Mitra the ‘Made in India’ robot shown at GES Hyderabad

Mitra is an indigenous robot developed by a two-year old startup Invento Robotics in Bangalore

Hyderabad: Prime Minister Narendra Modi with Ivanka Trump, daughter and adviser of the US President, inaugurates the Global Entrepreneurship Summit 2017 in Hyderabad on Tuesday.(PTI)

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Adviser to US President Donald Trump Ivanka Trump on Tuesday inaugurated the three-day Global Entrepreneur Summit in Hyderabad by pressing a button on an indigenously developed robot called Mitra.

Mitra has been developed by a Bangalore-based startup Invento Robotics that was set up in October 2015. The company has been founded by Balaji Viswanathan, who has previously worked in Silicon Valley and technology companies such as Microsoft. Viswanathan was recently in news for being the most followed person on Quora.

The company has been closely working with National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM) and Associated Chambers of Commerce of India (ASSOCHAM)

“Mitra has been completely designed and developed in India. The idea behind the robot was to provide customised and contextual information to people,” Kaundinya Panyam, a senior company executive told Hindustan Times.

The indigenous Mitra runs on a propriety operating system. The company sells multiple versions of the robot, customised for different sectors such as corporates and banking. It uses different chipsets depending upon the customisation and integrations that are incorporated within the humanoid. In some versions it uses Qualcomm’s chipsets.

Featuring fibre glass body, the humanoid comes with a touchscreen on its chest which comes in handy when there’s a lot of ambience noise, the executive said. On a single charge, Mitra can deliver a back up of 8-10 hours.

Invento said it has deployed a fully functional robot at a Canara Bank in Bangalore.

While the company is pushing the device primarily as a smart customer support assistance, it also sees other various use cases as well. For instance, the robot could be used as a party photographer, smart DJ or just a live tweeter.

Mitra also features a facial recognition technology which the company says is quite accurate, allowing the robot to quickly identify the person and deliver the customised services.

The humanoid also understands multiple languages. At the moment, Mitra supports Kannada and English but the company says it is soon going to add support for Hindi as well.

“Our robots can recognize speech in multiple languages and engage customers with smart conversations to provide better customer engagement and increase sales,” said the company on its website.

US Wishes India For World Court ICJ Win

Dalveer Bhandari was re-elected to ICJ with more than two-thirds of the UN members backing him

WASHINGTON:  The US has congratulated Justice Dalveer Bhandari for his re-election to the International Court of Justice or ICJ, however, it asserted that it is against any change in the current veto structure of the UN Security Council, even as it favorus a modest expansion of the 15-membered body.

India's Dalveer Bhandari was yesterday re-elected to the International Court of Justice with more than two-thirds of the UN members backing him, forcing Britain to withdraw its candidate amidst high drama in the hard-fought race to the world court.

Responding to questions on reform of the 15-member top wing of the world court, a US State Department spokesperson said: The United States remains open in principle to the idea of UN Security Council reform, including a modest expansion of the Security Council.

"We believe a reformed council must reflect the realities of the 21st century and be able to meet the challenges of this century with enhanced -- and not diminished -- effectiveness and efficiency. To this end, we remain opposed to any alteration or expansion of the veto, the spokesperson told news agency PTI.

The spokesperson was asked about reform of the UNSC in view of the differences that emerged between the General Assembly and the Security Council during the just concluded election to the ICJ.


For the last remaining seat, the General Assembly and the UN Security Council had to carry 11 round of voting before judge Christopher Greenwood from Britain withdrew from the race, leaving India's nominee Dalveer Bhandari to be re-elected for a nine-year term.

"We congratulate Judge Dalveer Bhandari of India for his re-election to the International Court of Justice, as well as the other candidates who were elected or re-elected...," the spokesperson said, thanking Judge Greenwood for his service to the ICJ.

However, the official refused to comment on the 11 rounds of voting.

