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NASA is All Set to Carry Out its Next Moon Mission with Orion Crew Capsule

Fifty years ago the first moon mission took place and last week was nothing but a celebration of the 50th anniversary of the same. Along with celebrating the whole event, NASA also revealed that it is going to carry out another mission to the moon using its newly developed Orion spacecraft, that will return humans to the moon by 2024.

During the 50th anniversary event at the Kennedy Space Center, the agency confirmed that the Orion crew capsule is ready for its trip to the moon and it will be carrying out its first mission after June 2020.

In the first mission of Orion next year, i.e., Artemis 1, the spacecraft will not carry any humans to the moon. It will be propelled through Boeing‘s new Space Launch System and will spend three weeks in the space. During this time, it will stay in the orbit of the moon for over six days. The mission will also carry out a test on the spacecraft while returning to the earth. During the mission, the agency will be testing the thermal shielding of Orion the time it will be entering the atmosphere of the earth at the highest of speed. This very mission is estimated to cost a total of $20-30 billion.

In the second mission to the moon, i.e. Artemis 2, in 2022 the spacecraft will carry a proper crew, and later in 2024, with the mission Artemis 3, it will take the astronauts to the surface of the moon.

During the event, Vice President Mike Pence talked about the first successful moon mission and the spaceflight, Apollo 11, that first landed humans on the moon. He also talked about the new Orion spacecraft and the missions that it will be carrying out in the coming future.

“Thanks to the hard work of the men of NASA, men and women of NASA, and American industry, the Orion crew vehicle for the Artemis 1 mission is complete and ready to begin preparations for its historic first flight,” said Pence during his speech.

It won’t be the first time that Orion will go into space. It took its first four hours flight into space back in 2014. It was a test flight in which it took two complete rounds of the earth.

Along with the moon mission, NASA is also working with other private companies like SpaceX and Boeing for its other space missions. The first mission that Orion will carry out will only be possible in 2020 if Boeing builds its most powerful Space Launch System rocket on time.

Encouraging the astronauts and scientists present at the event, Pence also stated, “It will be American men and the first American woman who will step on the surface of the moon in the coming five years.”

Yashica Vashishtha

Yashica is a Software Engineer turned Content Writer, who loves to write on social causes and expertise in writing technical stuff. She loves to watch movies and explore new places. She believes that you need to live once before you die. So experimenting with her life and career choices, she is trying to live her life to the fullest.

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Hongmeng OS is not Designed to Replace Android : Huawei

The past few months have been quite challenging for the Chinese tech company Huawei. It has faced partial ban in one of the biggest smartphone markets of the US and Australis and has been the centre of criticism for having ties with China.

Amid all there issues, the company is trying to improve its grip on the smartphone industry, and reportedly, had plans to replace Google’s Android OS with its homegrown Hongmeng operating system. But the company now has completely denied the reports and has claimed that Android will remain the OS for its smartphones.

Huawei’s senior vice president Catherine Chen told the reporters in Brussels that Hongmeng is not a smartphone OS, and the company has no plans to use a self-developed OS for its smartphones as well as the other mobile devices.

According to Chen, the OS has been developed for the industrial usage, and its development started even before the company started facing the issues with the U.S. The company chairman Liang Hua also gave a statement stating that the very operating system is designed for internet-of-things (IoT) devices.

But if we go back to June, the statement given by Huawei VP, Andrew Williamson, was a bit different. He had told the Reuters, “Huawei is in the process of potentially launching a replacement. It’d be ready in months in the event of an Android blacklisting. It’s not something Huawei wants. We’re very happy being part of the Android family, but Hongmeng is being tested, mostly in China.”

In fact, after the blacklisting of Huawei by most of the U.S. companies, the Huawei CEO Richard Yu had also said that Huawei would be ready to use its alternatives. He had also mentioned that the upcoming OS will be used in a variety of devices like routers, network switches, tablets, computers and data centres, etc.

Based on the past reports, Huawei even was conducting tests for the OS on smartphones, and according to a few testers, Hongmeng is based on open-source Android and offers 60 per cent faster performance than Android.

But now, it seems that the company no more wants to replace the OS. This change in the decision can be due to Trump’s announcement that permitted the U.S. companies to come back in business with Huawei. So now Huawei can regain its access to the Android OS and does not need another OS to embed into its smartphones.

