bell Labs (now Nokia Bell Labs) and leader of pioneering work on video compression standards that served as the key base technology for MPEG 1, 2 and 4 and enabled a wide range of video services including digital TV, HDTV, and streaming video, ushering in a digital video revolution. The technology is used in most TV sets and all mobile phones today.

    The Marconi Society, established in 1975 by Gioia Marconi Braga, each year recognizes one or more scientists who – like her father, radio inventor Guglielmo Marconi – pursue advances in communications and information technology for the social, economic and cultural development of all humanity. The awards ceremony will take place in Summit, New Jersey on Oct. 3, preceded by a symposium at Nokia Bell Labs in Murray Hill, on digital video and its societal impact.

    “Few things have had a greater impact on communications in recent years than the digital video revolution led by Arun,” says Dr. Vint Cerf, Chairman of the Marconi Society and Chief Internet Evangelist at Google. “Everywhere you look, video is transforming the way we communicate on mobile devices and how we consume entertainment and news. Movies, YouTube, live streaming–it is literally transforming how people interact. The next generation of video based on this technology, including virtual reality, promises to revolutionize video consumption, delivery and business models once again.”

    Dr. Netravali’s decades-long career at Bell Labs included launching research in video coding and compression in the early 1980s, and HDTV and video networking research in the early 1990s. He helped convince the organization to undertake big system initiatives like HDTV and Softswitch, and his research team proved the viability of HDTV, earning the company a trial with TV manufacturer Zenith. That resulted in the first commercially viable HDTV system.

  • June 16 New York & Dallas Print Editions

    June 16 New York & Dallas Print Editions

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  • June 09 New York & Dallas Print Editions

    June 09 New York & Dallas Print Editions

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  • Uber in US court to fight on possible shutdown of self-driving program

    Uber in US court to fight on possible shutdown of self-driving program

    SAN FRANSISCO (TIP): Uber Technologies Inc goes before a U.S. judge on Wednesday to fight for the right to continue work on its self-driving car program, the latest phase in a courtroom battle over trade secrets that threatens to topple a central pillar of Uber’s growth strategy.

    The ride-services company is contesting a lawsuit by Alphabet Inc’s self-driving car unit, Waymo, which accused former Waymo engineer and current Uber executive Anthony Levandowski of taking technical secrets from Waymo and using them to help Uber’s self-driving car development.

    If it were proven that Levandowski and Uber conspired in taking the information, that could have dire consequences for Uber, say legal and ride-hailing industry experts. Uber’s $68 billion valuation is propped up in part by investors’ belief it will be a dominant player in the emerging business of self-driving cars. At issue on Wednesday is Waymo’s demand that U.S. District Court Judge William Alsup in San Francisco issue an injunction barring Uber from using any of the technology that Waymo said was stolen. If Alsup issues a broadly worded order against Uber, it could all but shut down Uber’s self-driving car program while court proceedings continue. Alsup is not expected to rule immediately on Wednesday, but he may intimate which way he is leaning. At a hearing last month, Alsup warned Uber that it may face an injunction, saying of the evidence amassed by Waymo: “I’ve never seen a record this strong in 42 years.”

    Uber Chief Executive Officer Travis Kalanick has said that autonomous vehicles, though still in their infancy, are critical to the company’s long-term success and future growth.

  • May 05 New York & Dallas Print Editions

    May 05 New York & Dallas Print Editions

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  • April 28 New York & Dallas Print Editions

    April 28 New York & Dallas Print Editions

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  • April 21 New York & Dallas Print Editions

    April 21 New York & Dallas Print Editions

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  • Trump signs bill blocking online privacy regulation

    Trump signs bill blocking online privacy regulation

    WASHINGTON (TIP): After his press secretary blasted it as an example of rampant government overreach, President Donald Trump has signed a bill into law that could eventually allow internet providers to sell information about their customers’ browsing habits.

    The bill scraps a Federal Communications Commission online privacy regulation issued in October to give consumers more control over how companies like Comcast, AT&T and Verizon share that information.

