Washington: You can now have a feel of how it would be like if you get a chance to drive on Mars as NASA has released audio clips of its Perseverance rover crunching across the surface of the Red Planet, adding a whole new dimension to Mars exploration.

As the Perseverance rover began to make tracks on the surface of Mars, a sensitive microphone it carries scored a first: the bangs, pings, and rattles of the robot’s six wheels as they rolled over Martian terrain.

“A lot of people, when they see the images, don’t appreciate that the wheels are metal,” Vandi Verma, a senior engineer and rover driver at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, said in a statement.

“When you’re driving with these wheels on rocks, it’s actually very noisy.”

More than 16 minutes of sounds from Perseverance’s 27.3-metre drive on March 7 were captured by Perseverance’s entry, descent, and landing (EDL) microphone, which remains operational on the rover after its historic touchdown on February 18.

The off-the-shelf microphone was added to the rover to help take the public along for the ride during touchdown, but mission members have been eager to hear the sounds from the surface, too.

“If I heard these sounds driving my car, I’d pull over and call for a tow,” said Dave Gruel, lead engineer for Mars 2020’s EDL Camera and Microphone subsystem.

“But if you take a minute to consider what you’re hearing and where it was recorded, it makes perfect sense.”

Two versions of the audio clip of the same drive were released to the public on March 17.

The first version features over 16 minutes of raw, unfiltered sounds of the rover travelling in Jezero Crater.

In it, the noise generated by the interaction of Perseverance’s mobility system (its wheels and suspension) with the surface can be heard, along with a high-pitched scratching noise.

Perseverance’s engineering team continues to evaluate the source of the scratching noise, which may either be electromagnetic interference from one of the rover’s electronics boxes or interactions between the mobility system and the Martian surface.

The second version is a shorter compilation of sounds from the longer raw recording of the drive.

For this 90-second version, NASA engineers combined three segments from the raw audio file, processing and editing them to filter out some of the noise.

A key objective for Perseverance’s mission on Mars is astrobiology, including the search for signs of ancient microbial life.

The rover will characterise the planet’s geology and past climate, pave the way for human exploration of the Red Planet, and be the first mission to collect and cache Martian rock and regolith — broken rock and dust.

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San Francisco: Google blocked over 99 million Covid-related ads in 2020, including those for miracle cures, N95 masks due to supply shortages fake vaccine doses.

As claims and conspiracies about the coronavirus’s origin and spread were circulated online, Google launched a new policy to prohibit both ads and monetised content about Covid-19 or other global health emergencies that contradict scientific consensus.

“We continue to be nimble, tracking bad actors’ behavior and learning from it. In doing so, we’re able to better prepare for future scams and claims that may arise,” the company said in a statement on Wednesday.

The number of ad accounts Google disabled for policy violations increased by 70 per cent from 1 million to over 1.7 million.

The company also blocked or removed over 867 million ads for attempting to evade its detection systems, including cloaking, and an additional 101 million ads for violating its misrepresentation policies.

“We also continued to invest in our automated detection technology to effectively scan the web for publisher policy compliance at scale,” said the company.

Due to this investment, along with several new policies, Google removed ads from 1.3 billion publisher pages in 2020, up from 21 million in 2019.

It also stopped ads from serving on over 1.6 million publisher sites with pervasive or egregious violations.

Over the past few years, we introduced strict policies and restrictions around who can run election-related advertising on Google platform and the ways they can target ads.

“Globally, we continue to expand our verification programme and verified more than 5,400 additional election advertisers in 2020,” Google said.

In the US, Google temporarily paused more than five million ads and blocked ads on over three billion Search queries referencing the election, the candidates or its outcome.

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New Delhi: Facebook, often criticised for its role in human rights abuses? online has introduced a new corporate human rights policy, covering all of the social network and a fund to support human rights defenders.

The new policy sets out the human rights standards Facebook will strive to respect as defined in international law including the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs).

“It sets out how we will apply these standards to our apps and products, policies, programming, and overall approach to our business. We will report our most critical human rights issues, like risks to freedom of expression, to our Board of Directors,” said Miranda Sissons, Director of Human Rights on Wednesday.

Facebook will also release a public report annually on how it is addressing human rights concerns stemming from its products, policies or business practices.

Sissons said that the yearly report will build on its existing practice of disclosing human rights impact assessments and detailed responses to recommendations.

Facebook has recently banned accounts from the military junta that led the coup in Myanmar.

The independent Oversight Board has also delivered its first rulings, including a decision on anti-Muslim hate speech.

Facebook said that it is also creating a fund that will give offline assistance to human rights defenders facing critical threats and support new digital security efforts, beginning in Asia later this year.

“We’ll also build on our existing work to protect defenders’ accounts — efforts that include combating malicious actors who are targeting them, protecting them from incorrect content removals and offering advanced security options,” the company said.

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Washington: Vast amounts of ancient water may have been trapped beneath the surface of Mars, according to a NASA-funded study which challenges the current theory that the Red Planet’s water escaped into space.

Evidence found on the surface of Mars suggests that abundant water flowed across Mars billions of years ago, forming pools, lakes, and deep oceans, and where did all that water go has been a matter of investigation.

The new study, published in the journal Science, shows that a significant portion of Mars’s water — between 30 and 99 percent — is trapped within minerals in the planet’s crust.

The researchers from California Institute of Technology and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) found that around four billion years ago, Mars was home to enough water to have covered the whole planet in an ocean about 100 to 1,500 metres deep.

However, a billion years later the planet was as dry as it is today.

Previously, scientists seeking to explain what happened to the flowing water on Mars had suggested that it escaped into space due to Mars’s low gravity.

Though some water did indeed leave Mars this way, it now appears that such an escape cannot account for most of the water loss, the researchers said.

“Atmospheric escape doesn’t fully explain the data that we have for how much water actually once existed on Mars,” said Caltech PhD candidate Eva Scheller, lead author of a paper on the research.

The team studied the quantity of water on Mars over time in all its forms — vapour, liquid and ice — and the chemical composition of the planet’s current atmosphere and crust.

They did so through the analysis of meteorites as well as using data provided by Mars rovers and orbiters, looking in particular at the ratio of deuterium to hydrogen.

