I am introducing cryptography.
Cryptography is used to secure and protect data during communication. Encryption is a process which transforms the original information into an unrecognizable form. Decryption is a process of converting encoded/encrypted data in a form that is readable and understood by a human or a computer.
Amid the surge in COVID-19 cases across the country, the only hope for survival is to get vaccinated. Meanwhile, the government has requested its citizens to take the vaccine shots as early as possible. WhatsApp head Will Cathcart recently took to social media and tweeted in support of India. He quote tweeted a post from the official MyGovIndia account and informed that the messaging app has joined hands with health workers to operate helplines in the form of chatbots.
I am thinking of our friends in India going through such a difficult time with COVID and grateful for all the work people are doing to help one another. We're working with health partners to support helplines on WA like this one from @mygovindiahttps://t.co/pqE0VGHQbKhttps://t.co/uhmyEN5U7f
The ‘MyGov Corona Helpdesk’ chatbot on the app will now help users to find a vaccination center. The chatbot was unveiled earlier this year and has now been updated to help the citizens in finding the closest vaccination center.
After proving powered, the controlled flight is possible on the Red Planet, NASA's Mars Ingenuity helicopter has new orders: scout ahead of the Perseverance rover to assist in its search for past signs of microbial life. The next phase extends the rotorcraft's mission beyond the original month-long technology demonstration. Now, the goal is to assess how well flyers can help future exploration of Mars and other worlds. "We're going to gather information on the operational support capability of the helicopter while Perseverance focuses on its science mission," Lori Glaze, director of NASA's Planetary Science Division, told reporters Friday.
The type of reconnaissance that Ingenuity performs could one day also prove useful to human missions, by scoping out the best paths for explorers to traverse and reaching locations that aren't otherwise possible.
The 1.8 kilograms mini chopper successfully performed the fourth of its five originally planned flights on Friday, "going farther & faster than ever before," NASA tweeted.
The fifth is planned in the coming days, then its mission will be extended, initially by one Martian month.
Whether it continues beyond that will depend on if it's still in good shape and if it's helping, rather than hindering, the rover's goals of collecting soil and rock samples for future lab analysis on Earth.
Chief engineer Bob Balaram predicted a limiting factor will be its ability to withstand the frigid Mars nights, where temperatures plunge to -90 degrees Celsius.
Ingenuity keeps warm with a solar-powered heater, but it was only designed to last for a month and engineers aren't sure "how many freeze and thaw cycles (it) can go through before something breaks," he said.
NASA initially thought Perseverance would be driving away from the site where it landed at the Jezero Crater on February 18, just north of the planet's equator.
That would have meant the rover leaving Ingenuity behind and moving beyond the communications range.
Now though, the agency wants to keep Perseverance in the area for some time after finding a rocky outcrop that they believe contains some of the oldest material on the crater floor.
They hope to collect their first sample in July.
Ingenuity's exploits have captured the public's imagination since it made its first flight on April 19, but NASA said this wasn't a factor in its decision to allow the two robots to keep exploring Mars together.
"We really wish to spend a considerable amount of time where we are and so it's sort of a fortuitous alignment," said Perseverance project scientist Ken Farley.
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On a Friday in August, Tim Sweeney, a billionaire game developer, sent an email to a contact at Microsoft: “You’ll enjoy the upcoming fireworks show.”
A week later, Sweeney’s game Fortnite delivered good news to players on iPhones: They would get a discount on items in the game if they completed the purchases outside Apple’s payment systems.
The change violated Apple’s rules and cut the iPhone maker off from collecting a commission on one of the world’s most popular games. Hours later, Apple kicked Fortnite off the App Store.
Sweeney’s company, Epic Games, immediately sued Apple in federal court. It also began a public relations broadside that was months in the works, complete with a trending #FreeFortnite hashtag and a parody of Apple’s iconic “1984” ad depicting Apple CEO Tim Cook as an evil corporate overlord with an apple for a head.