    Critics have argued that the rule would stifle innovation and pick winners and losers among internet companies.

    The regulation was scheduled to take effect later this year, but Congress used its authority under the obscure Congressional Review Act to wipe it from the books.

    With a Republican president in the White House, the GOP-controlled Congress has turned to the 20-year-old law to scrap numerous regulations that Republicans say are costly, burdensome or excessive, many of which were finalized in the closing months of Democrat Barack Obama’s presidency.

    Internet companies like Google don’t have to ask their users for permission before tracking what sites they visit, a discrepancy that Republicans and industry group have blasted as both unfair to companies and confusing to consumers. White House press secretary Sean Spicer said last week that the president’s support for the bill was part of a larger effort “to fight Washington red tape that stifles American innovation, job creation and economic growth.” “The president pledged to reverse this type of federal overreach in which bureaucrats in Washington take the interest of one group of companies over the interest of others,” picking the winners and losers, he said.

    Supporters of the privacy measure argued that the company that sells an internet connection can see even more about consumers, such as every website they visit and whom they exchange emails with, information that would be particularly useful for advertisers and marketers.

    Undoing the regulation leaves people’s online information in a murky area. Experts say federal law still requires broadband providers to protect customer information but it doesn’t spell out how or what companies must do, which is what the online privacy rule aimed to do. The absence of clear privacy rules means companies that supply internet service, and who can monitor how consumers use it, can continue to mine that information for use in their own advertising businesses. Consumer advocates also worry that the companies will be a rich target for hackers.

    Ajit Pai, the agency chairman appointed by Trump, has said he wanted to roll back the broadband privacy rules. Pai and other Republicans want a different federal agency, the Federal Trade Commission, to police privacy for both broadband companies like AT&T and internet companies like Google.

    Broadband providers don’t fall under the trade commission’s jurisdiction, and advocates say that agency historically has been weaker than the communications commission.

    Trump signed three other bills yesterday, including one that eliminates a rule that prohibited the use of tactics like baiting and shooting bears from the air on the National Wildlife Refuges in Alaska (AP)

  • April 07 New York & Dallas Print Editions

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  • Google’s case against Uber just took an unexpected turn

    Google’s case against Uber just took an unexpected turn

    SAN JOSE, CA (TIP): In an unexpected twist to the Uber vs Google case, lawyers for Anthony Levandowski, the star engineer at the center of the trade-secret dispute, have advised him to exercise his fifth amendment right to not incriminate himself in a criminal proceeding, according to a court transcript.

    In February, Waymo, the self-driving company owned by Google’s parent company Alphabet, sued Uber , claiming that Levandowski had stolen vital Lidar technology shortly before starting his own self-driving company (which Uber later acquired).

    The trade secrets case is shaping up to be one of the most significant and closely-watched battles in Silicon Valley in years, pitting two of the world’s most powerful companies, and former partners, against each other.

    Levandowski isn’t named in the civil suit between the technology giants, but his lawyers met with Judge William Alsup in a hastily arranged conference on Wednesday, March 29.

    According to a transcript seen by Business Insider of the court proceedings, Levandowski’s lawyers say he plans to assert his fifth amendment rights because there is a “potential for criminal action” against the engineer at the heart of the case. The New York Times first reported the court proceedings.

    Part of Waymo’s argument against Uber is that Levandowski allegedly stole 14,000 files and took them to Uber to advance its competing self-driving car efforts. It was separately revealed on Wednesday that Google had previously filed demands against Levandowski in arbitration for allegedly using confidential information to poach employees.

    In the transcript, it was disclosed that a second employee was also a part of the arbitration proceedings. This person was not identified in the transcript. A Waymo person declined comment.

    For the time being, Levandowski’s lawyers said that they’re “broadly asserting” his Fifth Amendment rights to “any documents he may possess and control” that are relevant. This could include pleading the fifth should Google try to depose him.

    However, one of his lawyers stressed that he could change his mind as the case progresses and that they’re simply protecting his constitutional rights upfront.

