Dell Technologies, Google Cloud tighten up integration, storage links for data heavy workloads

The launch of Dell Technologies Cloud OneFS for Google Cloud is an effort to create a flow of data across both clouds.

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Olympus to end camera operations in South Korea

The Japanese giant will, however, continue its medical and scientific solutions businesses in the country.

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When will the IRS send my stimulus check? How to track it with the Get My Payment tool - CNET

The IRS is sending stimulus payments on a schedule. We'll explain how to use the agency's online tracker tool to see when your check or prepaid card is coming.

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SpaceX's first astronaut flight: All you need to know about the Demo-2 mission - CNET

A Falcon 9 rocket is set to carry two NASA astronauts from US soil to the ISS on May 27. The last time the US launched astronauts from within its borders was 2011.

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Your Android phone has iMessage skills. How to use Google Chat's texting features - CNET

If you're not using Google Chat's enhanced messaging features, now's the time to learn them all.

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Best dog food delivery services for 2020: Pet Plate, BarkBox, Chewy, PupJoy and more compared - CNET

These convenient dog food delivery services will save you a trip to the store.

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The best meat delivery services in 2020: Omaha Steaks, Snake River Farms, Porter Road and more - CNET

Explore your options for high-quality beef, pork, chicken and seafood all delivered to your door.

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Reserve Bank stays cyber resilient through 'FedEx' days and cafe-like 'technology time'

The bank's assistant governor said the organisation is in a position where an understanding of cyber risks, and how best to respond, is 'part of its DNA'.

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Coles shuffles data management into the cloud

It opens up the ability for the company's data science team to use machine learning and advanced analytics.

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Public policies in the age of digital disruption

We are witnessing a new wave of technological progress with enormous potential to profoundly transform our societies. Together with globalization, climate change, demographic transformations, and the risk of pandemics such as covid-19, digital disruption is generating far-reaching changes in the global economy. Economic growth is almost exclusively a feature of industrial revolutions and is relatively recent in human history. The social adaptation to the structural changes that technology has brought about has generally been slow, making it a reasonably smooth process. In the case of the digital revolution, however, there are already some signs of a much more abrupt disruption in businesses, markets and societies, reducing the time of response to deal with the new challenges. The success of this response will determine our societies’ capacity to improve productivity, create employment, and grow in an inclusive way.

The efficiency and quality of the welfare state and institutions is essential to guarantee equal opportunities first, and then provide a safety net for individuals facing unexpected adverse situations.

The digital revolution does not call for heightened optimism about the ability of robots or of artificial intelligence to fully substitute us in our jobs while we enjoy more leisure and higher levels of income. Nor does it call for the pessimism of those who think we are heading for massive technological unemployment and bound to lose our livelihood to robots. There is no call for utopias or dystopias. As in previous industrial revolutions, there is nothing inexorable or predetermined about the effects of the digital revolution. Some societies will be successful because they will be able to make the most of the opportunities created by these changes to social welfare. At the other extreme, those countries which fail to adequately manage this process well may see an increase in unemployment and inequality, with sluggish or stagnant productivity. Well-designed public policies in four key areas will be required to strengthen the positive effects of technological change:

1. Education and new digital skills. New occupations increasingly require a capacity for analytical reasoning, critical thinking, creativity, originality and initiative, personal leadership, social influence, and emotional intelligence. Language command, social and technical skills, along with the ability to manage and coordinate teams and projects, are also important. It is essential to continue learning and skills development , and public policies must ensure high-quality programs that meet these new needs and provide companies and workers the opportunity to continue their training and acquire new skills for the duration of their professional careers.
2. Policies for a new labor market. It is essential to remove barriers to job creation, investment, innovation, and growth; to increase legal certainty in labor relations; to strike a balance between labor market flexibility and employment security for workers in the gig economy; to facilitate the financing of startups; and to simplify and improve labor regulations to make them more efficient.
3. Competition and regulations in goods and services markets. As well as closing the digital divide, public policies should prevent new sectors and firms from gaining excessive market power that limits competition and innovation to the detriment of social welfare. Competition policies must be reshaped to closely monitor changing market conditions and ensure there is effective competition between firms. Measures that can be used to achieve this objective include the diffusion of technological advances and patents to facilitate the entry of new competitors and the financing of startups; the protection of consumer rights; access to small and medium-sized firms to big data, supercomputers, and cloud computing; and data sharing, when permitted by data owners.
4. Equal opportunities and redistribution. The efficiency and quality of the welfare state and institutions is essential to guarantee equal opportunities first, and then provide a safety net for individuals facing unexpected adverse situations. Societies that are already doing better in terms of equal opportunities and ex-post redistribution have a head start when it comes to facing the challenges of digital revolution inequality.