Water is made up of hydrogen and oxygen: H2O. Not all hydrogen atoms are created equal, however. There are two stable isotopes of hydrogen — deuterium to hydrogen.

The lighter-weight hydrogen has an easier time escaping the planet’s gravity into space than its heavier counterpart, according to the researchers.

Because of this, the escape of a planet’s water via the upper atmosphere would leave a telltale signature on the ratio of deuterium to hydrogen in the planet’s atmosphere, and there would be an outsized portion of deuterium left behind, they said.

However, the researchers noted that the loss of water solely through the atmosphere cannot explain both the observed deuterium to hydrogen signal in the Martian atmosphere and large amounts of water in the past.

The study proposes that a combination of two mechanisms — the trapping of water in minerals in the planet’s crust and the loss of water to the atmosphere — can explain the observed deuterium-to-hydrogen signal within the Martian atmosphere.

The researchers said that when water interacts with rock, chemical weathering forms clays and other hydrous minerals that contain water as part of their mineral structure, a process that occurs on Earth as well as on Mars.

Since Earth is tectonically active, old crust continually melts into the mantle and forms new crust at plate boundaries, recycling water and other molecules back into the atmosphere through volcanism, they said.

Mars, however, is mostly tectonically inactive, and so the “drying” of the surface, once it occurs, is permanent, according to the researchers.

“Atmospheric escape clearly had a role in water loss, but findings from the last decade of Mars missions have pointed to the fact that there was this huge reservoir of ancient hydrated minerals whose formation certainly decreased water availability over time,” said Bethany Ehlmann, associate director for the Keck Institute for Space Studies.

“All of this water was sequestered fairly early on, and then never cycled back out,” Scheller added.

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New Delhi: Google Go has crossed the 500 million download mark on the Play Store, indicating the brisk sale of Android Go devices over the past four years.

Google Go is a trimmed-down version of the Google app that you get pre-installed on any Android phone.

Google Go is pre-installed on Android Go devices, all of which are made for the low-end market segment.

Google mandates original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) to release 2GB RAM smartphones with Android Go Edition, one can expect the downloads of Google Go to reach even higher in the coming days.

Any Android user is free to install Google Go on his/her phone. It is a smaller app and does not use up a lot of data or resources.

Google earlier announced a new mode for its Google Go app that enables people to search without their history being saved to their account or device.

The mode helps people keep their search experience separate from the others who use the same device.

Additionally, Incognito Mode in Google Go is starting to roll out in more than dozen languages in India, including English, Hindi, Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Nepali, Oriya, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu.

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New Delhi: Twitter has announced to let people use security keys as the only authentication method soon, adding that the micro-blogging platform will allow multiple security keys per account instead of just one.

Currently, Twitter users can use a security key to sign in and also need an authenticator app or SMS code as another 2FA (two-factor authentication) method.

“Secure your account (and that alt) with multiple security keys. Now you can enroll and log in with more than one physical key on both mobile and web,” the company said in a tweet late on Monday.

“And coming soon: the option to add and use security keys as your only authentication method, without any other methods turned on,” it added.

Security keys are physical keys that connect to your computer using USB or Bluetooth. There are touted as the most secure way to protect online social media accounts.

Two-factor authentication is an extra layer of security for the Twitter account.

“Instead of only entering a password to log in, you’ll also enter a code or use a security key. This additional step helps make sure that you, and only you, can access your account,” the company said in an update.

In December last year, the company said it updated two-factor authentication so users can log in with their physical security keys on Android and iOS, like on desktop.

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New Delhi: Indian video game players spend an average of eight and a half hours each week playing, with over 60 per cent claiming to have played games for three consecutive hours or more, said a new report on Monday.

Gamers across the globe are playing video games an average of eight hours and 27 minutes each week, said the report by Limelight Networks, a video delivery and edge cloud services provider.

The data showed that video game playing rose to a new level across the world, with consumers’ playing time up 14 per cent over last year.

The desire to stay connected and entertained while being stuck at home during the pandemic has driven online gaming’s popularity.

“Social interactions, improved game performance, and latency-free environments are expected by Indian gamers, as it gives them an opportunity to connect with gamers across the world and remain engaged for longer durations,” Ashwin Rao, Country Director, Limelight Networks India, said in a statement.

“Gaming companies have their task cut out for them, as they have to match up to the transformation in the Indian landscape and meet the fast-paced growth in demand.”

Half of global gamers said they have made new friends through online games in the past year and one in three said the ability to interact with other players is extremely important.

From 2020 to 2021, the average for binge gaming in India has increased from 4.1 hours to 5.5 hours, and it is being attributed to the pandemic, as people are forced to stay home for long hours, said the report titled “State of Online Gaming 2021”.

Opportunities for interactivity and social engagement are likely drivers for video game adoption with the majority (64 percent) of global gamers saying they started playing video games in the past year.

The data showed that three quarters of gamers are interested in purchasing a new console, due to updated technology and faster game play.

Gamers in India are among those who are most likely to consider upgrading their console, said the report.

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San Francisco: Tech billionaire Elon Musk’s private aerospace company SpaceX on Sunday launched 60 Starlink satellites from Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A) at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

This was the ninth launch and landing of Falcon 9 first stage booster, which previously supported launch of Crew Dragon Demo-1, RADARSAT Constellation, SXM-7, and five Starlink missions.

According to a TechCrunch report, the launch also set a record for SpaceX for its Falcon 9 rocket reusability programme, since it was the ninth flight and ninth landing for this particular first-stage booster.

The booster was used previously on a variety of missions, including five prior Starlink launches, as well as the Demo-1 mission for the company’s Crew Dragon capsule, which was the uncrewed test flight that proved it would work as intended from launch all the way to docking with the International Space Station and then returning back to Earth, the report said.

SpaceX set its prior reusability record in January this year — another Starlink launch — using this very same refurbished first stage, which had just flown in December of last year before that.

SpaceX not only wants to continue to show that it can re-fly these boosters more and more times, but also that it can turn them around quickly for their next mission, since both speed and volume will have a significant impact on launch costs.

