One Thing Today in Tech

LinkedIn has started supporting Hindi—the first Indian regional language on the professional network—to support 600 million Hindi language speakers globally, the company said in a press release. With the launch of Hindi, LinkedIn now supports 25 languages globally. As part of the phase 1 rollout of LinkedIn in Hindi, members will be able to access their feed, profile, jobs, messaging, and create content in Hindi on desktop and their Android and iOS phones. The platform will also continue to add more Hindi publishers and creators in the coming weeks to boost member engagement and conversations in Hindi.

Big Tech is preparing to legally challenge certain provisions in India’s data protection bill if lawmakers accept and adopt all the recommendations of the Joint Committee of Parliament in the final legislation, Economic Times reports. The biggest point of contention is a proposal to classify social media platforms as publishers as it places the onus for user-generated content on internet companies. That could impact companies including Facebook, Google’s YouTube, Twitter, and WhatsApp—all of whom stand to lose the safe harbour or immunity currently provided by the Information Technology Act, 2000.

Someone drained funds from multiple cryptocurrency wallets connected to the decentralised finance platform BadgerDAO on Wednesday, The Verge reports. According to the blockchain security and data analytics Peckshield, which is working with Badger to investigate the heist, the various tokens stolen in the attack are worth about $120 million. While the investigation is still ongoing, members of the Badger team have told users that they believe the issue came from someone inserting a malicious script in the UI of their website. 

Timnit Gebru, the Google AI researcher who was fired controversially a year ago, has launched a new research institute to ask questions about responsible use of artificial intelligence that she says Google and other tech companies won’t, Wired reports. Gebru is now the founder and executive director of Distributed Artificial Intelligence Research. “Instead of fighting from the inside, I want to show a model for an independent institution with a different set of incentive structures,” she says.

In more Google news, the internet search giant is planning to launch its smartwatch next year, Slashdot reports, citing a report from Insider, which is behind a paywall. "Two employees said a spring launch was possible if the latest testing round is a success, however, all sources stressed that details and timelines were subject to change depending on feedback from employees testing the device," reports Insider. The device, which is internally codenamed ‘Rohan,’ (from the Lord of the Rings maybe) will showcase the latest version of Google's smartwatch software to customers and partners, according to Slashdot.

Tesla says it plans to ship a smaller version of its Cyberquad EV, named 'Cyberquad for Kids' in four weeks, MobileSyrup reports. While the Cyberquad—which cost $1900—maybe targeted for kids, Tesla's Head of Design says that adults can ride it as well. The company's website states that the little quad has 15 miles (24 km) of range and can go up to 10mph (16km/h). Its battery takes around five hours to charge, according to the report.

At its re:Invent conference, Amazon Web Services announced two new initiatives to make machine learning more accessible to anyone interested in learning and experimenting with the technology. The first is a $10 million scholarship programme to make AI and ML education accessible to poor students around the world. It will benefit 2000 students every year. Top 500 students, after a first Udacity nano degree, will get a shot at a second one and mentorship from experts at Amazon and Intel.

The second initiative is about increasing access to machine learning through Amazon SageMaker Studio Lab, which gives everyone access to a no-cost version of Amazon SageMaker—an AWS service that helps customers build, train, and deploy machine learning models.

“The two initiatives we are announcing today are designed to open up educational opportunities in machine learning to make it more widely accessible to anyone interested in the technology,” said Swami Sivasubramanian, Vice President of Amazon Machine Learning at AWS.

US lawmakers have called executives of eight major cryptocurrency firms to testify before a congressional committee on December 8, BBC reports, as the government scrutinises the sector further. Coinbase's Alesia Haas, Circle's Jeremy Allaire and Bitfury's Brian Brooks are among the executives asked to testify, according to BBC.

This will be the first time companies representing the controversial sector have been questioned in this way. 

Square, a fintech company co-founded by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, is changing its name to Block, the company said Wednesday. Dorsey quit Twitter earlier this week, where he was part-time CEO, while also being CEO of Square.

“The change to Block acknowledges the company’s growth,” the company said in a press release. “Since its start in 2009, the company has added Cash App, TIDAL, and TBD54566975 as businesses, and the name change creates room for further growth. Block is an overarching ecosystem of many businesses united by their purpose of economic empowerment, and serves many people—individuals, artists, fans, developers, and sellers.”

