Washington, March 6 (IANS) NASA's Mars 2020 Perseverance rover performed its first drive on Mars on Thursday, covering 6.5 meters across the Martian landscape, said NASA on Friday. The drive, which lasted about 33 minutes, propelled the rover forward four meters, where it then turned in place 150 degrees to the left and backed up 2.5 meters into its new temporary parking space, Xinhua news agency reported. The drive served as a mobility test as team members check out and cali

Washington, March 4 (IANS) NASA's Perseverance rover which landed on Mars on February 18 has now deployed its wind sensor, part of the rover's weather station, which is called the Mars Environmental Dynamics Analyzer (MEDA). According to a report in Space.com on Wednesday, the deployment of wind sensor can be understood from the before-and-after pictured snapped by the robot's navigation cameras. NASA said that since landing, the rover has gone through checks on every

New Delhi, March 3 (IANS) Cyber security researchers have found a new malware that is tricking Google into treating hacked websites as trustworthy sources and presenting innocent users with apparently "perfect matches" to their search queries on the platform. The hackers are using the malware dubbed as "Gootloader to lure "well-meaning users" into installing the malware on their devices, putting them at ransomeware risk, according to the report by Naked Secu

New Delhi, March 3 (IANS) If you think that NASA's $2.7 billion Mars Perseverance rover is carrying some state-of-the-art chip to sustain the rough atmosphere and send the data back home from the Red Planet, you are wrong as the most advanced rover runs on a chip used in the 1998 Apple iMacs. This is because an advanced chip is actually a detriment to the unique operating conditions of Mars, reports New Scientist. Mars' atmosphere offers far less protection from harmful radi

New Delhi, March 2 (IANS) In a bid to empower the public sector enterprises in India, tech company IBM on Tuesday announced it has achieved a full cloud service provider (CSP) empanelment from the Ministry of Electronics and IT (MeiTY). The company said that the MeitY empanelment will enable the Indian public sector tap into the industry's most secure and open cloud platform to drive innovation and growth. "Indian public sector can now access the industry's most secu

New Delhi, February 26 (IANS) :As more and more Indians adopt digital way of life most organisations are still a long way from authentically displaying "digital empathy" and deliver better customer experiences, a new report has stressed. Just over a third (37 per cent) of Indian executives have significant insights into customer mindset. "Drivers of purchase, friction points and attribution of how marketing actions relate to customer behaviour fare only marginally

San Francisco, February 23 (IANS): Facebook-owned photo-sharing platform Instagram is adding resources for people affected by eating disorders to its social platform. If users search for hashtags or content that's potentially related to disordered eating, the company will guide that user to resources or help lines provided by the National Eating Disorders Association (or NEDA) in the US, as well as others in the UK, Australia and Canada. This article contains some discussion

Washington, February 22 (IANS): As NASA's Perseverance rover touched down on Mars last week, a new study by scientists at the US space agency and German Aerospace Centre has found that some microbes on Earth could temporarily survive on the surface of the Red Planet. The researchers tested the endurance of micro-organisms to Martian conditions by launching them into the Earth's stratosphere, as it closely represents key conditions on Mars. Published in the journal Frontie

San Francisco, February 21 (IANS): If you don't agree to WhatsApp's new privacy policy update, you will be able to receive calls and notifications, but will not be able to read or send messages from the app, says a report. In an email to one of its merchant partners, reviewed by TechCrunch, Facebook-owned WhatsApp said it will "slowly ask" such users to comply with the new terms "in order to have full functionality of WhatsApp" starting May 15. If the

Washington, February 18 (IANS): NASA's Mars 2020 Perseverance rover, which is slated to touch down in Jezero Crater at around 3.55 p.m. EST on Thursday (2.25 a.m. Friday India time) is tasked with searching for telltale signs that microbial life may have lived on Mars billions of years ago. It will collect rock core samples in metal tubes, and future missions would return these samples to Earth for deeper study, NASA said. "To quote Carl Sagan," said Gentry Lee, Chi