Falcon 9 launch of 60 Starlink satellites happening now → https://t.co/bJFjLCzWdK https://t.co/u8NYhRY94I

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) March 14, 2021

Liftoff! pic.twitter.com/V3vn9PolF0

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) March 14, 2021

Deployment of 60 Starlink satellites confirmed pic.twitter.com/AMLK4R9dMn

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) March 14, 2021

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New Delhi: In a fresh effort to reskill millions in the new normal, Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai has announced new initiatives, including opening up enrollment for latest career certificates, expanding employer consortium and new tools to improve the job search.

Pichai said that enrollment is now open for latest Google Career Certificates, in the fields of Data Analytics, Project Management, and User Experience (UX) Design.

“We’re also announcing a new Associate Android Developer Certification, which prepares learners for entry level jobs in Android development. With 1.3 million jobs open in these fields right now in the US, the opportunity is significant,” he said in a statement last week.

With more businesses embracing digital ways of working, it’s estimated that 50 per cent of all employees will need reskilling by 2025.

“We’re also providing 100,000 scholarships to be distributed through nonprofits, workforce development boards, and other community organisations,” Pichai said.

More than 130 employers have joined Google employer consortium, eager to hire people who have earned these certificates.

“We’re also opening applications for Google’s apprenticeship programme in our Career Certificate fields in addition to a few other professional tracks. We will hire hundreds of apprentices over the coming years to participate in on-the-job training and applied learning,” Pichai informed.

Globally, Google is sponsoring 100,000 scholarships for our Career Certificates in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

“In India, we’re working to make certificates more accessible and launch an employer consortium. And in addition to our Career Certificates, we’re also making our cloud computing, big data and machine learning trainings free for US job seekers to help prepare for jobs in these high-growth fields,” he mentioned.

Now when you search for “no degree jobs” in the US, you’ll see a new job carousel highlighting relevant opportunities near you.

You can also filter by education and experience requirements, and there will be new labels on positions that do not mention degrees in their requirements.

“We’re also working with job sites — including Glassdoor, LinkedIn, ZipRecruiter, Snagajob and CareerBuilder — and US employers to make education and experience requirements clearer on job postings,” Pichai said.

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San Francisco: To address a unique breed of binger-watchers, Amazon is updating its Prime Video app on Android where they can play episodes of a TV series on shuffle.

Android Central reports that with the shuffle tool, the users will be able to start a series at any point, watching it in a random order that the usual chronological one.

The feature doesn’t let users shuffle through the entire show but only one particular season.

According to the report, Netflix is also working on the similar feature.

“It’s an excellent option for cutting down choice in sitcoms where character arcs and narrative development can often happen asynchronously or even in documentaries where such things don’t exist,” the report said on Friday.

The Amazon Prime feature appeared to be somewhat limited though at the moment and has only been spotted on Android.

Earlier this year, Netflix announced it is working on a shuffle button.

Netflix COO and chief product officer Greg Peters said that sometimes users come to the service “and they’re not really sure what they want to watch.”

“It’s really working for us where our members can basically indicate to us that they just want to skip browsing entirely, click one button and we’ll pick a title for them just to instantly play,” Peters said during the company’s Q4 investors’ call.

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New Delhi: Google India on Friday said it is working with the Union Health Ministry and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to accurately surface the information on vaccination centres on Search, Maps and Assistant.

The search engine giant said that it expects to roll out information on vaccination centres in the coming weeks.

So far, 2.6 crore doses of corona vaccine have been administered in the country since the drive began on January 16 after approval for ‘Covishield’ and ‘Covaxin’.

“As Covid-19 continues to challenge our communities, we remain committed to doing all we can to assist the country’s health agencies at this key juncture of the pandemic, where the successful rollout of these large-scale vaccinations can help us collectively turn a corner and see a much-needed return to normalcy,” Google India said in a statement.

The company said it has been working closely with the Rapid Risk Response team at the Union Health Ministry that is tracking misinformation using social media listening tools across region and languages, and countering it with science-based messaging on vaccines and pandemic response overall.

As the government activates the processes involved in implementing large-scale vaccinations against Covid-19, Google India has put in efforts to surface authoritative and timely information for people asking vaccine-related questions.

“We have worked with the Ministry of Health & Family Welfare (MoHFW) and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to amplify this science-based narrative around vaccination drive,” Google India said.

Shortly after the first phase of vaccinations commenced, the company rolled out knowledge panels in Google Search that show up for queries relating to the Covid vaccine.

These panels provide consolidated information such as details on the two vaccines, effectiveness, safety, distribution, side effects, and more, and is available in English and eight Indian languages — Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada, Marathi, Gujarati, Bengali, and Hindi.

This information is sourced from MoHFW, and provides answers to commonly asked questions, displays real-time statistics around vaccinations completed, and provides links to the MoHFW website for additional local resources.

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New Delhi: Some leading Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) are taking the initiative to provide clean water with the help of science and innovation in places where clean drinking water was not available easily.

This effort has been made with the encouragement and vision of the Union Ministry of Science and Technology.

In fact, the Centre for Technical Excellence at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kharagpur is focusing on water purification these days. The Centre has also worked towards providing a supply of safe drinking water in several states of the country.

The Water Purification Technical Excellence Centre at IIT Kharagpur has developed a low-cost nano filtration technology which has ensured access to safe drinking water for 25,000 people at three different locations in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh. This water is free of heavy metals, considered hazardous for health.

IIT Guwahati has also undertaken similar initiatives. In fact, children at a primary school in North Guwahati, Assam, have benefited from drinking the purified water from which excessive iron and chemical oxygen demand (COD) was removed. There was a stink in the water, but now IIT Guwahati has set up a water treatment plant in the school.

The plant has been developed on the basis of chemical free electrocoagulation technology in collaboration with DST and is capable of reducing the amount of iron and arsenic present in water, bringing the total dissolved solvent and chemical oxygen demand (COD) below the limits prescribed by BIS.

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Washington: The largest asteroid predicted to pass by our planet in 2021 will be at its closest on March 21, NASA has said, adding that there is no threat of a collision with Earth.

Called 2001 FO32, the near-Earth asteroid will make its closest approach at a distance of about two million kilometres, the US space agency said on Thursday.