Yashica Vashishtha

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Instagram Likes Soon to be Hidden; The Company Aims at Removing the Pressure of Likes from its Users

Leave a Comment / News, Tech News / By Yashica Vashishtha

YouTube and Instagram have helped millions of creators and influencers to build a huge audience base for them. Thanks to the likes on the videos and the Instagram posts that show the creators how many people are into their content and are following them. But soon, Instagram is going to hide the likes feature on the platform.

The company has been testing a feature that hides public “Like” counts since this April. First, it got the feature to Canada for the testing, and from Wednesday, it will also start testing the same for the users from six other countries, i.e., Ireland, Italy, Japan, Brazil, Australia, and New Zealand.

Through the test, Instagram will start hiding the number of likes that a post will receive from the users. Also, the number of times a video has been viewed will not be visible to people. But yes, the users who have received the likes, and the views, will have access to the ‘numbers’ and can see it under their posts.-

According to an Instagram spokesperson, the company does not want its users to have any kind of pressure of getting more likes and wants the followers to focus on the photos/videos of a user shares, not how many likes they get.

The company first announced about testing the new feature at Facebook’s annual developer conference. It also tweeted about the same, saying, “looking forward to learning more about how this change might benefit everyone’s experience on Instagram.”

The response to the tweet was a mix of opinions, where some of the people did not even care about the likes, the influencers showed their disappointment, as their business depends only on how many followers and likes they have.

Along with ‘hiding the likes’ feature, the company is also taking another step to strengthen its moderation techniques, as it now will be sending an alert message to a user who has violated any of the guidelines on Instagram, and their account is close to getting shut.

The company will properly give the users the reference of the post, story or the comment, that caused the violation and got deleted. With the alert, the platform will provide the users with a chance to apply for reviewing the content through the help page on Instagram.

“To start, appeals will be available for content deleted for violations of our nudity and pornography, bullying and harassment, hate speech, drug sales, and counter-terrorism policies, but we’ll be expanding appeals in the coming months,” the company said. “If the content is found to be removed in error, we will restore the post and remove the violation from the account’s record.”

This way, the users will get the full clarity on why their account is getting closed, and they can also object on the decision. Also, Instagram will be able to make people think before posting anything offensive over the platform.

Yashica Vashishtha

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Netflix to Roll-out a Cheaper Mobile-only Plan to Target More Users in India

Leave a Comment / India, News, Tech News / By Yashica Vashishtha

The online video streaming services are taking over the entertainment industry, and there has been the rise of many of them Netflix being the leader of all. But amid the high competition, Netflix is also having some issues in regaining its customers. For the past few months, the company has also been facing slower growth due to the rise in its subscription plan prices, as well as the rise of other companies like Amazon that offering fancy discounts and original content over their platform.

The company has seen the lowest growth in the past few months, and only half of the expected number of new users have subscribed to Netflix in the first quarter of this year that just ended in June.

To be the leader in the filed, the company has to take some serious steps, to begin with, reduced prices. Netflix just announced that it will be starting up a new but cheaper mobile-only streaming plan, India being the first recipient of the new plan. The company revealed the news on Wednesday, adding that India is the biggest growing market, where it will be easier to get to most of the users with lowered prices.

“After several months of testing, we’ve decided to roll out a lower-priced mobile-only plan in India to complement our existing plans. We believe this plan, which will launch in Q3, will be an effective way to introduce a larger number of people in India to Netflix and to further expand our business in a market where Pay-TV ARPU is low (below $5),” said Reed Hastings, CEO, Netflix.

According to a report, despite being the biggest population, only 2 million people are subscribed to Netflix in India. The company said that it may gain more subscribers if it reduces the subscription prices for the Indian users, The basic Netflix monthly plan starts at Rs 500 which allows the users to access Netflix on a single screen at a time. With the announcement, the company disclosed that the new plan will only work on mobile devices and will render a 480p picture quality.

While testing the new plan in March, Netflix offered the users a price as cheap as Rs 250 ($3.63) for it, but there has been no revelation on what will be the prices for the original plan. The company will be bringing the plan by the third quarter of this year in India, and later, it may also expand to other countries.