"We're not going to comment on the prior rounds of voting. In the end, Judge Bhandari received the unanimous support of the UNSC and an absolute majority in the UN General Assembly for his re-election to the ICJ," the spokesperson said.

China to shut down steel plants for 5 months to curb Beijing winter pollution

The Xi Jinping government will also form a new environmental protection bureau to explore ways to curb PM 2.5 levels in the capital city and its surrounding provinces.

China will either shut down or curtail operations at dozens of steel plants over the next five months under an aggressive action plan to reduce winter pollution in Beijing and its surrounding areas, a new report has stated.

A number of steel plants in northern China, which usually faces heavy to severe winter pollution every year, will be shut down before Christmas as part of the green strategy.

“The measures are part of an aggressive action plan that aims to cut wintertime particulate pollution by 15% year-on-year over the next five months. These cuts are badly needed as Beijing and the surrounding industrial provinces have suffered the winter’s first serious episode this week (last week of October), with PM 2.5 levels across several provinces reaching ‘very unhealthy’ levels,” the report by environmental advocacy group Greenpeace said.

The new measures are set to take full effect in mid-November, and will continue through the winter.

“The operating restrictions will affect one quarter of China’s total steel-making capacity and approximately 10% of its cement production. The measures are expected to cut national steel output by over 10% in the next five months and could prevent (the emission of) as much CO2 as Denmark and Finland emit in one year,” the report added.

Greenpeace energy analyst Lauri Myllyvirta stated in a presentation shared with Hindustan Times that among the other measures being put in place by China to curb winter pollution are output restrictions on aluminium plants; closure of cement and coking plants; installation of a new environmental protection bureau; ramped-up central enforcement agencies that would conduct tens of thousands of inspections; replacement of coal heating and cooking in three million households; a ban on construction activities; and restrictions on heavy trucks.

Myllyvirta described the steel industry as a “dominant source of air pollutant emissions in the Beijing region, given that the surrounding Hebei province is the world’s largest producer of the metal and has poorer emission control performance than other large producer provinces”.

Though the five-month shutdown of factories is temporary, the plan envisages a new joint environmental protection bureau covering Beijing and two surrounding provinces with a focus on enforcing industrial emission norms.

Stressing on the campaign’s “forward-looking aspect”, Chinese environmental minister Li Ganjie said: “These special campaigns are not one-off measures. Instead, they are an exploration of long-term mechanisms.”

Myllyvirta said it was interesting to note the manner in which President Xi Jinping referred to the environment in his inaugural speech at the 19th national congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC), which concluded in Beijing late last month.

Xi mentioned the words “environment” and “ecological civilisation” 20 and 12 times respectively in his speech, which lasted for over three hours.

Real life Iron Man

Richard Browning has been dubbed the ‘real life Iron Man’.

Marvel character Tony Stark’s fanciful Iron Man costume may never become a reality, but what is it that makes this British inventor’s suit fly? It’s physics.

Richard Browning made a Guinness World Record on Thursday for fastest speed in a flight suit, whizzing in the air at speeds over 50km at Lagoona Park in Reading, Britain. The technology of the suit combines miniaturised jet engines and an exo-skeleton, allowing vertical take-off and flight.

The Guinness World Record – fastest speed in a body-controlled jet engine power suit – is the first of its kind, The Mirror said.

“I am delighted we have set the record, and I have no doubt that this is just the beginning – I really think we can go on and smash it,” Browning -- now being dubbed as the ‘real life Iron Man’ – was quoted as saying by Express.co.uk.

The suit, named ‘Daedalus’ after the mythological Greek craftsman and Icarus’ father, has six jet engines mounted on the arms and the rear of the exo-skeleton. These engines act as thrusters that make vertical flight possible. The suit depends on human body movement to steer itself.

In April this year, Browning captivated an audience at the TED Conference by flying in a circle and hovering above the ground. His start-up, Gravity, formally debuted in March with an early-version suit that he started working on three years back.