The asteroid is about as 0.8 to 1.7 kilometres in diameter, according to a report in Live Science.

“We know the orbital path of 2001 FO32 around the Sun very accurately, since it was discovered 20 years ago and has been tracked ever since,” said Paul Chodas, Director of the Centre for Near Earth Object Studies (CNEOS), which is managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, said in a statement.

“There is no chance the asteroid will get any closer to Earth than 1.25 million miles.”

Still, that distance is close in astronomical terms, which is why 2001 FO32 has been designated a “potentially hazardous asteroid.”

During this approach, 2001 FO32 will pass by at about 124,000 kph — faster than the speed at which most asteroids encounter Earth.

The reason for the asteroid’s unusually speedy close approach is its highly inclined and elongated (or eccentric) orbit around the Sun, an orbit that is tilted 39 degrees to Earth’s orbital plane.

This orbit takes the asteroid closer to the Sun than Mercury and twice as far from the Sun as Mars.

The March 21 encounter will provide an opportunity for astronomers to get a more precise understanding of the asteroid’s size and albedo – i.e. how bright, or reflective, its surface is — and a rough idea of its composition.

This will be achieved, in part, with the use of NASA’s Infrared Telescope Facility (IRTF), a 3.2-metre telescope atop Hawaii’s Mauna Kea that will observe the asteroid in the days leading up to close approach using its workhorse infrared spectrograph, SpeX.

“We’re trying to do geology with a telescope,” said Vishnu Reddy, Associate Professor at the University of Arizona’s Lunar and Planetary Laboratory in Tucson.

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New Delhi: Next time when you get frustrated by a road simply not existing on Google Maps during your journey, you can draw and update the Maps directly via a new road editing tool.

Google has made it possible via updating its map editing experience in more than 80 countries, to allow Maps users to add missing roads and realign, rename or delete incorrect ones.

“When you see a road missing on maps.google.com, simply click on the side menu button, go to ‘Edit the map’, and select ‘Missing Road.’ Now the power to map is in your hands!” Kevin Reece, Director of Product, Google Maps, said in a statement late on Thursday.

You can add missing roads by drawing lines, quickly rename roads, change road directionality, and realign or delete incorrect roads.

“You can even let us know if a road is closed with details like dates, reasons and directions. To make sure the suggestions and edits are accurate, we’ll vet contributed road updates before publishing them,” Reece informed.

This feature is rolling out over the coming months in more than 80 countries where people can already report road updates on Google Maps.

The company also announced that to help local businesses in Google Search and Maps, people using Android in the US can join its first nationwide challenge to rally helpful reviews, photos and updates.

In the coming weeks, the company said it will roll out a new content type in Google Maps: photo updates which is an easy way to find and share experiences and highlights with recent photos.

“A Google Maps photo update is a recent snapshot of a place with a short text description, without the need to leave a review or rating,” it added.

Photo updates can help people make more informed decisions with a place’s most recent images.

Google relies on 170 billion high-definition Street View images from 87 countries, contributions from hundreds of millions of businesses and people using Google Maps, and authoritative data from more than 10,000 local governments, transit agencies and organisations.

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New Delhi: In a fresh bid to secure Google Pay users in India, the company on Thursday announced more choices and controls to manage transaction data on the digital payments platform.

The users can now view and delete individual transactions and activity records that they don’t want used to personalise their Google Pay experience, by visiting account.google.com.

From next week, Google Pay app settings will provide users with more controls to decide how their Pay activity is used to personalise features within the app.

“All users will be asked to choose whether they would like to turn the control on or off as soon as they upgrade to the next version of the Google Pay app,” Ambarish Kenghe, Vice President-Product, Google Pay, said in a statement.

Turning on “Personalisation within Google Pay” will provide a more tailored experience within Google Pay.

For example, the users receive more relevant offers and rewards based on their activity within Google Pay, including transaction history.

“Even with this setting turned off, Google Pay will continue to work just as well — only without personalization,” Kenghe said.

The users who update Google Pay on Android and iOS can access these controls to modify their personalisation experience on Google Pay based on their preference.

“Your personal information is never sold to anyone and your transaction history is not shared with any other Google product for targeting ads,” the company said.

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Washington: The Mars rover from NASA has sent first-ever audio readings like the mesmerising sound of Martian wind, captured from its SuperCam instrument, back home.

The instrument delivered audio data to the French Space Agency’s operations center in Toulouse that includes the first audio of laser zaps on another planet.

“It is amazing to see SuperCam working so well on Mars. When we first dreamed up this instrument eight years ago, we worried that we were being way too ambitious. Now, it is up there working like a charm,” Roger Wiens, principal investigator for Perseverance’s SuperCam instrument, said in a statement on Wednesday.

Obtained only about 18 hours after landing, when the mast remained stowed on the rover deck, the first file captures the faint sounds of Martian wind.

The wind is more audible, especially around the 20-second mark, in the second sound file, recorded on the rover’s fourth Martian day, or sol.

SuperCam’s third file, from Sol 12, includes the zapping sounds of the laser impacting a rock target 30 times at a distance of about 10 feet.

Some zaps sound slightly louder than others, providing information on the physical structure of the targets, such as its relative hardness.

This is also the first time an instrument has used Raman spectroscopy anywhere other than on the Earth.

“Raman spectroscopy is going to play a crucial role in characterising minerals to gain deeper insight into the geological conditions under which they formed and to detect potential organic and mineral molecules that might have been formed by living organisms,” said Olivier Beyssac, research director at the Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales (CNES) in Paris.

SuperCam was developed jointly by the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in New Mexico and a consortium of French research laboratories under the auspices of the CNES.

“SuperCam truly gives our rover eyes to see promising rock samples and ears to hear what it sounds like when the lasers strike them. This information will be essential when determining which samples to cache and ultimately return to Earth through our groundbreaking Mars Sample Return Campaign,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for science at NASA headquarters in Washington.

A key objective for Perseverance’s mission on Mars is astrobiology, including the search for signs of ancient microbial life.

The rover will characterise the planet’s geology and past climate, pave the way for human exploration of the Red Planet, and be the first mission to collect and cache Martian rock and regolith (broken rock and dust).