Epic’s attack was the most direct challenge to Apple’s power in years, and nine months later, the fight is heading to federal court in Oakland, California. On Monday, a trial is scheduled to open with testimony from Sweeney on why he believes Apple is a monopoly abusing its power.
The trial, expected to last about three weeks, carries major implications. If Epic wins, it will upend the economics of the $100 billion app market and create a path for millions of companies and developers to avoid sending up to 30 percent of their app sales to Apple.
An Epic victory would also invigorate the antitrust fight against Apple. Federal and state regulators are scrutinising Apple’s control over the App Store, and on Friday, the European Union charged Apple with violating antitrust laws over its app rules and fees. Apple faces two other federal lawsuits about its App Store fees — one from developers and one from iPhone owners — that are seeking class-action status.
Beating Apple would also bode well for Epic’s upcoming trial against Google over the same issues on the app store for Android devices. That case is expected to go to trial this year and would be decided by the same federal judge, Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers of the Northern District of California.
If Apple wins, however, it will strengthen its grip over mobile apps and stifle its growing chorus of critics, further empowering a company that is already the world’s most valuable and that topped $200 billion in sales over just the past six months.
The trial will center on a legal debate over whether Apple is a monopoly. Epic’s lawyers have argued that companies need iPhones to reach customers and that Apple unfairly forces app makers to use its payment system and pay its fees.
Apple’s lawyers have responded that iPhones are merely one way to reach consumers and that Apple’s fees are in line with industry standards.
Apple probably has the upper hand, legal experts said. Courts are often more sympathetic to defendants in antitrust trials, since companies have a right to choose with whom they do business.
But Epic is arguing that Apple is using its position of power to stifle competition, a legal theory “that has worked and overcome that disadvantage,” said William Kovacic, a law professor at George Washington University. The Department of Justice made a similar argument against Microsoft in its antitrust suit two decades ago.
The case might come down to one narrow technical question: What is the market these two are fighting over? Epic argues that the case is about iPhones and that Apple has a clear monopoly on them. Apple lawyers insist that the market in question includes all gaming platforms — from smartphones to video game consoles to desktop computers — and that Apple hardly has a monopoly there.
The answer will be up to Gonzalez Rogers. And after she decides this case, she is set to hear the next two App Store lawsuits seeking class-action status.
An Apple spokesperson said in a statement that Apple’s top executives would show how the App Store had been good for the world. “We feel confident the case will prove that Epic purposefully breached its agreement solely to increase its revenues,” she said.
Epic declined to comment.
Fortnite, a battle royale video game, is the biggest hit of Epic’s 30 years in business. It got there, in part, because Sweeney pushed the companies behind the big gaming consoles — Microsoft, Sony Group and Nintendo — to let players battle each other across different devices, meaning a Microsoft Xbox owner could play a Sony PlayStation owner for the first time.
In 2018, Epic released Fortnite in an iPhone app. In about two years, Epic earned roughly $1 billion from Fortnite and its other iPhone apps. But it had to pay about 30 percent of that to Apple. Epic was paying similar commissions to the gaming console makers.
Sweeney has said in interviews and on Twitter that he realised the app store commissions meant that Apple and Google could sometimes profit more on a game than the developers who had made it. He saw an opportunity to challenge the tech giants.
Jack Nicas and Erin Griffith[c.2021 The New York Times Company]
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The Brazilian Amazon released nearly 20 percent more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere over the last decade than it absorbed, according to a stunning report that shows humanity can no longer depend on the world's largest tropical forest to help absorb manmade carbon pollution. From 2010 through 2019, Brazil's Amazon basin gave off 16.6 billion tonnes of CO2, while drawing down only 13.9 billion tonnes, researchers reported Thursday in the journal Nature Climate Change. The study looked at the volume of CO2 absorbed and stored as the forest grows, versus the amounts released back into the atmosphere as it has been burned down or destroyed.