New Delhi, February 15 (IANS): Texas-based start-up OnwardMobility, Blackberry's new owner, has confirmed that it will launch new devices later this year. BlackBerry's partnership with TCL ended last year, and after a few months, it signed with OnwardMobility. In a recent interview, Peter Franklin, CEO of OnwardMobility, reiterated that the company will release a 5G phone this year, reports GizChina. The company is currently working with Foxconn to develop a new BlackB

San Francisco, February 14 (IANS): Google has updated its YouTube iOS app for the first time in over two months, becoming one of the highest-profile Google apps to see an update since early December. Although there's been speculation that the reason for the lack of updates to iOS versions of Gmail, Docs, Search, and Photos is an attempt to avoid Apple's new privacy labels, Google has explicitly denied that was the case. Last month, the company said in a blog post that it wou

San Francisco, February 13 (IANS): Several companies including Qualcomm, Microsoft and Google are reportedly nervous about Nvidia acquiring British chip designer Arm. According to reports by CNBC and Bloomberg, the tech giants have made their concerns that the deal could harm competition known to regulators around the world. They fear that the acquisition will lead to changes in how Arm licenses out its chipmaking technology, despite Nvidia pledging that it will not force Arm to

Washington, February 13 (IANS): An international team of astronomers has discovered a trio of hot worlds larger than Earth orbiting a much younger version of our Sun called TOI 451. The system resides in the recently discovered Pisces-Eridanus stream, a collection of stars less than 3 per cent the age of our solar system that stretches across one-third of the sky. The researchers believe that the newly discovered planetary system, detailed in The Astronomical Journal, will provid

San Francisco, February 11 (IANS) Microsoft reportedly held talks in recent months to acquire the $51-billion social media firm Pinterest, the media reported on Thursday. According to The Financial Times, the tech giant aimed to acquire Pinterest, a platform popular for sharing and discovering recipes, home ideas, style inspiration and other ideas, to create a portfolio of active online communities that could run on its Cloud computing platform. "The talks were currently not

Washington, February 10 (IANS): NASA has selected Elon Musk's private aerospace company SpaceX to provide launch services for two major components of the Gateway that will serve as a way station for future Moon missions. As part of the contract, SpaceX will provide launch services for NASA's Power and Propulsion Element (PPE) and Habitation and Logistics Outpost (HALO), the foundational elements of the Gateway. The total cost to NASA is approximately $331.8 million, inclu

New Delhi, February 10 (IANS): Software major Adobe has introduced a useful feature where multiple people can work on the same file in Photoshop, Illustrator or Fresco. The ‘Invite to Edit' feature in Photoshop, Illustrator and Fresco software allows asynchronous editing on all surfaces across the desktop, iPad, and iPhone (Fresco). "Now collaborators can edit a shared cloud document, one at a time. Just save your .PSD or .AI files as cloud documents and send

New Delhi, February 8 (IANS): The focus on right to privacy in public discourse has prompted 81 per cent of Indian Internet users to stop using or considering not using certain apps due to privacy or data-sharing concerns, a new report said on Monday. The report reveals that owing to the pandemic, Internet usage across Indian households has spiked by 50 per cent and has also fostered awareness about cyber frauds across 61 per cent of the households. "The pandemic has acceler

Bengaluru, February 8 (IANS): Amazon Alexa turned three in India on Monday and the customer interactions with the virtual assistant increased 67 per cent in 2020. The customers said "I love you" to Alexa 19,000 times a day, up a massive 1,200 per cent from 2019, according to the company. More customers in non-metro cities brought home an Echo device, accounting for over 50 per cent of India's Alexa users. "Be it the Echo device in the living room, 100+ Alexa bu

New Delhi, February 7 (IANS): A cyber security researcher has discovered a malicious Google Chrome extension in the wild abusing the Chrome Sync process that can help hackers steal user data. Hackers can use the Google Chrome sync feature to send commands to infected browsers and steal data from infected systems, bypassing traditional firewalls and other network defenses. Croatian security researcher Bojan Zdrnja found a malicious Chrome extension that can communicate with a remo