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New Delhi: Twitter has announced it is running a test with select iOS and Android users to give people an accurate preview of how their images will appear when they Tweet a photo.

Currently, Twitter algorithms automatically crops images to make them display in a more condensed way in the timeline.

Going forward, people in the test will see that most Tweets with a single image in standard aspect ratio will appear uncropped when posted.

“People will see exactly what the image will look like in the composer tool before it’s posted. Very wide or tall images will be center-cropped,” Dantley Davis, Chief Design Officer at Twitter said late on Wednesday.

Twitter’s automatic image cropping has been a problem for photographers and artists.

“With this test, we hope to learn if this new approach is better and what changes we need to make to provide a ‘what you see is what you get’ experience for Tweets with images,” Davis said in a tweet.

Twitter’s algorithm decides which part of an image will get the focus and this has create problems in the past.

The algorithm once prioritised white faces over Black ones in its image preview. It once cropped out former US president Barack Obama in one person’s tests.

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Bengaluru: Google celebrated the 89th birthday of Professor Udupi Ramachandra Rao, with a doodle on its home page featuring an animated image of the renowned Indian space scientist with a background of the Earth and shooting stars.

“Happy Birthday, Prof. Rao! Your stellar technological advancements continue to be felt across the galaxy,” reads the description on Google Doodle’s website.

Born in a remote village of Karnataka on this day in 1932, Rao began his career as a cosmic-ray physicist and protg ofDr Vikram Sarabhai, a scientist widely regarded as the father of India’s space programme, it said.

After completing his doctorate, Professor Rao brought his talents to the US, where he worked as a professor and conducted experiments on NASA’s ‘Pioneer’ and ‘Explorer’ space probes.

On his return to India in 1966, he initiated an extensive high energy astronomy programme at thePhysical Research Laboratory, Indias premier institution for space sciences, before spearheading his countrys satellite programme in 1972.

Motivated by the practical applications of aerospace technology to solve societal problems such as poverty and food shortages, Prof Rao supervised the 1975 launch of Indias first satelliteAryabhataone of over 20 satellites he developed that transformed much of rural India by advancing communication and meteorological services, it said.

From 1984 to 1994, Professor Rao continued to propel his nations space programme to stratospheric heights as Chairman of Indian Space Research Organisation.

Here, he developed rocket technology such as the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV), which has launched over 250 satellites.

Prof Rao became the first Indian inducted into the Satellite Hall of Fame in 2013, the same year that PSLV launched India’s first interplanetary missionMangalyaana satellite that orbits Mars today.

He passed away on July 24, 2017, in Bengaluru.

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New Delhi: The govt-run DRDO has achieved an important milestone in the development of air independent propulsion (AIP) system for diesel submarines by proving the efficacy of its land-based prototype, a statement by the Defence ministry said on Tuesday.

The AIP’s prototype was operated in endurance mode and max power mode as per the user requirements on March 8, the statement said.

The AIP has a force multiplier effect on lethality of a diesel electric submarine as it enhances the submerged endurance of the boat several folds. Fuel cell-based AIP has merits in performance compared to other technologies, the ministry noted.

The system is being developed by Naval Materials Research Laboratory (NMRL) of the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO).

While there are different types of AIP systems being pursued internationally, fuel cell-based AIP of NMRL is unique as the hydrogen is generated onboard, the ministry said.

The technology has been successfully developed with the support of industry partners L&T and Thermax. It has now reached the stage of maturity for fitment into target vessels, it mentioned.

Defence Minister Rajnath Singh congratulated the DRDO, the Indian Navy as well as the industry for this achievement.

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New Delhi: A total of 3,17,439 cyber crimes and 5,771 FIRs were registered online through a centralised portal in the last 18 months — a sizeable number of them in Maharashtra and Karnataka, the Lok Sabha was informed on Tuesday.

Union Minister of State for Home G Kishan Reddy said the Ministry of Home Affairs operationalised the National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal on August 30, 2019 to provide a centralised mechanism to the citizens for online reporting of all types of cyber crime incidents, with a special focus on cyber crimes against women and children.

“As per the data maintained, since its inception 3,17,439 cyber crime incidents and 5,771 FIRs have been registered up to February 28, 2021 in the country which includes, 21,562 cyber crime incidents and 87 FIRs in Karnataka and 50,806 cyber crime incidents and 534 FIRs in Maharashtra,” he said in a written reply to a question.

The minister said incidents reported on this portal, their conversion into FIRs and subsequent action thereon are handled by the state and Union Territory law enforcement agency concerned as per the provisions of the law.

The MHA holds regular interactions with the state and UTs and advises them to expedite the disposal of cyber crime incidents reported with special emphasis on those relating to women and children, he said.

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Chennai: The Indo-US collaborative NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) Mission moved ahead with the Indian space agency sending the S-Band SAR payload.

The payload SAR that can send good clarity pictures of the earth was flagged off by Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) Chairman K.Sivan on March 4 through virtual mode, said ISRO.

The S-Band SAR was shipped from Space Applications Centre, Ahmedabad to Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Pasadena for integration with L-Bank SAR payload of JPL, NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration).

Coconuts were broken before the truck loaded with SAR moved out of the Space Applications Centre.

According to Indian space agency, NISAR is a joint collaboration between ISRO and NASA for a dual-frequency L and S-Band SAR for earth observation.

NISAR would provide a means of disentangling highly spatial and temporally complex processes ranging from ecosystem disturbances to ice sheet collapses and natural hazards including earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanoes and landslides.

On Sept. 30, 2014, NASA and ISRO signed a partnership to collaborate on and launch NISAR.

The NISAR will be put into orbit in 2022 by Indian rocket Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV).

The US space agency NASA is providing the mission’s L-band synthetic aperture radar, a high-rate communication subsystem for science data, GPS receivers, a solid-state recorder and payload data subsystem.

ISRO is providing the spacecraft bus, the S-band radar, the launch vehicle and associated launch services, NASA said.

ISRO identified science and applications that were complementary to the primary mission objectives: agricultural monitoring and characterization, landslide studies, Himalayan glacier studies, soil moisture, coastal processes, coastal winds, and monitoring hazards.

