A new, minimalistic £10 phone with features like digital payments and streaming unveiled by Indian billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Jio could help expand internet services to a wider audience in the country. The affordable feature phone, priced at Rs 999 (about £10), can help bridge India’s “digital divide” by introducing 4G internet for the first time to scores of users, experts said. “Reliance Jio’s persistence to bridge the ‘digital divide’ by putting 4G internet-capable phones in hands of 2G feature phone users or first-time users continues!” industry analyst Neil Shah from the research firm Counterpoint said. Jio said in a press release earlier this week that the beta trial for its first million Jio Bharat phones would begin this week on Friday. The low-cost 4G-enabled phone with a 2-inch display comes with a number of pre-installed features. These include mobile payments through the United Payments Interface (UPI) – a form of instant digital payments that are widely used in India – as well as access to Jio’s own on-demand video and music streaming services JioCinema and JioSaavn. The low cost of the new phone may also bring the internet further within the reach of women in households. In low-income households in India, mobile phones remain a shared device with internet access shared on an individual mobile phone, explained digital rights activist Nikhil Pahwa, founder of tech policy analysis website MediaNama. “Typically, there is one person in the household whose mobile phone has internet access because devices are expensive and internet access prices have increased of late,” Mr Pahwa told The Independent. “So, a low-cost device means it will become affordable for low-income households to have more than one handset. This is great for women because typically it is the men in the house that have access to the internet,” he said. Reliance Jio said the phone will also come with a Rs 123 (£1.2) data plan valid for 28 days, offering 14GB of internet access (0.5 GB or 500 MB per day) – a price the company claims is 30 per cent cheaper than plans offered by competitors. This move may lead to other network operators in India such as Bharti Airtel reducing their tariffs too. “Bharti recently raised 2G prices from Rs99 to Rs155 across all circles while Vi [Vodafone Idea] took this in one circle. This disruptive step can halt incremental tariff increases for 2G and help JIO gain share in that segment,” JP Morgan said in a report on Tuesday. Following Jio’s announcement, shares for Bharti Airtel and Vi slipped by 2 to 3 per cent in early trading on Tuesday. The move also brings internet-enabled phones within the reach of the masses, and as more people understand the utility of the internet, it may lead to the further conversion of featurephone users to adopt smartphones, industry experts said. “There are still 250 million mobile phone users in India who remain ‘trapped’ in the 2G era, unable to tap into basic features of the internet at a time when the world stands at the cusp of a 5G revolution,” Reliance Jio Chairman Akash Ambani said. Telecom analyst Tarun Pathak tweeted that the featurephone-to-smartphone conversion in India has slowed down due to some “upgrade barriers”, adding that “Jio Bharat aims to bridge that gap”. Read More India rolls out 5G cellular network for eight cities in ‘step towards new era’ France riots: Aunt of teenager shot dead by police in Paris pleads for violence and looting to end Civil conflict in India’s Manipur threatens food supplies to 100,000 people, warns non-profit

The rise of artificial intelligence (AI) is the “most profound” technology shift of our lifetime with the potential to “turbocharge” the UK’s economy, according to a new report by Google. Artificial intelligence, according to the report, can help turn around the UK’s recent growth stagnation and boost its economy by £400bn by 2030 by enabling an annual growth of 2.6 per cent. The tech giant’s UK and Ireland boss Debbie Weinstein called the transformation ushered in by AI in the tech industry “the most profound platform shift that any of us have lived through”. While some jobs are likely to be lost to AI, there will also be a “whole new set of jobs that will be created”, according to the tech chief. “We are very conscious of the impact that this technology will have on people,” Ms Weinstein told PA. “We want to make sure everyone has the skills they need. We’re aware that this is a fundamental technology shift that will impact all of our lives,” she added. Google’s new report comes amid widespread fear of the impact disruptive AI technology could have on several spheres of life, including privacy, the education sector, industry and jobs. Recently, professor Geoffrey Hinton, widely called the “godfather of AI” for his research contributions to the field and its impact, resigned from his job at Google, expressing fear that the AI tools he helped build could spell humanity’s doom. He cautioned that “bad actors” could use new AI technologies to harm others. “It is hard to see how you can prevent the bad actors from using it for bad things... I console myself with the normal excuse: If I hadn’t done it, somebody else would have,” he said. A growing number of experts across the world have called for AI development to be slowed down or halted as the potential for the technology to be misused has come to light following the launch of tools like ChatGPT and Midjourney. Google agrees in the new report that regulation is vital as AI technology develops, and adds that is “actively collaborating” with regulators around the world. The company is reportedly in favour of launching a “national skills agenda” involving governments, firms, and educational institutions to ensure that workers are not left behind as AI technology develops. “This nuanced approach is important if the UK is to pursue a competitive advantage in attracting inward investment associated with agile regulation,” Google noted in the report. “We’re aware of the fundamental change and the importance of getting it right while managing the downside risks,” Ms Weinstein told PA. Read More Judge blocks Biden agencies from communicating with social media platforms ‘Rage-baiting’ leftist Twitter account is probably fake, expert says How to delete your Twitter account Meta’s Twitter alternative Threads to be launched this week World ‘a long way’ from alliance on AI, Sunak says AI takes just five hours to design functional computer

