Pepper’s skill set includes making phone calls, identifying missing items in the kitchen and occasional aerobics instruction. Now, after a surge in loneliness among vulnerable groups during the coronavirus pandemic, this robot’s potential as a companion have earned her a role in a Scottish university’s assisted living all experiment with artificial intelligence. Scientists at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh have programmed robots, including Pepper — who was launched as per the world’s first humanoid in Japan in 2014 — to perform tasks normally carried out by care workers. “We are specifically interested in…

Microsoft Edge browser is started crashing for users who has selected for Google as their default search engine. The crashes went on around for four hours before Microsoft fixed it. This issue only affected users who had Google selected as their default engine. This issue was affecting users on both MacOS and Windows, according to reports. Microsoft acknowledged the issue, and suggested a workaround of turning off search suggestions while it worked on a fix. As per a report by The Verge, the browser is started crashing when users typed into the…

Huawei Technologies and Apple both are increased their share of the China smartphone market in the second quarter of 2020, bucking a broader trend as the overall market for handsets continued to contract. Huawei shipped 40.2 million devices in China in the second quarter, 8% more than a year earlier, to increase its share of the market to a dominant 44%. Apple saw a substantial year on year growth of 35%, selling 7.7 million units, though its sales made up only 8.5% of the total market. Overall smartphone shipments in China…

NASA’s latest Mars rover Perseverance is launches Thursday on an astrobiology mission to look for signs of ancient microbial life — and to fly a helicopter-drone on another world for the first time. Take-off is scheduled for 7:50 am (5:20 pm IST) from Cape Canaveral, Florida on board a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket. If all goes to plan, Perseverance will reach the Red Planet on February 18, 2021, becoming the fifth rover to complete the voyage since 1997. All so far have been American. China launched its first Mars rover last week, which…

After the months of delays Google has finally confirmed the launch of Pixel 4a for August 3. Google did not specifically say that it’s the Pixel 4a but it’s most likely the mid-range phone. Google updated its Twitter and Facebook pages to tease the launch of its new phone. There’s a bit of work required though to figure out the Pixel 4a launch. First is the cover photo on Google’s Twitter and Facebook pages. It has a dot on the side indicating the punch-hole camera and “The Google Phone” written…

Before Facebook Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg signed a deal to acquire Instagram, he proposed the idea to the photo-sharing startup’s co-founder Kevin Systrom, who was not interested. “Will he go into destroy mode if I say no?” Systrom asked a board member. “Probably,” replied Matt Cohler, the venture capitalist and early Facebook employee. Then Cohler added that Facebook it would likely to go into destroy mode either way. The exchange was one of several potentially damning pieces of evidence in documents obtained by the US House Judiciary subcommittee on antitrust,…