Yashica Vashishtha

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Neuralink : Elon Musk Finally Talks About his Secretive Company’s Brain Control Interface

Leave a Comment / News, Tech News / By Yashica Vashishtha

Elon Musk, the Tesla and SpaceX founder, is always up to something next level. He has been involved in some really big and unique projects, like an online bank, an electric car, a reusable rocket, etc. The CEO of one of the biggest tech giants also owns the secretive experimental company ‘Neuralinks’. Tuesday evening during an event in San Francisco, Musk gave a presentation on the projects that this company has been working on for the past two years.

The company was founded in 2017, and it mainly works on developing the data transmission system between humans and computers. On Tuesday, CEO Musk, on the behalf of Neuralink, introduced devices that can be implanted to a human brain, so that they can operate devices like computer and smartphones through their thoughts.

Musk explained that there will be threads thinner than a normal human hair, which will be connected with a processor inside the human brain. This processor will make the person able to operate various electronic devices through a Bluetooth connection.

During the presentation, the company demonstrated a computer receiving information from a rats mind. And, in future, the company seeks to get permission from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to start clinical trials on the human brains. If the company gets the approval, it will start the experiments by the end of the first half of the next year.

According to Musk, Neuralink is experimenting with such devices so that the paralysed people will be able to control through their mind, but with lesser damage made to their neural system than the other already available devices do.

The process of inserting the processor into a paralysed human’s brain will include drilling four 8mm holes into the patient’s skull and then implant the processor connected to 4 to 6 μm thin polymer threads. This will help them operate various devices only through their thoughts. The company intends to use a laser beam to get through the skull in future.

“We will painlessly laser-drill the holes into the skull, place the threads, plug the hole with the sensor, and then you go home. It’ll be an experience like getting Lasik,” said President Max Hodak.

According to a report by the New York Times, the company will be carrying out the early experiments with the neuroscientists at Stanford University.

“It’s not going to be suddenly Nueuralink will have this neural lace and start taking over people’s brains. Ultimately, the company wants to achieve a symbiosis with artificial intelligence. And that, even in benign scenario humans would be left behind.” said Elon Musk during the presentation.

Earlier in 2006, the scientists from the Brown University developed a similar system named BrainGate that enabled a paralysed person Matthew Nagle play Pong using only his mind. But, this was a way stiffer technology and is prone to cause more damage to the human brain.

But the technology used by Neuralink is more flexible. The company has also developed a robot who will insert those threads into the human brain that too six threads per minute.

Yashica Vashishtha

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Amazon Prime Day Sale: Over 2000 German Employees Protests on the First Day of Sale

Leave a Comment / News, Tech News / By Yashica Vashishtha

Amazon is hosting its two days Prime Day sale, probably the biggest sale of the year, which started on Monday 15th July, but amid this biggest shopping discount extravaganza, many of its employees have gone on strike. As soon, the sale started, the Amazon workers from Germany started their strike against the company with the motto, “No more discounts on our incomes”.

There has been always an issue for the Amazon workers on the wages the company offers them. According to the employees, the company offers new discounts and free deliveries to its customers by cutting off their salaries, and they can no more handle this. These workers from Germany had already announced that they will stop working during the Amazon Prime Day sale, and employees from the two distribution centres in Bad Hersfeld, as well as sites in Werne, Rheinberg, Leipzig, Graben and Koblenz, went on strike on the same day the sale started.

“We know Prime Day is a big day for Amazon, so we hope this strike will help executives understand how serious we are about wanting real change that will uplift the workers in Amazon’s warehouses,” striker Safiyo Mohamed said in a release.

According to another striker, over 2000 Amazon workers went on the strike on the first day of the sale. But Amazon being aware of the strike to take place on its very important day had said that the strike won’t affect the operations of the sale. In fact, on Monday, the company even made the announcement that it will create another 1,000 jobs in Poland. This announcement by the company also reflected double salary for its Poland workers.

This is not the first time that Amazon workers are on strike, in fact, last year there were over 50 strikes in Europe only. Employees from some of the other countries also took part in those strikes. And, in April this year, the representatives of the worker union of 15 countries had a meeting in Berlin concerning the same issue.

Along with Germany, this time the employees from Minnesota, U.S. also joined the strike during the first six hours of the sale. The Amazon workers from the UK also had planned to strike during the sale.

Along with the low wages, the employees often complain about how the company treats them at their workplace. But as the company had already claimed that the Prime Day sale won’t get affected by the strike, the company still does not seem to be doing anything for the employees. Amazon has clearly said that it won’t be accepting the demands of the employees who have gone on the strike.

Yashica Vashishtha

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