A second radar frequency was added to the mission to better fulfill these science requirements.

NASA said NISAR will be the first satellite mission to use two different radar frequencies (L-band and S-band) to measure changes in our planet’s surface less than a centimeter across. The partnership with India has been key to preserving as much science as possible.

NASA said it requires a minimum of three years of global science operations with the L-band radar, and ISRO requires five years of operations with the S-band radar over specified target areas in India and the Southern Ocean.

All NISAR science data, L-band and S-band, will be freely available and open to the public, consistent with the long-standing NASA Earth Science open data policy. The US space agency has chosen the Alaska Satellite Facility Distributed Active Archive Center (DAAC) to host the mission’s data and products, NASA said.

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New Delhi: In yet another fillip to the Make in India and domestic manufacturing dream of the Indian government, Apple said on Tuesday that its flagship and environment-friendly iPhone 12 smartphone will soon be produced in India for the local customers.

The news comes at a time when the iPhone 12 series has received stupendous response in the country.

“We are proud to be starting production of iPhone 12 in India for our local customers,” Apple told IANS in a statement.

“Apple is dedicated to making the best products and services in the world to delight our customers,” the company added.

Despite arriving in October, the iPhone 12 contributed significantly towards the rise of Apple in the festive quarter (October-December period) in the country, according to market intelligence firm CyberMedia Research (CMR).

Apple registered over 60 per cent growth (on-year) in its India business in the full year 2020 while for the festive quarter, the growth was an impressive 100 per cent (YoY) and iPhone 12 contributed significantly towards it.

“With its recent market gains in India, Apple is positioned for aggressive growth in the upcoming quarters. The local assembly of iPhone 12 in India will give a further fillip to its Apple’s prospects,” said Prabhu Ram, Head-Industry Intelligence Group (IIG), CMR, told IANS.

Riding on the stellar performance of iPhone 11, XR and then iPhone 12, Apple for the first time doubled its smartphone market share in India to nearly 4 per cent in the festive quarter of 2020.

Apple started manufacturing iPhones in India in 2017 with iPhone SE.

Today, Apple manufactures some of its most advanced iPhones in India including XR, iPhone 11, and now iPhone 12.

According to Navkendar Singh, Research Director, Client Devices & IPDS, IDC India, Apple had a very good 2020 for iPhone shipments, having almost doubled it over 2019.

“Now with plans to manufacture iPhone 12 in India, this will certainly help Apple in continuing last year’s momentum in 2021 as well,” Singh told IANS.

For the first time, iPhone 12 models utilise 100 per cent recycled rare earth elements in all magnets, including the new camera, Taptic Engine, and MagSafe, as well as Apple’s MagSafe accessories.

Apple’s suppliers in India are now utilising solar and wind energy for their needs.

iPhone 12 comes with 5G technology, features the fastest A14 Bionic chip, edge-to-edge Super Retina XDR displays, and a sophisticated flat-edge design with Ceramic Shield front cover, offering four times better drop performance.

“Apple continues its stellar run in the India smartphone market, gaining strength on the back of increased local manufacturing and strong marketing initiatives. The company continues to gain on its enduring aspirational appeal,” Ram said.

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New Delhi: In a bid to support the economic empowerment of women in India, Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai on Monday announced $25 million in grants to non-profits and social enterprises in India and around the world.

On the occasion of International Women’s Day, Pichai also committed to help 1 million women in rural villages in India to become entrepreneurs through business tutorials, tools and mentorship, as part of the Google Internet Saathi programme.

“Women are almost twice as likely to lose their jobs during the pandemic and an estimated 20 million girls are at risk of not returning to school. We have the opportunity to build a future that is more equal and more inclusive – and we must take it,” Pichai said during the virtual ‘Google for India’ event.

The company also announced $500,000 Google.org grant to Nasscom Foundation to support 100,000 women agriculture workers with digital and financial literacy.

The virtual event also marked the completion of Google’s joint effort with Tata Trusts to empower women across rural India with digital literacy skills via the Internet Saathi programme that was launched in 2015.

“In bringing today’s technology, and perhaps tomorrow’s technology, to bear for the benefit of rural women is a great move forward. Over time, these efforts will ensure that the true value of the internet can come into the fore,”said Ratan Tata, Chairman, Tata Trusts.

Over six years, the Internet Saathi programme has benefitted over 30 million women across India through training provided by over 80,000 “Internet Saathis”.

In a special address, Union Women and Child Development Minister Smriti Irani said that women can act as great enablers of India’s growth story, creating tectonic shifts in society.

“Over the last few years, under Jan Dhan Yojana, we have supported 220 million women to become financially independent. Under the Mudra Yojana, we have dedicated 27 crore worth of funds, accessed by 70 per cent women,” she said during the event.

“I am happy to learn about Google’s efforts and commitment to enable women entrepreneurs in India as these will create pathways for the socio-economic advancement of women,” she added.

Google said it has launched the ‘Women Will’ web platform that will be complemented by community support, mentorship and accelerator programmes for rural women entrepreneurs.

Available in English and Hindi, the platform is designed especially for women aspiring to explore entrepreneurship.

To begin with, Google will work with 2,000 Internet Saathis to help other women gain from this resource and start on their entrepreneurial journey.

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San Francisco: Micro-blogging site Twitter said it is testing a new way to display tweets that link out to e-commerce product pages.

With a new Twitter card format, the company is experimenting with tweets that include a big “Shop” button and integrate product details directly into the tweet itself, including the product name, shop name and product pricing, TechCrunch reported last week.

This format could potentially come into play as part of Twitter’s larger push to become a creator platform, with its recently announced plans for a “Super Follow” subscription.

The new product will allow Twitter users to follow a particular account for subscriber-only perks like newsletters, exclusive content, a supporter badge and other deals and discounts.

A more “shoppable” tweet format could allow these creators to direct their fans to products and merchandise, perhaps, the report said.

Twitter also briefly touched on its plans for future investments in e-commerce during its Investor Day last week, but not in great detail.

“We’re starting to explore ways to better support commerce on Twitter, said Twitter Revenue Lead, Bruce Falck, during the event.