"We half-expected it, but it is the first time that we have figures showing that the Brazilian Amazon has flipped, and is now a net emitter," said co-author Jean-Pierre Wigneron, a scientist at France's National Institute for Agronomic Research (INRA).
"We don't know at what point the changeover could become irreversible," he told AFP in an interview.
The study also showed that deforestation — through fires and clear-cutting — increased nearly four-fold in 2019 compared to either of the two previous years, from about one million hectares (2.5 million acres) to 3.9 million hectares, an area the size of the Netherlands.
"Brazil saw a sharp decline in the application of environmental protection policies after the change of government in 2019," the INRA said in a statement.
Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro was sworn into office on 1 January 2019.
Terrestrial ecosystems worldwide have been a crucial ally as the world struggles to curb CO2 emissions, which topped 40 billion tonnes in 2019.
Over the last half-century, plants and soil have consistently absorbed about 30 percent of those emissions, even as they increased by 50 percent over that period.
Oceans have also helped, soaking up more than 20 percent.
The Amazon basin contains about half of the world's tropical rainforests, which are more effective at soaking up and storing carbon that other types of forests.
If the region were to become a net source rather than a "sink" of CO2, tackling the climate crisis will be that much harder.
Using new methods of analysing satellite data developed at the University of Oklahoma, the international team of researchers also showed for the first time that degraded forests were a more significant source of planet-warming CO2 emissions than outright deforestation.
Over the same 10-year period, degradation — caused by fragmentation, selective cutting, or fires that damage but do not destroy trees — caused three times more emissions than outright destruction of forests.
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Having unveiled its new brand logo in the country a few days ago, Kia India has today launched the 2021 Kia Seltos and 2021 Kia Sonet, with both SUVs gaining some key additions. The 2021 Kia Seltos is priced from Rs 9.95 lakh to Rs 17.65 lakh, while the 2021 Kia Sonet’s prices range from Rs 6.79 lakh to Rs 13.25 lakh (all prices, ex-showroom). Both SUVs are now pricier by a notable margin, but along with sporting the new Kia logo, also pack some more features and changes to equipment levels across variants.
One of the key additions for the Kia Seltos is the arrival of the intelligent manual transmission (iMT) option. Kia first rolled out this ‘clutch-less’ gearbox on its Sonet compact SUV and is now offering it with the bigger Seltos as well, with a new HTK+ 1.5 petrol variant priced at Rs 12.19 lakh. That’s Rs 40,000 more than the HTK+ variant with a manual transmission, but the iMT version also gets automatic climate control and an electric sunroof, both of which are missing from the equivalent manual variant.
Additionally, the GTX+ 7 DCT and GTX+ AT versions of the Kia Seltos now feature paddle shifters. There’s also a new GTX (O) variant with black-and-beige leatherette seats, and electronic stability control is now offered from the HTX trim onwards. The UVO connected car tech has been updated, too, and now brings new functions including a voice-operated sunroof and driver-side window.
Similarly, the Kia Sonet, too, gets two new variants – HTX diesel-automatic and HTX 1.0 DCT. Paddle shifters are now standard on all automatic variants of the Kia Sonet, and just like the Seltos, the compact SUV, too, gets a voice-operated sunroof.
Electronic stability control is now available from the HTX trim onwards, as are rear sunshade curtains and multi-drive and traction modes (for the automatic variants).
An electric sunroof is now available from the HTK+ iMT variant onwards, and 16-inch alloy wheels are now offered from the HTX variant onwards. A smart key with push-button start and remote engine start features are now available from the HTK+ trims onwards (1.5 diesel and 1.0 turbo variants only).
Both the Kia Sonet and the Kia Seltos continue with the same engine options as before.
In related news, Kia will enter a new market segment early in 2022. This new model is rumoured to be a brand-new Kia MPV, which is likely to slot in between the Maruti Suzuki Ertiga and the Toyota Innova Crysta, both in terms of size and price.
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