HANOI, Vietnam--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jul 4, 2023--

HSBC Holdings Plc will become the first British bank to test an advanced data-security system being run by

Meta Platforms Inc.’s Threads app — the social network launching this week to take on Twitter Inc. —

LONDON & DUBLIN--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jul 4, 2023--

A federal judge on Tuesday ordered some Biden administration agencies and top officials not to communicate with social media companies about certain content, handing a win to GOP states in a lawsuit accusing the government of going too far in its effort to combat Covid-19 disinformation.

Twitter CEO Linda Yaccarino on Tuesday tweeted a defense of the temporary cap announced July 1 on the

Twitter said its temporary cap on the number of tweets that accounts can see each day has had

Facebook has lost a legal challenge at the European Union’s top court over a groundbreaking German antitrust decision that limited the way the company uses data for advertising

Many of Twitter’s users are looking to move on in the wake of the site’s latest chaos. In recent days, Elon Musk has announced that his site will apply “rate limits” in an attempt to stop data scraping on the site, by automated tools including those used to train AI systems. But in effect that has meant that Twitter has stopped working properly for many of the people who rely on it. After the latest backlash, some of those users are looking to leave the site entirely, and move instead to other alternatives. As they do, they might wish to delete their account to avoid leaving data and posts up online after they leave. But deleting Twitter is not as easy as you might think. The first step is for a user to deactivate their Twitter account, which starts a process during which the user can decide if they actually want to go through with it. When a user deactivates their Twitter account it is no longer visible on Twitter, but if a log-in is carried out during a specified reactivation period then the account remains useable. Once the reactivation period is over then another Twitter user will be able to utilise the username. Before deleting Twitter account the user can download a copy of their information by going to Your account and selecting Download an archive of your data. Deleting Twitter on iPhone or mobile web. 1. Open Twitter app or go to Twitter.com. 2. Tap profile picture. 3. Choose Settings and privacy and select Your account. 4. Chose Deactivate your account 5. Choose reactivation period - 30 days or 12 months. 6. Read disclaimer and select Deactivate 7. Enter password and follow prompts to delete account. Deleting Twitter account on web 1. Open Twitter.com 2. Click on three dot icon on left 3. Choose Settings and privacy and select Your account 4. Choose reactivation period - 30 days or 12 months 5. Read disclaimer and select Deactivate 6. Enter password and follow prompts to delete acount Read More How to delete your Twitter account What does Twitter’s rate-limiting restriction mean? ‘Rate limits’ and Twitter chaos: What exactly is Elon Musk doing? Twitter to stop TweetDeck access for unverified users Meta’s Twitter alternative Threads to be launched this week How Elon Musk finally broke Twitter – and why it might just be the start

New findings have revealed that time ran five times slower in the early universe, after scientists published new research into quasars. A quasar is a luminous active galactic nucleus and studying them has allowed scientists to measure time. The variation in brightness of quasars from the early universe has been measured to determine time dilation back to a billion years after the Big Bang. Experts have found that there was an era in which clocks moved five times slower than they do in the present day. The findings come as a relief to many cosmologists who have been perplexed by previous results that have come from studying quasars. The discovery that the universe is expanding led to the theorisation of “time dilation” – the idea that time moved slower the smaller the universe was. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Professor Geraint Lewis of the University of Sydney, the lead author of a new study, said in a statement: “Looking back to a time when the universe was just over a billion years old, we see time appearing to flow five times slower.” He continued, explaining: “If you were there, in this infant universe, one second would seem like one second – but from our position, more than 12 billion years into the future, that early time appears to drag.” To measure the extent of time dilation, scientists turned to quasars, as they are able to measure their change in brightness over a period they can estimate. The most distant quasar that is visible is 13 billion back in time and can still be seen despite its far distance. Their brightness varies due to turbulence and lumpiness in their accretion disks. Lewis explained the phenomenon as being “a bit like the stock market”. He said: “Over the last couple of decades, we’ve seen there is a statistical pattern to the variation, with timescales related to how bright a quasar is and the wavelength of its light.” Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.