“We know people come to Twitter to interact with brands and discuss their favourite products. In fact, you may have even noticed some businesses already developing creative ways to enable sales on our platform,” he explained.

According to Falck, this demand gives confidence in the power of combining real-time conversation with an engaged and intentional audience.

“Imagine easily discovering, and quickly purchasing, a new skincare product or trendy sneaker from a brand you follow with only a few clicks,” Falck said.

But he cautioned investors that while Twitter was “excited about the potential of commerce,” it was still something that’s in “very early exploration”.

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Washington: NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance rover performed its first drive on Mars on Thursday, covering 6.5 meters across the Martian landscape, said NASA on Friday.

The drive, which lasted about 33 minutes, propelled the rover forward four meters, where it then turned in place 150 degrees to the left and backed up 2.5 meters into its new temporary parking space, Xinhua news agency reported.

The drive served as a mobility test as team members check out and calibrate every system, subsystem, and instrument on Perseverance, according to NASA.

Once the rover begins pursuing its science goals, it is expected to have regular commutes extending 200 meters, said NASA.

“The first trek of the agency’s largest, most advanced rover yet on the Red Planet marks a major milestone before science operations get under way,” said NASA in a statement.

“When it comes to wheeled vehicles on other planets, there are few first-time events that measure up in significance to that of the first drive,” said Anais Zarifian, Perseverance rover mobility test bed engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.

“This was our first chance to ‘kick the tires’ and take Perseverance out for a spin. The rover’s six-wheel drive responded superbly. We are now confident our drive system is good to go, capable of taking us wherever the science leads us over the next two years,” she said.

Upcoming events and evaluations for the rover include more detailed testing and calibration of science instruments, sending the rover on longer drives, and jettisoning covers that shield both the adaptive caching assembly and the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter during landing, according to NASA.

The experimental flight test program for the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter, which landed on Mars together with Perseverance rover, will also take place during the rover’s commissioning.

The rover was launched on July 30 last year from the Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in the US state of Florida. It arrived at the red planet on February 18 after a 203-day journey traversing 472 million kilometers.

With the primary mission to search for signs of ancient life on Mars, the rover will characterize the planet’s geology and past climate, pave the way for human exploration of the Red Planet, and be the first mission to collect and cache Martian rock and regolith.

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Kanpur: Phool.Co, backed by IIT-Kanpur, has awarded the BIRAC Innovator Award 2021 for making ‘Fleather’, a bio alternative to animal leather.

Fleather is made from temple flowers and farm waste while Phool is a brand owned by Kanpur Flowercycling Pvt. Ltd that was founded in 2017.

Incubated at Startup Incubation and Innovation Centre (SIIC) at IIT-Kanpur, Phool developed a biomaterial that performs almost like leather.

Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council (BIRAC) is a non-profit set up by the department of Biotechnology (DBT), government of India that aims to empower the emerging biotech enterprises to undertake strategic research and innovation, addressing nationally-relevant product development needs.

The selection for BIRAC Innovation Award was made by an eminent jury to offer recognition to the most significant contributors to research-based scientific innovations.

Fleather is built on the principles of biomimicry and can be customized for aesthetic expression, flexibility, density, and strength.

The process of making Fleather is ultra-sustainable, not only cutting down several traditional downstream leather tanning processes but also helping provide better job opportunities to women from the marginalised sections of society.

Professor Abhay Karandikar director, IIT Kanpur said: “I am happy that Phool has been recognized for its work. It is not only a great business but also a great workplace providing livelihood to more than 100 women from the marginalized section of the society.”

Ankit Agarwal, founder, Phool.Co, said: “We humans love leather. It delivers status, luxury and comfort. But leather is a co-product of the livestock industry that produces around 18 per cent of the total earth’s greenhouse emission. Fleather can perform like leather while significantly cutting down the emission and reusing temple and farm waste.”

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Washington: Dr Swati Mohan, the Indian-American aerospace engineer, who played a pivotal role in the successful landing of NASA’s Perseverance rover on Mars, has told President Joe Biden that her path to the premier US space agency began when she watched the first episode of Star Trek as a child.

Mohan is the guidance and controls operations lead for the Perseverance rover mission, acting as the “eyes and ears” for NASA’s most sophisticated spacecraft to date.

She played a key role in landing the US space agency’s historic Perseverance rover on the Martian surface on February 18. Mohan was also the first to confirm that the rover had successfully touched down on the Martian surface after surviving a particularly tricky plunge through the atmosphere of the Red Planet.

Mohan, who emigrated from India to the US when she was only a year old, told Biden that her path actually started way back when she was a child, watching the first episode of Star Trek, the popular TV show.

“In addition to those fantastical scenes of space, what really captured my attention was this really close-knit team which was working together, manipulating this technological marvel with the sole purpose of exploring space and understanding new things and seeking new life,” Mohan told Biden during a virtual interaction on Thursday.

President Biden congratulated the NASA team responsible for the successful landing of the six-wheeled rover on Mars and for giving the country a “dose of confidence” at a moment when the nation’s reputation as a scientific leader has been tattered by the coronavirus pandemic.

Biden, speaking during a video conference call with the leadership of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) team led by Dr. Michael Watkins, expressed awe over the landing of the Perseverance.

Interacting with Biden, Mohan said, “You know, Perseverance is my first mission at JPL, where I’ve gotten to work from the very beginning of formulation, all the way through operations, and it made me feel like I was part of that crew.

“Being able to work with this incredibly diverse, talented team that has become like a family, spending years creating our own technological marvel has been a privilege,” she said.

“Those last days and weeks leading up to landing day, it was pretty smooth, but we were all still really nervous and, frankly, terrified until we got through those final seven minutes.

Mohan helmed the mission’s attitude control system, which helps make sure the spacecraft is heading in the direction it needs to be.

“To be able to call touchdown safely, to see those first images come back from Mars, to see the place where we have never been able to go to on Mars before and go there — reach there for the express purpose of seeking out new life just made it feel like I was living in a dream,” said the Indian-American engineer.

“Now that tremendous relief has passed for the team of being able to be there safely, all that’s left is the excitement and the thrill of all the scientific discoveries that are yet to come and what Perseverance can actually find — and hopefully find those signs of past life on Mars,” Mohan said.