The former Royal Marine reservist created the suit because he is “inspired by doing things that haven’t been done”, reads a description on his promotional website. He wanted to create a flight suit that one day would allow its wearer to launch from a beach, soar along the coast and then perhaps hop into a helicopter in the air to continue their journey.

Browning had earlier said investors and some in the British military were interested in his human-propulsion gear. But “I don’t think anyone is going to be going down to WalMart with it or taking anybody to school for quite a while, but the team at Gravity is moving it along”, Browning said in April.

Although the suit has been compared to the ‘Iron Man’ armour worn by Marvel character Tony Stark, Browning says his goal is firmly rooted in the real world.

Indian Scientists Successfully Fire Electromagnetic Railgun

The Indian Defense Research organization hopes to soon complete trials of electromagnetic railguns that would give the country's naval forces a superlative advantage and a capability to launch devastating attacks on both land and sea targets.

NEW DELHI (Sputnik) — Indian defense scientists have successfully developed electromagnetic railguns (EMRG) that can fire projectiles at Mach 6 (six times the speed of sound) or 4,600 miles per hour. Such railguns are touted as one of the future technologies of warfare, as they use kinetic and laser energy instead of controlled explosives for firing missiles.

According to the state-owned Defense Research and Development Organization (DRDO), a 12 mm square bore EMRG has been successfully tested and they are preparing for the 30 mm variety. The target is to accelerate a one kilogram projectile to a velocity of more than 2,000 m/s with a capacitor bank of 10 megajoules.

"A simple, single pulse driven railgun launcher was developed with a minimum of metal components in proximity to the bore to maximize the inductance of the launcher and to improve the launch efficiency. The launcher has a 12 mm square bore cross-section. The launcher was fabricated with lengths ranging from 1 to 2 meter," a defense scientist involved with the project told Sputnik on condition of anonymity.

According to the state-owned Defense Research and Development Organization (DRDO), a 12 mm square bore EMRG has been successfully tested and they are preparing for the 30 mm variety. The target is to accelerate a one kilogram projectile to a velocity of more than 2,000 m/s with a capacitor bank of 10 megajoules.

"A simple, single pulse driven railgun launcher was developed with a minimum of metal components in proximity to the bore to maximize the inductance of the launcher and to improve the launch efficiency. The launcher has a 12 mm square bore cross-section. The launcher was fabricated with lengths ranging from 1 to 2 meter," a defense scientist involved with the project told Sputnik on condition of anonymity.

JavaScript continues to be the first choice of developers

Technology is something that changes almost every day. The same goes for tech trends, tools and new programming languages. However, there are some like JavaScript, which although emerged more than a decade ago, still holds the future. The popular programming language continues to sow its seeds in an evolving software industry to produce highly responsive web applications packed with advanced features and catering to the dynamic needs of user-centric businesses.

JavaScript has become the dominant language of the web as all the modern web browsers implement this language. It is the only language that can be deployed on all personal computers and mobile devices globally. However, critics say it’s not really the most refined language and is considered by many programmers as syntantically “messy”. So, what’s all the noise about?
Latest buzz

JavaScript has been constantly dubbed by the web development community as the most popular programming language. As per the new developer survey released by Stack Overflow, a popular online community for developers, in March this year, JavaScript continued to be the most commonly used programming language for the fifth year in a row.

Stack Overflow also listed the most popular languages by occupation, where JavaScript again dominated, placing No.1 in Web Developer, Sysadmin/DevOps and Data Scientist/Engineer categories and No. 2 in the Desktop Developer section, where SQL barely edged it out by 0.2 percentage points. JavaScript-based offerings also fared well in the category of most popular "frameworks, libraries and other technologies,” where Node.js and AngularJS were first and second.