Microsoft has released a cheaper, standalone version of its Teams collaboration software, Teams Essentials, aimed at smaller businesses.

“We know how difficult the past 20 months have been for small businesses. They’ve had to demonstrate extreme flexibility to adapt, often with limited access to tools and technology,” Jared Spataro, corporate vice president for Microsoft 365, said in a blogpost. “Teams Essentials is built specifically to meet the unique needs of small businesses, enabling them to thrive in this new era of work.

”Teams Essentials includes group meetings for up to 30 hours, meetings with up to 300 people, and 10GB of cloud storage per user. A subscription will cost $4 in the US, and Rs. 100 in India, per person per month.

CRED, a fintech company founded by entrepreneur Kunal Shah, is buying Happay, which provides corporate expense management in India. The acquisition is expected to be a cash and stock deal potentially valuing Happay at approximately $180 million, the company said in a press release.

While Happay will operate as a separate entity, the team will work closely with CRED to tap its ecosystem, build distribution, add products and expand the business. Happay’s 230-member team will get all the benefits extended to CRED team members, including its ESOP programme, the company said in the release.

Facebook’s parent company, Meta, has been ordered to sell Giphy by the UK's Competition and Markets Authority, BBC reports. Meta, until recently known as Facebook, bought the GIF-sharing search engine last year in a deal reportedly valued at $315 million. Meta planned to integrate Giphy's database of GIFs with Instagram, according to the BBC report. But the CMA ruled the purchase unfair to competing for social-media platforms. In May 2020, when Meta announced its acquisition of Giphy, it said 50 percent of the GIF search engine's traffic already came from Facebook platforms—half of that from Instagram. Giphy also provides GIFs to competitors such as TikTok, Snapchat and Twitter.

Facebook’s cryptocurrency head David Marcus is leaving the company, The Verge reports. The former PayPal executive joined Facebook in 2014 to run Messenger but eventually took over plans to launch a new cryptocurrency and wallet. These were known at the time as Libra and Calibra, respectively, but are now called Novi. “While there’s still so much to do right on the heels of hitting an important milestone with Novi launching—and I remain as passionate as ever about the need for change in our payments and financial systems—my entrepreneurial DNA has been nudging me for too many mornings in a row to continue ignoring it,” Marcus said on his Facebook page and Twitter. Novi’s VP of product Stephane Kasriel, previously an early PayPal employee and the CEO of Upwork, will take over the leadership.

Twitter has banned users from sharing photos or videos of private individuals without their permission on its platform, the company said in a blogpost. Twitter is updating its existing private information policy and expanding its scope to include “private media.” Under its existing policy, publishing other people's private information, such as phone numbers, addresses, and IDs, is already not allowed on Twitter. This includes threatening to expose private information or incentivising others to do so.

Microsoft has been asked by shareholders to publish a report on sexual harassment within the company, CNBC reports. Shareholders approved a proposal asking the company’s board to publish a report on the effectiveness of its workplace sexual harassment policies in a rare vote of support for an activist initiative. Microsoft’s board had recommended that shareholders vote against the proposal, but it received 77.97 percent of all votes, according to a regulatory filing. The decision comes a year and a half after Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates stepped down from his seat on the company’s board. Reports at the time had said that Gates had tried to start a relationship with an employee in 2000—prompting a board investigation. The proposal asks for the details of investigations on executives—including Gates—as well as the number of cases the company has looked into and what was done about them.

Xiaomi’s Redmi Note 11T 5G Android smartphone has been launched in India. The phone was previously launched in China alongside two other new Redmi Note 11 series phones last month, Android Central reports. Xiaomi's latest budget 5G phone has a 6.6-inch LCD with a 90Hz refresh rate and a 240Hz touch sampling rate. It is equipped with MediaTek's 6nm Dimensity 810 chipset, paired with up to 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage. The phone is expected to go on sale in India from December 7 for a starting price of ₹16,999 (about $227), according to Android Central.

Mark Papermaster wears multiple hats within AMD—where he is chief technology officer and executive vice president—and in the semiconductor industry and forums such as the IEEE. Papermaster is one of the people credited with AMD’s turnaround over the last decade—a turnaround for which CEO Lisa Su became a widely acclaimed business leader. In conversation with Forbes India, Papermaster talks about what helped AMD, the future of semiconductors, the company’s work in India, and his advice to aspiring engineers

India’s telecom ministry has advised people to not buy Starlink connections because the company doesn’t have a license yet to sell its satellite internet connections in the country. Two months ago, Starlink—owned by Elon Musk—announced that it is starting services in India and was taking bookings.