Used wisely, new technologies can be placed at the service of these policies to identify new needs, design solutions, deploy measures quickly and efficiently, streamline processes, reduce costs and improve services, evaluate results, or select their beneficiaries.

There are reasons to be optimistic about the future, but only if our societies can properly manage the changes, promote economic growth, and provide a welfare state that adapts to new individual and collective needs. It is very likely that some countries will do this more successfully than others. The social impact of new technologies will depend on how the new challenges are managed. In this process of change, there is no trade-off between fairness and efficiency: societies that can design a welfare state that works more efficiently will make the most of new technologies to increase social welfare, while at the same time attaining lower levels of inequality and greater intergenerational equity.

Read the full article.

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Brazilian company still wants exclusive rights to the "iPhone" brand

Apple is still fighting for the "iPhone" trademark in Brazil after seven years.

What you need to know

• The "iPhone" trademark dispute in Brazil is ongoing.
• Electronics company IGB Electronica is suing for exclusive rights to the trademark.
• Apple and the company have both had rights to the trademark since 2013.

The iPhone trademark dispute is apparently not over, at least in Brazil. Reported by Technoblog via MacRumors, IGB Electronica, an electronics company in Brazil, has revived a long-running lawsuit against Apple for exclusive rights to the "iPhone" trademark in the country.

"IGB Electronica fought a multi-year battle with Apple in an attempt to get exclusive rights to the "iPhone" trademark, but ultimately lost, and now the case has been brought to the Supreme Federal Court in Brazil, according to Brazilian site Tecnoblog (via Reddit)."

The company did originally receive exclusive rights to the trademark back in 2012, but that was shortly changed to allow both IGB Electronica and Apple to use the name. The company tried to fight for exclusive rights again in 2018, but the original ruling to allow Apple to also use the trademark was upheld.

"IGB Electronica under the name Gradiente produced a line of IPHONE-branded Android smartphones in Brazil in 2012, and there was a period of time where the Brazilian company was given exclusive rights to the iPhone trademark. That ruling didn't last, though, and Apple and IGB ultimately both wound up with rights to use the name in the country."

The company is now reportedly set to take up the suit again in hopes to reverse the decision made by the court.

"With the most recent lawsuit, IGB is aiming to reverse that 2018 decision, but the case could take years to get a ruling from the Supreme Federal Court in the country."

It is speculated that the company is hoping to receive a payout from Apple in order to settle the lawsuit.

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Apple announces Apple Watch Activity Challenge for World Environment Day

Another Activity Challenge is just around the corner.

What you need to know

• Apple has announced a new Activity Challenge for Apple Watch.
• It will be held on June 5th in celebration of World Enirvonment Day.
• Challengers must complete their Stand goal to complete the challenge.

If you've been wanting to finish an Apple Watch Activity Challenge, you don't have to wait long. Reported by 9to5Mac, Apple has announced that its next Activity Challenge for the Apple will will occur on June 5th in celebration of World Environment Day.

"Apple has scheduled its next Apple Watch Activity Challenge for June 5 in celebration of World Environment Day. This challenge encourages Apple Watch owners to fill their Stand ring by standing and moving around for at least one minute during 12 hours that day."

This Activity Challenge will focus on meeting your Stand goal. In order to win the challenge, Apple Watch owners must stand and move around for at least one minute during twelve hours throughout the day.

"Stand up for the planet on World Environment Day. Close your Stand ring on June 5 and earn this award by getting up and moving around for at least one minute during 12 hours that day."

According to the report, this is the first time Apple has matched up an Apple Watch Activity Challenge with World Environment Day. The company did not hold a challenge last month, and next month's is one that anyone can complete, even if they are still under a stay-at-home order.

"Apple did not hold an Apple Watch Activity Challenge for Earth Day last month, likely in an effort to encourage people to stay home and practice social distancing due to COVID-19. This year marks the first Activity Challenge in celebration of World Environment Day."

If you complete the challenge, you'll earn three new exclusive stickers.

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Services Australia says no Centrelink robo-debts raised since July 2019

6,888 debts have been reduced to zero and 1,421 reduced to 'non-zero'.

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Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg says the social network has 'high bar' for removing content - CNET

Facebook will remove coronavirus misinformation if can lead to physical harm, Zuckerberg says.

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New SD Express card spec is nearly four times faster than the current one

Image: SD Association

The SD Association, the group that sets the standards for memory cards, announced a new SD 8.0 specification for SD Express memory cards today that will allow the cards to transfer data at a rate of nearly four gigabytes per second, in large part thanks to utilizing PCIe 4.0 and NVMe interfaces commonly found in solid-state drives. That faster transfer rate could be useful as new technologies, like 8K video, create ever-larger files, which in turn require faster throughput if you want to transfer data in a timely manner.