The strong showing of JavaScript probably isn’t much of a surprise to most developers, as it continually ranks highly in other survey and reports. Earlier this year, for example, the biannual Redmonk language popularity report listed JavaScript as No. 1, as it did several times previously.  And in January, JavaScript was named the ‘Application & Data Tool of the Year’ for 2016 by StackShare Inc, which runs a developer-only community that tracks software tools. It also garnered “programming language of the year” honours for 2014 by the TIOBE Index. Why does JavaScript continue to be the first choice of developers?

First things first

What is JavaScript? Well, JavaScript is a client and server-side computer scripting language. It is supported by all popular browsers including Microsoft Internet Explorer (beginning with version 3.0), Firefox, Opera, Safari and Google Chrome, among others. It can be used across multiple Web browsers and has the capability of making a website more interactive with features such as slideshows, ad pop-ups and Google’s auto complete functionality. It is also used in game development and writing desktop applications.

How did it all start

JavaScript was first created by Brendan Eich, an American technologist, while working at Netscape in 1995. Eich later co-founded the Mozilla project.  Eich originally joined intending to put Scheme “in the browser”, but his Netscape superiors insisted that the language resemble Java in terms of its syntax. The result was a language that had much of the functionality of Scheme, the object orientation of Self, and the syntax of Java. Initially, it was nicknamed Mocha, further released in beta as LiveScript and then it eventually got named as JavaScript when Sun Microsystems signed a licence agreement with Netscape.

In the first decade after its release, JavaScript was widely criticised with many professional programmers denigrating the language because, among other reasons, its target audience consisted of Web authors and other such “amateurs”. However, with the advent of Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (AJAX), developers started changing their mindset and the language’s journey began to the path of popularity.

Why is it still so popular?

It's easy: JavaSrcipt is a syntantically simple language and also has a huge open source community to seek out help from in case you get stuck. As developers are able to use the same language in the front end and back end, it makes the programming task easier. It’s accessible: Since JavaScript runs in a browser, you don’t need to download it in order to use it. All you need is a text editor. Also, it doesn’t require any special compilers or editors. On the client side, it comes with a browser and executes within a browser. Best of all, it’s completely free.

You don’t need to buy JavaScript.

It’s extensible: The functionality of any web application can be extended by adding third-party add-ons in JavaScript: JSON, AJAX, Nodejs, MongoDB, jQuery. These tools take this “messy” looking language to the next level. Nodejs/MongoDB allows for it to be used as a backend language; AJAX gives it optimised loading times and a fabulous user experience; and jQuery gives it an extensive code library that makes writing complex Javascript much quicker and easier.

It has free frameworks and libraries: Developing a software is not quite easy. However, there are free frameworks and libraries available in JavaScript that allow developers to code error-free and quickly. While some popular frameworks are AngularJS, Backbone.js and Bootstrap, a few libraries are jQuery, Prototype, and Dojo.

Someone broke Twitter with a 35,000 character tweet

you thought 280-character tweets were bad. Over the weekend, two German men (who presumably were unfamiliar with the saying that brevity is the soul of wit) figured how to trick Twitter into letting them post a 35,000 character tweet. Twitter has since deleted the post, although it lives forever on the Internet Archive, where you can view it here.

The tweet starts off by saying (at least, according to Google translate) “People! @Timrasett and @HackneyYT can exceed the character limit! You do not believe us? Here’s about 35k characters proof.” Following that is an incomprehensible string of characters that goes on and on and on and on.

So, what’s the secret sauce? As pointed out by one Twitter user, the main body of the post is actually a URL (in case you’re curious, click the link above and CTRL-F for “.cc”).

Unfortunately, the fun didn’t last long. Twitter sat both Tim Rasett and HackneyYT on the naughty step, handing them both temporary bans. Fortunately, these have since lifted.

This, presumably, is because Twitter doesn’t like looking silly, and the fact that the extra-long tweet was causing all sorts of issues for users.

Amusingly, last year, Recode reported that Twitter was contemplating letting users post tweets of up to 10,000 characters in length, which is the same character limit afforded to direct messages. Perhaps Tim Rasett and HackneyYT weren’t even that far off the mark.