Mohan thanked President Biden for speaking to the NASA team.

“Thank you for taking the time to speak with us,” she said.

Responding to her, Biden said: Are you kidding me? What an honour this is. This is an incredible honour. And it’s amazing. Indian of descent Americans are taking over the country: you (Mohan); my Vice President (Kamala Harris); my speech writer, Vinay (Reddy). I tell you what. But thank you. You guys are incredible.”

“I tell you what, you said you feel like you’re ‘living a dream’ — you’ve created a dream for millions and millions of young kids, young Americans. You talk about STEM. You — it was — look, the thing that I found so exhilarating about this: You all did this — the whole team — the team I can see now and the entire team at JPL — what you did: You restored a dose of confidence in the American people,” Biden said.

Mohan went on to study mechanical and aerospace engineering at Cornell University, followed by a masters degree and doctorate in aeronautics and astronautics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Eventually, she landed at NASA.

“They were beginning to wonder about us. They were beginning to wonder: Are we still the country we always believed we were? You guys did it. You guys gave a sense of ‘America is back.’ It’s — it’s astounding what you did. You should not underestimate it. You should not underestimate it,” the President asserted.

“You did it the most American way: You believed in science, you believed in hard work, and you believed there wasn’t a darn thing you couldn’t do if you put your minds together,” he said.

One of the reasons why America is “such an incredible country is we’re such a diverse country. We bring the best out of every single solitary culture in the world here in the United States of America, and we give people an opportunity to let their dreams run forward,” Biden said.

“Everyone was so down the last years about: Is America still the — fount of change? And are we still the country that has hopes and develops and pursues the most unlikely things to happen? And we are. And you all demonstrated it. I really mean this. It’s so much bigger than landing Perseverance on Mars. It’s about the American spirit, and you brought it back. You brought back in a moment we so desperately need it,” he observed.

After President Biden spoke to her, Mohan tweeted, “I’m pretty sure I’m still in a dream. It’s amazing what we can do when we dare mighty things, together.” She also tagged a video of her interaction with Biden.

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Bengaluru: India has agreed to expand space cooperation with Italy by tapping opportunities in earth observation, space science, robotic and human exploration, the state-run Indian space agency said on Thursday.

“At a bilateral meeting in virtual mode with the Italian Space Agency (ISA) on Wednesday, we have agreed to form thematic working groups to work on earth observation, space science and robotic and human exploration,” said Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) in a statement here.

The virtual meeting was presided over by ISRO Chairman K. Sivan and ISA President Giorgio Saccoccia.

Expanding space cooperation with Italy comes days after India launched 637kg Brazilian satellite Amazonia-1 on board PSLV-C51 rocket from ISRO’s spaceport at Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh, about 90km northeast of Chennai on February 28.

Brazil’s Minister of Science, Technology and Innovation Marcos Pontes, who witnessed the launch at the spaceport, offered to step-up the space ties with India.

“Brazil has requested India’s support in procurement of material and systems for its launch vehicle programme,” said the statement.

Cooperation in space missions using ISRO’s fourth stage of polar satellite launch vehicle’s (PLSV) orbital platform for studying weather was discussed at the meeting with the Brazilian delegation.

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New Delhi: It a bid to create a privacy-first web experience for billions of its users, Google has explicitly said that once third-party cookies are phased out from its platforms, it will not build alternate identifiers to track individuals as they browse across the web, nor will use them in its products.

Google Chrome last year announced its intent to remove support for third-party cookies.

“We continue to get questions about whether Google will join others in the ad tech industry who plan to replace third-party cookies with alternative user-level identifiers,” said David Temkin, Director of Product Management, Ads Privacy and Trust at Google.

Third-party cookies have been blocked in Apple Safari and Mozilla Firefox and Google aims to do the same in Chrome. The cookies allow advertisers to track you as you move between various websites.

Google said on Wednesday that advertisers don’t need to track individual consumers across the web to get the performance benefits of digital advertising.

“Our web products will be powered by privacy-preserving APIs which prevent individual tracking while still delivering results for advertisers and publishers,” Temkin emphasised.

Nearly 72 per cent people feel that almost all of what they do online is being tracked by advertisers, technology firms or other companies, and 81 per cent say that the potential risks they face because of data collection outweigh the benefits, according to a study by Pew Research Center.

Google said that Chrome will offer the first iteration of new privacy-first user controls in April and will expand on these controls in future updates.

The company said that it will continue to support first-party relationships on its ad platforms for partners, in which they have direct connections with their own customers.

“We’ll deepen our support for solutions that build on these direct relationships between consumers and the brands and publishers they engage with”.

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San Francisco: Elon Musk-run SpaceX managed to land its next-generation heavy-lift rocket Starship for the first time but it exploded minutes later on the launching pad at a US facility.

Musk first celebrated the landing on Thursday, saying “Starship SN10 landed in one piece”, and then tweeted: “RIP SN10, honourable discharge”.

The Starship prototype named SN10 managed to land after carrying out a high-altitude test flight in Texas.

The launch test’s objective was to showcase the computer-controlled movements of the rocket’s four aerodynamic flaps that steer its descent before landing, according to SpaceX.

Starship is SpaceX’s ambitious spacecraft to take humans to Mars. The company has been working on prototypes to find the right design that will work for transport.

SN10 slowly descended on its landing pad, softly touching down but leaning slightly to the side, and then exploded.

Last month, earlier prototype of Starship exploded after a high-altitude test flight in Texas.

The prototype, Starship serial number 9 (SN9), marked the completion of SpaceX’s second high-altitude flight test of a Starship prototype from the company’s site in Cameron County, Texas.

SpaceX had said that all four flaps were actuated by an onboard flight computer to control Starship’s attitude during flight and enable precise landing at the intended location.

But during the landing flip manoeuvre, one of the Raptor engines did not relight and caused SN9 to land at high speed, causing an explosion.

“These test flights are all about improving our understanding and development of a fully reusable transportation system designed to carry both crew and cargo on long-duration, interplanetary flights and help humanity return to the Moon, and travel to Mars and beyond,” SpaceX said.

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