The government of India has asked the company to comply with the Indian regulatory framework for rendering the satellite-based communication services and refrain from booking/rendering the satellite internet services in India with immediate effect, the Department of Telecom said in a tweet on Friday.

Facebook, Twitter, and other social media companies will have to hand over the names and details of the people behind any accounts used for trolling, in Australia, if a new defamation law is approved by the country’s lawmakers, ABC News reports.

Under the law, proposed by Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, social media companies will be legally liable for the content they publish from users. It removes liability from individuals and companies that manage pages. The legislation will be released in draft form this week and is expected to be introduced in the Australian parliament early next year, according to ABC News.

Xiaomi, one of the world’s biggest Android smartphone makers, is building an electric car manufacturing factory in Beijing. It will be capable of producing 300,000 cars a year, Reuters reports. According to the report, the factory will be built in two phases and will be ready for mass production by 2024.

Slice, a fintech startup in Bangalore that wants to reinvent credit cards for Indian millennials, has raised $220 million in a new round of funding and turned unicorn in the process, TechCrunch reports. The Series B investment was co-led by Tiger Global, Insight Partners, and other investors, including Blume Ventures, who joined in. Slice also made news in October by starting a three-day workweek for full-time employees.

(02:41) Interview: Prakash Ramamurthy, chief product officer at Freshworks, on what makes a great product manager

Girish Mathrubootham, Freshworks’s founder, wasn’t ready to relinquish the role of product head until he found Prakash Ramamurthy, a bit under two years ago — as he was looking for people to put his company on its next phase of growth. In today’s interview, Prakash talks about how Freshworks stays relevant to its smallest customers, even as it adds bigger and bigger enterprises to its customer roster.

America has blocked more Chinese firms from accessing US technology, adding the names of eight tech firms to a list called the ‘entity list’, BBC reports. The companies were helping the Chinese military’s quantum computing efforts, according to the report. The US has also blocked individuals and entities from Russia, Japan, Singapore, and Pakistan. The entities blocked in Pakistan are related to the country’s “unsafeguarded nuclear activities or ballistic missile programme,” a US commerce department official said, according to BBC.

Spotify is testing a TikTok-style vertical feed of music video clips, with a discover tab on its app’s opening page. The update was discovered by Chris Messina—widely credited as the inventor of the hashtag—who posted a short video on his Twitter page showing the new feature.

A UK judge has set December 16 as the deadline for home secretary Priti Patel to decide if the extradition of Mike Lynch, co-founder of a British software company Autonomy, should be allowed, Financial Times reports. Lynch is accused in the US of tricking Hewlett Packard into paying $5 billion more for his company in an $11.7 billion deal in 2011 at a 79 percent premium to the market value that was widely criticised as too high.

Samsung is ending its Galaxy Note series, Android Police reports. The company has not released a Note smartphone for 2021 and hasn’t included one for its 2022 lineup either, Android Police says, citing ET News, a South Korean tech news site. Features of the Note may be included in Samsung’s S22 Ultra, according to the report.

(02:23) Interview: Lava Kumar, co-founder and chief product officer at Entropik Tech on emotion AI

You might think twice about making faces at your smartphone because the technology to interpret that already exists and companies are using it to sell you that next dress you didn’t know you wanted or to add another data point to your profile they are storing away. In today’s interview, Lava Kumar, co-founder and chief product officer at Entropik Tech, talks about his company’s emotional AI products that can interpret facial expressions, eye movements and even brain signals.

Instagram’s head, Adam Mosseri, will testify before America’s top lawmakers in a senate subcommittee hearing in early December about the platform's harmful impact on young users, CNN reports. Mosseri is the most high-profile executive from Meta, as Facebook is now called, to agree to testify since Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen released hundreds of internal company documents, according to CNN.

Apple will be switching to its own 5G modems in 2023 instead of using technology from Qualcomm, Nikkei reports. Apple’s modems will be made by TSMC—the chip maker that already supplies Apple’s A-series processors and M1 system-on-chip semiconductors. Apple has been working on reducing its reliance on Qualcomm for vital semiconductor components for several years. The two companies have also contested court battles.