    Uber’s associate general counsel, Angela Padilla, said in a statement provided to Business Insider that it plans to respond in court on April 7.

    “We look forward to our first public response laying out our case on Friday, April 7. We are very confident that Waymo’s claims against Uber are baseless and that Anthony Levandowski has not used any files from Google in his work with Otto or Uber,” she said.

     

    (Source: Business Insider)

  • GOOGLE KNOWS IF YOU’RE WATCHING TOO MUCH PORN

    GOOGLE KNOWS IF YOU’RE WATCHING TOO MUCH PORN

    Whilst originally designed as a way for people to buy secret presents for their partners or to Google things they were too embarrassed for anyone to know, incognito windows are used by a vast array of people to watch porn.

    Yes, Google Chrome’s incognito mode allows you to browse porn to your heart’s content and your laptop or phone will store no evidence of it. And it appears the brains behind Google are well aware of the function’s main use.

    When you open 100 incognito windows, a smiley or winky face appears. Instead of the normal tab counter in the top right-hand corner, users will see the cheeky face. A winky face -;) – appears on Android devices, whereas iOS users see a normal smiley -:).

    Google seem to be poking fun at prolific users of incognito windows but it’s unclear why the faces appear.

    According to Mashable, it could be that the app wasn’t designed to have more than two characters in the number of tabs field so rather than displaying three digits, they use a face instead. This is just one of many hidden features -known as Easter Eggs -in Google Chrome. For example, if you search `google in 1998′ in your browser, you’ll be transported back to the original version of the search engine.

  • March 31 New York & Dallas Print Editions

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  • March 24 New York & Dallas Print Editions

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  • March 17 New York & Dallas Print Editions

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  • SAP to offer its business apps on Google Cloud

    SAP to offer its business apps on Google Cloud

    FRANKFURT (TIP): Germany’s SAP is teaming up with Silicon Valley giant Google to allow customers to run SAP’s big business applications on Google’s cloud while offering Google’s suite of web-based desktop apps to users, the company said.

    Appearing on stage at Google’s Cloud Next conference in California, Bernd Leukert, SAP’s executive board member in charge of products and innovation, is set to announce the two companies are also working on joint machine learning initiatives to be unveiled at SAP’s own user conference in May.

    SAP has moved in recent years to encourage the multinational base of corporate customers using its financial planning and other business applications to switch from traditional packaged software running on clients’ own computers to cloud delivery.

    SAP, Europe’s largest technology company, said its flagship HANA database software was now running on the Google Cloud Platform (GCP) in order for customers to uncover real-time insights using big data from their operations on a grand scale.

    The pact will allow customers to run SAP’s powerful database from laptops and other memory-constrained computers using streamlined HANA express edition software, while off-loading more complex tasks to Google’s cloud delivery platform.

    SAP also said it was working over the next two months to make its own cloud platform ready to run on the Google cloud, allowing developers to take advantage of its containerisation features that allow technicians to automate software updates. Source: Reuters

  • Google vows fix for ‘inappropriate’ search results

    Google vows fix for ‘inappropriate’ search results

    WASHINGTON (TIP): Google said on Monday that it was working to fix a search algorithm glitch that produced “inappropriate and misleading” results from its search engine and connected speaker.

    The internet giant reacted after a blog post highlighted unsubstantiated search results indicating former president Barack Obama was planning a “coup d’etat’ and that four former US presidents were members of the Ku Klux Klan.

    The weekend post from Search Engine Land editor Danny Sullivan found Google delivered “terribly wrong” answers to some queries in its “one true answer” box at the top of search results and in queries to its Google Home speaker.

    “The problematic examples I review don’t appear to have been deliberate attempts,” Sullivan wrote. “Rather, they seem to be the result of Google’s algorithms and machine learning making bad selections.”

    Sullivan said when he asked the speaker if US Republicans were the same as Nazis, it answered in the affirmative.

    Similarly, he cited an example in which Google’s search engine listed four former US presidents as “active and known” KKK members, even though there has been no conclusive historical evidence supporting that.