Specifically, the 8.0 specification allows for transfer speeds of up to 3,938 megabytes per second, according to an SD Association white paper. That’s a significant jump from the maximum transfer speeds of 985 megabytes...

Continue reading…

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Scores of medical device manuals uploaded to support pirate repairs

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India’s Khatabook raises $60 million to help merchants digitize bookkeeping and accept payments online

Khatabook, a startup that is helping small businesses in India record financial transactions digitally and accept payments online with an app, has raised $60 million in a new financing round as it looks to gain more ground in the world’s second most populous nation.

The new financing round, Series B, was led by Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin’s B Capital. A range of other new and existing investors, including Sequoia India, Partners of DST Global, Tencent, GGV Capital, RTP Global, Hummingbird Ventures, Falcon Edge Capital, Rocketship.vc and Unilever Ventures, also participated in the round, as did Facebook’s Kevin Weil, Calm’s Alexander Will, CRED’s Kunal Shah and Snapdeal co-founders Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal.

The one-and-a-half-year-old startup, which closed its Series A financing round in October last year and has raised $87 million to date, is now valued between $275 million to $300 million, a person familiar with the matter told TechCrunch.

Hundreds of millions of Indians came online in the last decade, but most merchants — think of neighborhood stores — are still offline in the country. They continue to rely on long notebooks to keep a log of their financial transactions. The process is also time-consuming and prone to errors, which could result in substantial losses.

Khatabook, as well as a handful of young and established players in the country, is attempting to change that by using apps to allow merchants to digitize their bookkeeping and also accept payments.

Today more than 8 million merchants from over 700 districts actively use Khatabook, its co-founder and chief executive Ravish Naresh told TechCrunch in an interview.

“We spent most of last year growing our user base,” said Naresh. And that bet has worked for Khatabook, which today competes with Lightspeed-backed OkCredit, Ribbit Capital-backed BharatPe, Walmart’s PhonePe and Paytm, all of which have raised more money than Khatabook.

The Khatabook team poses for a picture (Khatabook)

According to mobile insight firm AppAnnie, Khatabook had more than 910,000 daily active users as of earlier this month, ahead of Paytm’s merchant app, which is used each day by about 520,000 users, OkCredit with 352,000 users, PhonePe with 231,000 users and BharatPe, with some 120,000 users.

All of these firms have seen a decline in their daily active users base in recent months as India enforced a stay-at-home order for all its citizens and shut most stores and public places. But most of the aforementioned firms have only seen about 10-20% decline in their usage, according to AppAnnie.

Because most of Khatabook’s merchants stay in smaller cities and towns that are away from large cities and operate in grocery stores or work in agritech — areas that are exempted from New Delhi’s stay-at-home orders, they have been less impacted by the coronavirus outbreak, said Naresh.

Naresh declined to comment on AppAnnie’s data, but said merchants on the platform were adding $200 million worth of transactions on the Khatabook app each day.

In a statement, Kabir Narang, a general partner at B Capital who also co-heads the firm’s Asia business, said, “we expect the number of digitally sophisticated MSMEs to double over the next three to five years. Small and medium-sized businesses will drive the Indian economy in the era of COVID-19 and they need digital tools to make their businesses efficient and to grow.”

Khatabook will deploy the new capital to expand the size of its technology team as it looks to build more products. One such product could be online lending for these merchants, Naresh said, with some others exploring to solve other challenges these small businesses face.

Amit Jain, former head of Uber in India and now a partner at Sequoia Capital, said more than 50% of these small businesses are yet to get online. According to government data, there are more than 60 million small and micro-sized businesses in India.

India’s payments market could reach $1 trillion by 2023, according to a report by Credit Suisse.

Mobile payments firms in India are now scrambling to make money

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When Disneyland and Disney World might reopen following COVID-19 closures - CNET

Pictures and video have emerged from Shanghai Disneyland's reopening, while Disney World begins taking reservations for visits starting July 1.

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Game of Thrones one year later: Still one of TV's greatest achievements - CNET

Commentary: Thrones' finale aired May 19, 2019. The lackluster final season stains the show's legacy, but doesn't shatter it.

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Carbon emissions dropped dramatically under coronavirus lockdowns - CNET

We've been locked down and the planet's been breathing easier, but experts warn emissions could rebound quickly.

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See Boston Dynamics robot dog Spot herd sheep like a pro in new video - CNET

The robot could end up being an ideal ranch hand that acts like a sheep dog but doesn't need to be fed.

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Ruby Rose unexpectedly leaves Batwoman TV series on The CW - CNET

Warner Bros. to recast her role of Kate Kane/Batwoman before season 2 of the DC Comics series debuts in 2021.

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Coronavirus: Mixed reality headsets help medics treat Covid-19 patients

Hand gestures allow doctors to view x-rays and scans, and connect with colleagues in another room.

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