Coinbase, America’s biggest crypto exchange, has acquired crypto wallet startup BRD, to get the founders on to its own wallet team, the company said on Twitter. The BRD team will help accelerate web3 adoption and BRD’s founders bring deep expertise in self-custody for crypto wallets, Coinbase said in its tweet. BRD has millions of users including in India.

BigBasket, India’s biggest online groceries company, is entering offline retail and has opened its first store in Bangalore, the company said in a press release. The company acquired by the Tata Group this year, expects to open 200 stores by 2023 and 800 by 2026.

TomTom, a geolocation technology company, has opened a 100,000 square feet state-of-the-art facility in Pune that can accommodate up to 1000 employees, the company said in a press release. The centre is one of TomTom’s largest offices worldwide and a strategic engineering hub, according to the company. Staff can decide if they need to use the office based on the type of work at hand.

NASA has launched a spacecraft that will intentionally collide with a distant asteroid in the world’s first full-scale mission to test technology for defending Earth against potential asteroid or comet hazards, the US space agency said in a press release on Wednesday. The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART), launched on Wednesday on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from a base in California.

DART is part of NASA’s larger planetary defence strategy. It is built and managed by the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory. Its goal is to slightly change the asteroid’s motion in a way that can be accurately measured using ground-based telescopes. It will show that a spacecraft can autonomously navigate to a target asteroid and intentionally collide with it—a method of deflection called kinetic impact.

Interview: Ankit Tomar, CTO and Sachin Agrawal, COO at Bizongo on plans to make the company an exports facilitation platform

Bizongo started as a simple way for small manufacturers to find orders more efficiently. Today it has evolved into something of an ‘operating system’ for manufacturers of custom-designed goods to manage many of their supply-chain needs. In today’s interview, Ankit Tomar and Sachin Agrawal, two of the three co-founders at Bizongo talk about how their tech platform will eventually catalyse and facilitate exports from India.

India may ban private cryptocurrencies and launch a central bank digital currency, according to a parliament bulletin released on Tuesday. The Cryptocurrency and Regulation of Official Digital Currency Bill, 2021, is among the proposed laws that will be taken up when the parliament meets for its winter session starting November 29.

According to the bulletin, the bill seeks “To create a facilitative framework for the creation of the official digital currency to be issued by the Reserve Bank of India. The Bill also seeks to prohibit all private cryptocurrencies in India, however, it allows for certain exceptions to promote the underlying technology of cryptocurrency and its uses.”

Apple has filed a lawsuit against NSO Group and its parent company to hold it accountable for the surveillance and targeting of Apple users, the iPhone maker said in a press release. The complaint provides new information on how NSO Group infected victims’ devices with its Pegasus spyware. To prevent further abuse and harm to its users, Apple is also seeking a permanent injunction to ban NSO Group from using any Apple software, services, or devices.

NSO Group creates sophisticated, state-sponsored surveillance technology that allows its highly targeted spyware to surveil its victims. These attacks are aimed at a very small number of users, and they impact people across multiple platforms, including iOS and Android.

SenseTime, one of China’s biggest AI solution providers, is a step closer to its initial public offering, according to TechCrunch. SenseTime has received regulatory approval to list on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.

Founded in 2014, SenseTime was christened as one of China’s four ‘AI Dragons’ alongside Megvii, CloudWalk, and Yitu.

Atom Bank, an online bank in the UK, has introduced a four-day workweek for its 430 staff without cutting their pay, BBC reports. Employees now work 34 hours over four days and get Monday or Friday off, when previously they clocked 37.5 hours across the whole week.

Inspired by the Covid-19 pandemic, the move will help retain staff and improve their wellbeing. However, employees will have to work longer hours on the days they are coming to the office.

(03.27) Interview: Hemant Mohapatra, partner at Lightspeed, on prospects of crypto startups in India and south-east Asia

India has a nascent but growing cryptocurrency and blockchain sector, with at least two startups already crowned unicorns on the back of a strong venture capital investor interest. In today's interview, Hemant Mohapatra—a partner at Lightspeed, which is among the VC firms that have backed the crypto sector for several years now, discusses his new comprehensive report on the prospects of crypto startups in India and south-east Asia.

