Bank FDs now fetch less than savings accounts !!

Kolkata: It no longer pays to keep your money locked up in a bank. Fixed deposit rates have plummeted in recent months, with short-term rates now hovering very close to or below savings account rates for some banks. Surplus liquidity and sluggish credit growth have forced banks to cut rates of both short-term and long-term deposits, and made savers move to riskier instruments such as debt market mutual funds or even equity assets. Deposit growth shrunk last fiscal and has grown less than 2 % so far in the current…

BHIM Website Exposes Personal Details Of 7.26 Mn Indians !!!

According to a report by Israeli cybersecurity platform vpnMentor, the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) developed payments platform BHIM has suffered a data breach which has compromised personal data of more than 7.26 Mn users, including Aadhaar card details, caste certificates, residence proof, bank records, professional records, certificates, PAN card details, along with financial proofs such as screenshots taken within financial and banking apps. However, NPCI told Inc42 that no data has been compromised at BHIM app and requested everyone to not fall prey to such speculations. Further, it said that NPCI follows a high…

Next-generation cockroach-inspired robot is small but mighty !!

This itsy-bitsy robot can’t climb up the waterspout yet but it can run, jump, carry heavy payloads and turn on a dime. Dubbed HAMR-JR, this microrobot developed by researchers at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and the Harvard Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, is a half-scale version of the cockroach-inspired Harvard Ambulatory Microrobot or HAMR. About the size of a penny, HAMR-JR can perform almost all of the feats of its larger-scale predecessor, making it one of the most dexterous microrobots to…

Robots help some firms, even while workers across industries struggle !!

Overall, adding robots to manufacturing reduces jobs —by more than three per robot,in fact. But a new study co-authored by an MIT professor reveals an important pattern: Firms that move quickly to use robots tend to add workers to their payroll, while industry job losses are more concentrated in firms that make this change more slowly. The study, by MIT economist Daron Acemoglu, examines the introduction of robots to French manufacturing in recent decades, illuminating the business dynamics and labor implications in granular detail. “When you look at use of…

Undergraduates develop next-generation intelligence tools  !!

In Covid-19 pandemic has driven us apart physically while reminding us of the power of technology to connect. When MIT shut its doors in March, much of campus moved online, to virtual classes, labs, and chatrooms. Among those making the pivot were students engaged in independent research under MIT’s Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP). With regular checking of their advisors via Slack and Zoom, many students succeeded in pushing through to the end. One even carried on his experiments from his bedroom, after schlepping his Sphero Bolt robots home in a backpack….

Twitter Provides Notes on How People Can Take Action to Respond to Racial Inequality !!

The clearest message coming out of the #BlackLivesMatter protests in the US is that we all need to take responsibility. Change can’t happen unless the majority of people respond to the call – but how can you do that? What can you do, within your personal or work life, that will help you to facilitate a shift? Twitter has this week provided some guidance on this, listing a series of guides and pointers to help people better understand and respond to the call. As explained by Twitter: “The recent killings of Ahmaud Arbery,…

Facebook Publishes New Update on Account Removals Due to Organized Manipulation Efforts !!

Facebook has this week published its Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior report for May, which outlines all of the accounts, pages and groups that the platform has removed over the course of the month due to identified efforts to mislead and misinform Facebook uses for varying purpose. As explained by Facebook: “We’re constantly working to find & stop coordinated campaigns that seek to manipulate public debate across our apps. We view influence operations as coordinated efforts to manipulate public debate for a strategic goal where fake accounts are central to the operation.”  In May, Facebook…

Sensex rallies 608 points to 34,895 in opening session; Nifty surges 184 points to 10,326 !!

The Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) on Sunday clarified that the annualised gross direct tax collection growth in 2019-20 was actually 8% at ₹14,01,920 crore, but tax reforms worth ₹1,68,200 croreannounced last year had led to about 5% contraction in overall tax receipts in the previous financial year. The revenue impacts of corporate tax reforms and personal income tax concessions were ₹1,45,000 crore and ₹23,200 crore, respectively. After adjusting the revenue losses due to the two reforms actual gross direct tax collection in 2019-20 was ₹12,33,720 crore, a 4.92%…

A foolproof way to shrink deep learning models !!

As more Artificial Intelligence(AI) applications move to smartphones, deep learning models are getting smaller to allow apps to run faster and save battery power. Now, MIT researchers have a new and better way to compress models. It’s so simple that they unveiled it in a tweet last month: Train the model, prune its weakest connections, retrain the model at its fast, early training rate, and repeat, until the model is as tiny as you want. “That’s it,” says Alex Renda, a PhD student at MIT. “The standard things people do to prune their…

Study finds stronger links between automation and inequality !!!

This is part 3 of a three-part series examining the effects of robots and automation on employment, based on new research from economist and Institute Professor Daron  Acemoglu. Modern technology affects different workers in different ways. In some white-collar jobs — designer, engineer — people become more productive with sophisticated software at their side. In other cases, forms of automation, from robots to phone-answering systems, have simply replaced factory workers, receptionists, and many other kinds of employees. Now a new study co-authored by an MIT economist suggests automation has a…