    The news comes amid a growing controversy over “fake news” circulating online via Google or Facebook, and efforts by the internet giants to weed out hoaxes and misinformation.

    In a statement to AFP, Google said its boxed results at the top of a search query, known as “featured snippets,” are based on an algorithmic formula.

    “Unfortunately, there are instances when we feature a site with inappropriate or misleading content,” Google’s statement said.

    “When we are alerted to a featured snippet that violates our policies, we work quickly to remove them, which we have done in this instance. We apologize for any offense this may have caused.”

    Google also noted it includes a “feedback” link under these snippets that can allow the search giant to flag or remove inappropriate content.

  • March 10 New York & Dallas Print Editions

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  • March 03 New York & Dallas Print Editions

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  • Feb 24 New York & Dallas Print Editions

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  • Indian Americans raise pitch against ‘travel ban’

    Indian Americans raise pitch against ‘travel ban’

    According to a study at California State University San Bernardino’s Center for Study for Hate and Extremism, the anti-Muslim hate crimes in the US rose sharply in 2015 to the highest levels since the aftermath of the September 11 terror attacks. The study also suggested that President Trump’s anti-Muslim rhetoric could have contributed to this backlash against American Muslims.

    And recently we saw the President going as far as severely restricting the entry of nationals of seven majority Muslim countries, causing a rash of protests across the country with various Indian communities taking part in it.

    The Sikh Center of Seattle is one such religious organization raising its voice against the so-called travel ban. Recently, the Center deputed Harjinder Singh Sandhawalia for a roundtable discussion of all faith leaders of the Seattle held in the Redmond city mosque. This meeting was hosted by the Muslim community of the area. It was in this meeting that Congresswoman Suzan DelBene said she had introduced a bill (HR 489) in the Congress to stop the order registering Muslims in the country. Sandhawalia was present in the discussion and called for protecting religious freedom of minority communities.

    Members of other Sikh communities have also joined hands in the protest marches being organized across the country. Ravinder Singh, CEO of the Khalsa Aid Foundation who has been involved in humanitarian work at the Syria border, has also condemned the decision in his tweets. ‘Donald #Trump only BANNING MUSLIMS from countries where he has ZERO business interest! Well done USA’ reads one of his tweets.

    With more American Indian communities joining the protests, the anti-Trump voices are now being amplified collectively across the country. A Punjabi community calling itself Punjabi Aunties took to streets holding placards written in Hindi and Punjabi. Swaroop Kaur, homemaker from Seattle, has been running a Vegan store for 22 years now. Swaroop finds this decision demeaning and hurting. “22 years in Seattle, will you Mr Trump, still call me an immigrant?” she questions.

    On the other hand, Jamie Quinn consultant physiotherapist at Swasthya Kendra Clinic, vehemently opposes the decision on the Internet. She writes, “It’s not about who is banned and who isn’t. This is a **** move towards several refugees who are just trying to escape war and for several students and working people who want to earn money for a good life in the USA. Aaj unko ban Kiya toh kal hume bhi kar sakte Hai (today they have banned them, tomorrow it could be us).”

    While on ground, protests gain momentum, social networking sites, FB pages being run by Indian communities staying in America are also garnering support from non-Indian communities: ‘Stop Donald Trump’, ‘Stand Againist Trump’, ‘Trump O Bar’, ‘Hindi Hai Hum’ are some of the pages that have been rallying support against the President’s order.

    Anita Vohra, a Google employee in San Francisco led a silent protest in her vicinity with other Google employees joining her.

  • NRI wants his name delinked from Google search, court says no

    NRI wants his name delinked from Google search, court says no

    There is no reason for creation of a separate legal framework under ‘right to be forgotten’ to delink ‘irrelevant information’ from the Internet, Google Inc told Delhi High Court on Thursday.

    The submission was made in an affidavit placed before Justice Sanjeev Sachdeva by Google which has contended that even if it disables or blocks a site in its search engine, that webpage will remain on the original website and would be accessible on other search engines.