Britain has passed a law requiring new houses and buildings to install electric vehicle charging points from next year, BBC reports. This will see up to 145,000 charging points installed across the country each year. New supermarkets, workplaces and buildings undergoing major renovations will also come under the new law. The UK is switching to EVs, with petrol and diesel car sales banned from 2030.

Niantic, the maker of the popular augmented reality game Pokémon GO, has raised $300 million from Coatue at a valuation of $9 billion, the company said in a blogpost on Monday. The company that initially spun out of Google, will use the funds to invest in current games and new apps, expand its Lightship developer platform, and build out its version of what it calls the real-world metaverse.

“We’re building a future where the real world is overlaid with digital creations, entertainment and information, making it more magical, fun and informative,” said John Hanke, Niantic’s Founder and CEO.

Jina.ai, an open-source startup in Berlin, that uses neural search to help its users find information in their unstructured data (including videos and images), has raised $30 million in Series A funding led by Canaan Partners, TechCrunch reports. New investor Mango Capital, as well as existing investors GGV Capital, SAP.iO and Yunqi Partners also participated in this round.

DuckDuckGo, the maker of the privacy-focused browser and app of the same name, is beta testing an app-tracking blocker for Android phones, the company said in a blogpost. People can join the private waitlist by downloading the app or updating to the latest version, navigating to app tracking protection in the privacy section under settings, and clicking on the ‘join the private wait list’ option.

Once active, the app-tracking blocker will detect when your Android apps are about to send data to third-party tracking companies found in DuckDuckGo's app tracker dataset, and block those requests.

El Salvador, which recently became the first country to make Bitcoin legal tender, plans to build a Bitcoin city at the base of a volcano, with the cryptocurrency used to fund the project, its president has announced, BBC reports. The city will be circular to represent the shape of a coin and will be built near the Conchagua volcano to take advantage of its geothermal energy to power Bitcoin mining, according to the report.

(03:28) Interview: Ashwathnarayan CN, Karnataka’s minister for science and tech, higher education, information tech, biotech, and skill development

The government of the state of Karnataka is making efforts to expand the tech ecosystem concentrated in Bengaluru, beyond the state’s capital city, which has become India’s tech capital. In today’s interview, Ashwathnarayan CN, the state’s minister for science and tech, higher education, information tech, biotech, and skill development, articulates some of the ways the government is making progress on this front.

Brazil has seen an alarming acceleration in the destruction of its Amazon rain forests, fresh data from the country’s National Institute for Space Research shows, Deutsche Welle reports. The data shows a rapid reversal in the slowdown in the rate of deforestation—increasing by 22 percent in just the last year—in the south American nation, ever since president Jair Bolsonaro came to office in 2019, according to the report.

America lags China and Russia in hypersonic missile technology and it has some “catching up to do very quickly,” according to a top US Space Force official, Politico reports. The US is “not as advanced as the Chinese or the Russians in terms of hypersonic programs,” General David Thompson, vice chief of space operations, said during his appearance at the Halifax International Security Forum, Politico reports. Both China and Russia have recently tested hypersonic missiles that fly at least five times the speed of sound and can glide and navigate to targets in a way that makes current radar technology powerless in detecting them.

Microsoft is adding shopping and security features to its Edge browser ahead of the holiday shopping season in the US and Europe, the company said in a recent blog post. Shopping related features include the ability to keep track of price changes—and get alerts—on products that users have browsed recently. And Microsoft is piloting ‘easy update’ a feature that lets you update your passwords quickly.

Adele Adkins, the British singer-songwriter of hits such as ‘Someone Like You’ and ‘When We Were Young’, has coaxed Spotify, the world’s biggest music streaming service, to drop the shuffle option that used to be the default when you tapped on its play button, BBC reports. People should listen to her songs in the order that she intended, Adele tweeted, after Spotify pushed the shuffle feature inside a menu, making playing songs in order the default. ‘Anything for you’, Spotify tweeted back.

(2:40) Interview: Sateesh Andra, managing director at Endiya Partners, talks about his hopes for India’s nascent deep tech sector

Sateesh Andra is an entrepreneur-turned-investor with extensive experience across multiple funds, backing tech ventures at storied firms like DFJ, and now at his own VC firm Endiya Partners, where he is a managing director. In today’s tech conversation, the onus is on the investors to back deep-tech founders in India, and on the entrepreneurs to build those playbooks, Sateesh says.