TECH WORLD

How Bill Gates aims to clean up the planet It’s a simple idea: strip CO2 from the air and use it to produce carbon-neutral fuel. But can it work on an industrial scale? I t’s nothing much to look at, but the tangle of pipes, pumps, tanks, reactors, chimneys and ducts on a messy industrial estate outside the logging town of Squamish in western Canada could just provide the fix to stop the world tipping into runaway climate change and substitute dwindling supplies of conventional fuel. It could also make Harvard superstar  physicist David Keith , Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and oil sands magnate  Norman Murray Edwards  more money than they could ever dream of. The idea is grandiose yet simple: decarbonise the global economy by extracting global-warming carbon dioxide (CO 2)  straight from the air, using arrays of giant fans and patented chemical whizzery; and then use the gas to make clean, carbon-neutral synthetic diesel and petrol...

Amazon Is Reportedly Building a Robot to Follow You Around the House Amazon hopes its home robot will go on sale sometime in 2019. Amazon seems determined to insert itself ever further into our everyday lives, and the game plane apparently does not end with its smart speakers,   bedroom cameras , or various   other Echo gadgets . According to   a report by Bloomberg , Amazon is working on a home robot that can follow you around. The robot, codenamed ‘Vesta,’ will be equipped with HD cameras and software to navigate around the hom The big mystery right now is what exactly Amazon plans to use Vesta for. It’s possible that the robot could just be an Echo speaker on wheels, but that seems like a limited scope for such an involved project. It stands to reason the robot may also act as a companion or be able to perform certain tasks. There is, of course, the likely privacy downside. If Vesta has both a microphone and a camera (likely, considering it will need to navi...

India Well Positioned for AI-Led Economic Transformation: Assocham With over 36 percent of large financial establishments investing in   Artificial Intelligence   ( AI )-driven technologies and 70 percent planning to embrace it, India is well poised for AI-led economic transformation, a PwC India and Assocham report said on Friday. Yet, While AI,  Machine Learning  (ML) and robotics have a wide range of use cases in financial services sector, their potential has not been fully realised in India, said the joint report. "Establishing data access frameworks and guidelines for open application interfaces from financial institutions will act as an enabler for increased adoption of AI in the sector," the findings showed. AI can be leveraged to protect economic sectors and infrastructure such as airports and power plants that are vulnerable to attacks. "Anomalous behaviour detection in individuals and infrastructure disruption prediction (natural/ man-made cau...

Jeff Bezos, Blue Origin launch used rocket, and fleas, to space After a number of delays Sunday morning, a   Blue Origin New Shepard rocket blasted off from the west Texas desert just after noon Central Daylight Time, sending a crew capsule carrying a dummy named "Mannequin Skywalker" on a brief trip to space. The Amazon founder's space company joins Elon Musk and SpaceX in the pioneering field of rocket recycling. For the eighth time, Jeff Bezos' commercial space company successfully tested the system it hopes to use to send paying passengers on suborbital flights in the coming months.  The spacecraft reached an altitude of 350,000 feet (106,680 meters), or about 5 percent higher than previous New Shepard test flights. That height sent the rocket beyond the internationally accepted boundary between Earth's atmosphere and space, called the Karman Line. Blue Origin ✔ @blueorigin Touchdown of the New Shepard Booster and Cr...

redmi note 5 pro Redmi Note 5 Pro smartphone was launched in February 2018. The phone comes with a 5.99-inch touchscreen display with a resolution of 1080 pixels by 2160 pixels. Redmi Note 5 Pro price in India starts from Rs. 13,299. The Redmi Note 5 Pro is powered by 1.8GHz octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 636 processor and it comes with 4GB of RAM. The phone packs 64GB of internal storage that can be expanded up to 128GB via a microSD card. As far as the cameras are concerned, the Redmi Note 5 Pro packs a 12-megapixel primary camera on the rear and a 20-megapixel front shooter for selfies. The Redmi Note 5 Pro runs Android 7.1.1 and is powered by a 4000mAh non removable battery. It measures 158.60 x 75.40 x 8.05 (height x width x thickness) and weigh 181.00 grams. The Redmi Note 5 Pro is a dual SIM (GSM and GSM) smartphone that accepts Nano-SIM and Nano-SIM. Connectivity options include Wi-Fi, GPS, Bluetooth, USB OTG, FM, 3G and 4G (with support for Band 40 used by some L...

This Device Will Capture Ideas from Your Dreams A MIT-designed device can prolong and capture memories during a semi-lucid dream state that has inspired geniuses throughout history. Right before we fall asleep, we pass through a semi-lucid state called hypnagogia. It's a surreal state in which you might lose your sense of self, experience a distorted sense of space and time, get lost in lucid dreams or bizarre ideas free from constraints. Geniuses through history like Edison, Tesla, Poe and Dalí have tried to channel the uninhibited creativity of the state. Some even devised a trick — holding a steel ball in their hands, which would drop as soon as they left the hypnagogia state. Awake, they could quickly jot down their impressions or ideas before they fell back asleep. Today, researchers from MIT are trying a more high-tech way to replicate that process. They designed a device called  Dormio  intended to extend hypgnagogia and record the "microdreams" we ex...

Arizona no longer requires safety drivers in autonomous vehicles Arizona will now allow self-driving cars to operate in the state without a safety driver behind the wheel. Governor Doug Ducey signed an  executive order  this week making it legal for these vehicles to operate on their own as long as they abide by all federal and state safety standards. "As technology advances, our policies and priorities must adapt to remain competitive in today's economy," Governor Ducey said in a  statement . "This executive order embraces new technologies by creating an environment that supports autonomous vehicle innovation and maintains a focus on public safety." Ducey's order comes just days after California announced that  fully driverless cars will be allowed on its roads  starting in April. And both states have played host to a number of self-driving vehicles tests in recent years. In Arizona,  Waymo , Intel,  Uber  and  GM ...

This Food Delivery Robot Successfully Made Its Way Through Snowy Streets of England This food delivery robot has been able to make its way through the blizzard during Storm Emma to deliver food to customers.UK food delivery firm, Just Eat, has found a way to beat the tough weather conditions in the country brought on by Storm Emma, through its robot delivery vehicles.  The delivery robots have proven they can work through the snow to deliver food and they also have a light for night deliveries.The JustEatUK snowbots have been doing a great job battling the elements to deliver takeaways to hungry customers in Milton Keynes! "The StarshipRobots robot is able to switch from 6 wheels to 4 to help it navigate more easily through the snow." Just Eat  tweeted  a successful delivery in Milton Keynes. The robots were initially launched in 2016 and they are being tried in some areas around London including Greenwich and Milton Keynes. It is reported that 1,000 deliv...