Internet

An executive at Tencent has been held by Chinese authorities as part of a probe into a high-profile corruption case involving one of China’s former top law-enforcement officials, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter. Shares in the gaming company and Internet powerhouse fell 1.4 percent in early trade in Hong Kong on

Workers at an Amazon warehouse in Alabama have begun voting on whether to form the first American union at the e-commerce giant, an effort that could pave the way for further unionisation in the United States at one of the world’s most powerful companies. Amazon is the second-largest employer in the US with an 800,000-strong

Twitter said Tuesday its user base jumped to 192 million in the quarter marked by US presidential election turmoil and a battle against misinformation. Ranks of “monetisable” daily active Twitter users rose 27 percent from a year earlier during the fourth quarter, which ended just days before former president Donald Trump was booted from the

WhatsApp appears to have not been able to convince more users to utilise its payments feature as the app received negative growth in terms of UPI transactions in January, according to the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) data released by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI). However, PhonePe continued to lead UPI apps with a

Freed from his daily obligations at Amazon, Jeff Bezos is expected to turn up the heat on his space venture, Blue Origin, as it faces a pivotal year and fierce competition from Elon Musk’s SpaceX, industry sources said. The 57-year-old Bezos, a lifelong space enthusiast and the world’s second-richest person behind Musk, said last week

Bitcoin is still a confusing idea for many people, but its surging value through the last few months has gotten everyone paying attention again. The value of Bitcoin soared as high as $40,000 (roughly Rs. 29.2 lakhs). However it still remains volatile, and on January 11, we saw Bitcoin sliding 26 percent in its biggest

Private social audio app Clubhouse is attracting masses of new users from mainland China, where the US app remains uncensored by authorities despite flourishing discussions on rights, national identity, and other sensitive topics. Western social media apps including Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube are banned in China, where the local Internet is tightly censored to weed

The Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation Limited (IRCTC) has launched its online bus booking services that went live for the service of the nation on January 29, IRCTC informed on Friday. “IRCTC under the leadership of Ministry of Railways, Ministry of Commerce and Industry and Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution is

Aadhaar is not mandatory for registration on Co-WIN portal, Union Minister of State for Health Ashwini Choubey informed Lok Sabha on Friday. Providing details about the Co-WIN portal, which has been created along with the CoWin mobile app to streamline the COVID-19 vaccination drive in India, he said it has been developed by the Ministry

The Ministry of Home Affairs has ordered the suspension of internet services at Singhu, Ghazipur and Tikri borders of Delhi, where farmers have been protesting against the new farm laws, for 24 hours till Saturday night in the wake of their ”chakka jam” call, officials said. Apart from the three sites, internet services will remain

Amazon.com Inc’s announcement this week that it would be rolling out AI-powered cameras in its branded delivery vans for safety has drawn criticism from privacy advocates and workers concerned with being subjected to surveillance on the job. The world’s largest e-commerce firm said the cameras, which are developed by transportation technology company Netradyne, would improve

BookMyShow has now launched BookMyShow Stream — a new video-on-demand streaming platform. This marks the online ticketing platform’s debut in the transactional video-on-demand (TVOD) segment as COVID-19 pandemic continues to affect the entertainment business. Through this platform, users will be able to buy or rent the movies they want, including recent blockbusters that are still

Google is exploring an alternative to Apple’s new anti-tracking feature, the latest sign that the Internet industry is slowly embracing user privacy, according to people with knowledge of the matter.Internally, the search giant is discussing how it can limit data collection and cross-app tracking on the Android operating system in a way that is less

Zoom is introducing new features aimed at helping users transition back to working from offices, or hybrid working. Zoom Rooms Kiosk Mode will let a virtual receptionist greet you from a Zoom Rooms for Touch device and Neat Sense will enable users to monitor and manage the air quality and humidity in the room. Other

An engineering director and a software developer have quit Alphabet’s Google over the dismissal of AI researcher Timnit Gebru, a sign of the ongoing conflicts at the search giant over diversity and ethics. David Baker, a director focused on user safety, left Google last month after 16 years because Gebru’s exit “extinguished my desire to

Microsoft is introducing a new downloads interface for Edge. A new section will appear in the top-right corner of the browser that will show all active downloads. It takes less screen space and can be dismissed easily. The button of the new downloads section has a progress ring, allowing users to monitor the overall download