    This view was also echoed by the court while hearing an NRI’s plea seeking he be “delinked” from information regarding a criminal case involving his wife in which he was not a party. He has also sought removal from the records of the trial court order which mentions him.

    “If you post something on social media, it will never get deleted,” the court said and added if the man’s plea was allowed then all courts may have to destroy their records in matrimonial disputes.

    In his petition, filed through advocates Rohit Madan and Zoheb Hussain, the NRI has claimed the online availability of the criminal case, despite it being settled amicably, affects his right to privacy and reputation apart from affecting his employment opportunities.

    His petition has raised the question “whether data controllers or intermediaries such as Google, are required to delete information that is inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant if they receive a request for removal of such data”.

    Claiming that the plea was not maintainable against it or its Indian entity, Google has said, “If a content is adjudicated to be defamatory or its goes beyond the principles of law of privacy, same can be directed to be removed pursuant to being adjudicated by the court. “However, there is no reason or justification for creation of a separate statute or legal framework under right to be forgotten.”

  • ‘GOOGLE ASSISTANT WILL LEAD SMART SPEAKERS, VIRTUAL ASSISTANT SPACE’

    ‘GOOGLE ASSISTANT WILL LEAD SMART SPEAKERS, VIRTUAL ASSISTANT SPACE’

    Internet giant Google’s virtual assistant, Google Assistant, is expected to lead the smart speakers and virtual assistant space leaving products such as Amazon’s Alexa trailing behind, an analysis by market research firm IHS said.

    “Despite Amazon’s strong first-mover advantage and momentum, Google Assistant will eventually benefit from scale — a unified presence across all Google platforms; and fundamentals — the ability to enhance consumers’ everyday virtual assistance experience via its strength in search as well as deeper personalization thanks to data from Gmail, Chrome, Maps and other Google services,” Paul Erickson, senior analyst at IHS Markit, said.

    “Additionally, Google Assistant will be able to play media to the growing multi-brand Google Cast universe of devices –Chromecasts, smart TVs, speakers and Android TV devices,” he added.

    Smart speakers are an increasingly important anchor for virtual assistants in the smart home, and expected to grow to a base of 45 million units by the end of 2020. The long-term platform battle in this market is expected to be between Amazon’s Alexa and Google Assistant.

    IHS Markit expects that though Google’s ecosystem will help it eventually prevail, the affordability-based success of Amazon’s Echo Dot is a competitive challenge Google will need to address to succeed. “Echo Dot’s inexpensive pricing has proven a volume success for Amazon, and is helping to grow the entire category – and Alexa’s foothold into the mainstream,” Erickson explained.

    “Though Google possesses advantages in the virtual assistant race, Alexa’s Echo Dot-driven surge is a competitive development they will need to respond to quickly. The longer it takes for impulse-buy-priced Google Assistant Smart Speaker products to arrive, the more the future will be one where the Google-Amazon competitive relationship in the virtual assistant landscape will be one of co-existence rather than Google’s preferred position of dominance.”

    With Google Home and Assistant both relatively new, these advantages are expected to take time to combine and build momentum, IHS Markit analysis shows. Amazon capitalised on this in the fourth quarter of 2016 with a less-expensive Echo Dot, discounted Echo Dot multi-packs, and an aggressive Alexa television ad campaign — to highly successful results in the 2016 holiday buying season. Echo Dot has become Amazon’s Trojan horse for Alexa penetration into the smart home –similar to Google’s Chromecast and the Google Cast standard. However, Google’s advantages are expected to eventually pull Google Assistant ahead in both smart speakers and the overall virtual assistant race, strong developer momentum behind Alexa and surging Echo Dot sales will make this increasingly difficult.

    IHS Markit currently estimates 2017 platform shipments of Smart Speakers at a conservative 4.1 million units for Alexa, and 1.5 million for Google Assistant. Google Assistant is expected to eventually out-ship Alexa by 2020. Despite this, Alexa is still expected to remain the installed base leader in Smart Speakers for several years beyond thanks to the current momentum of Echo Dot.