Clickpost, an automated logistics SaaS platform, offers e-commerce companies an amalgamation of intelligent services related to shipping and tracking of packages. Its AI-driven platform optimises the cumbersome task of logistical handling of goods deliveries – from selecting a delivery partner, to tracking deliveries, and even automating action in case of a shipment delay. This shipping

Mass Effect Legendary Edition has set a May 14 release date, developer BioWare announced Tuesday in a reveal trailer for the long-anticipated 4K remaster of the original Mass Effect trilogy. It’ll cost Rs. 3,999 in India and $60 in the US, and will be available on PC (EA Play/Origin and Steam), PlayStation 4, and Xbox

Ford Motor will tap into software, artificial intelligence, and cloud computing offered by Alphabet’s Google to develop new consumer services and modernise internal operations, the companies said on Monday. As part of a six-year partnership, the Dearborn, Michigan-based automaker will incorporate the tech giant’s Android operating system into its Ford and Lincoln vehicles starting in

Billionaire Elon Musk said on Monday bitcoin was “on the verge” of being more widely accepted among investors as he expressed his support for the cryptocurrency in a chat on social media app Clubhouse that drew thousands of listeners. The comments followed his use of the “#bitcoin” tag on his Twitter profile on Friday, which

Netflix has announced three Indian originals for February 2021. The Girl on the Train — the Bollywood adaptation of the British novel (that has previously also been adapted by Hollywood) starring Parineeti Chopra, Aditi Rao Hydari, and Kirti Kulhari, from the Bard of Blood director — arrives February 26. A week earlier on February 19

The return of Manoj Bajpayee’s (missing) agent in Amazon’s The Family Man is the highlight of February’s local streaming picks, alongside Parineeti Chopra in Netflix’s The Girl on the Train, and the Telugu-language anthology film Pitta Kathalu also on Netflix. Lastly, we’ve 1962: The War in the Hills, a Hotstar Specials series based on the

The government has listed a bill that will prohibit “all private cryptocurrencies” in India and provide a framework for creation of an official digital currency to be issued by the Reserve Bank of India. Titled “The Cryptocurrency and Regulation of Official Digital Currency Bill, 2021,” the bill will be considered in the ongoing Budget session

Amazon’s bid to stall Future Group’s $3.4 billion (roughly Rs. 24,788 crores) retail assets sale is similar to Alexander the Great’s “ruthless ambition to scorch the earth”, the Indian group’s CEO Kishore Biyani said in an internal staff memo seen by Reuters. Amazon, locked in protracted legal disputes with Future, alleges the Indian firm violated

Spotify has been granted a patent for new tech that can suggest songs to users based on the analysis of their voice data. The global audio and music streaming giant had first applied for this patent in February 2018 and it was granted by thr United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) this month. The

Personal information of a large number of people who participated in the Netherlands’ coronavirus track-and-trace programme has been leaked, the Dutch health authorities (GGD) said on Friday. The GGD confirmed a media report that data had been stolen and apologised for what it said were two separate leaks. It said in a statement it did

Qualcomm on Thursday lost its fight against a data demand from EU antitrust regulators after Europe’s top court reaffirmed the regulators’ right to see it, in a case that has already landed the company a EUR 242 million (roughly Rs. 2,140 crores) fine. The ruling by the Luxembourg-based Court of Justice of the European Union

Vivaldi browser’s latest update brings a new tab management system that enables two levels of tab bars on the desktop Web browser. This new feature, called Two-Level Tab Stacks, allows for a second level in the tab bar for managing tab groups. Two-Level Tab Stacks feature has been introduced with Vivaldi 3.6 and it is

Mozilla Firefox 85 has been released, which ends support for Adobe Flash Player plugin and “protects” users from supercookies. Firefox 85 does not support Adobe Flash or have a setting to re-enable it – a pre-decided move that was first announced back in 2017. Besides that, the biggest change in the latest version of Firefox

Online shopping platform Amazon is preparing to set up a Polish based website so local shoppers will no longer have to order via its German site, it said on Wednesday, sending shares in top local rival Allegro down by over 7 percent. Amazon has been present in Poland since 2014 with nine logistics centres but