8 International Beautiful Places To Visit

Are soaring flight costs preventing you from planning your next international trip? Not anymore. We have the perfect list of places where you can fly for real cheap. And mind you, these places are some of the best and the most sought after holiday destinations in the world. So what's holding you back? Read on to know more!

1. Maldives: Adventure in paradise

 
Nestled amidst the Indian Ocean, Maldives is a surreal romantic destination. If romance is not what you are looking for, go for the awesome world-class adventure, water sports and delectable cuisine. Sun Island Beach is known for rich and varied marine life amidst coral atolls. Spectacular diving sites dot the Southern Ari Atoll area.

 2. Bali: Beaches, temples and treks
 

From food to the beaches to that 'eat, pray, love' experience, there are so many reasons why you should go to Bali for a holiday. Go for the Mount Batur trek, chill at pretty cafes, visit the cliffs of Uluwatu or the rice terraces of Ubud.

3. Singapore: An international entertainment hot-spot

 

Be entranced by the fine beauty of a modern megapolis with splendid entertainment avenues! Marina Bay is a must visit at night and you can witness many events that are conducted there. The Sentosa Island is a one-stop entertainment wonder! Of course, the Universal Studio theme park is a part of it.

4. Kuala Lumpur: Experience the life after dark

 
Kuala Lumpur is a paradise for those who love the life after dark. From Bangsar's cocktail bars to Changkat Bukit Bintang's chic see-and-be-seen nightclubs there's no shortage of fun places to go after dark. You can even play Club at The Roof KL and be seen with local celebrities and trendsetters. Oh and don't miss out the Petronas Towers.


5. Mauritius: Look! An underwater waterfall!

This is the ultimate destination sporting beaches, waterfalls and some great natural wonders. Visit the Trou aux Cerfs, an extinct volcano with a lake at the centre. The village of Chamerel has coloured surface, the mix of purple, oranges, yellow, red, violet, brown and green and the highest waterfall of the region.

6. Hong Kong: Exotic dining on a cruise

Hong Kong is one place which will leave you mesmerised! In The Jumbo Kingdom, Jumbo Floating Restaurant is an awesome dining experience. Not only is it known for its food but the authentic Chinese feel. Another must do is a Hong Kong evening harbour cruise. The panoramic view coupled with dinner is one of a kind experience.

7. Bangkok: Glitzy nightlife that will stun you!

 
Bangkok's nightlife remains unmatched to any other across the world. Watch the cityscape from Vertigo - Banyan Tree is a chic al fresco bar-cum-restaurant, 61 floors above the bustling Bangkok. Go for a dinner cruise on Chao Praya River or go shopping after dark at the Khao San Road. There is never a dull moment here.

8. Dubai: Land of man-made wonders

 
Being a desert city, Dubai will surprise you with the world’s longest flower wall. Go to the top observation deck of the tallest building in the world, Burj Khalifa to look at the glittering cityscape. Or bask the sea at Jumeriah Beach Park as you take in the Palm Jumeriah and the other man-made islands. If you love shopping, don't miss out the Dubai Mall.

Bellroy’s ‘Made for Google’ sleeve is a perfect companion for your Google Pixelbook

If you’re an owner of Google’s new $1,000 Pixelbook, you probably want to protect it. However, covering up such a gorgeous machine requires something a bit more than your standard laptop sleeve. That’s where Bellroy’s Pixelbook sleeve comes in.

As gorgeous as the machine it holds

The Pixelbook is an amazing laptop for its hardware alone, and Bellroy’s sleeve is also drop dead gorgeous. It has a fabric design that feels great and even in the light grey color I’ve been using, doesn’t get dirty easily.

The sleeve is available in black and grey, and in either case, you’ll get a couple of leather accents. On the grey model, that’s a brown leather, and it looks great. The sleeve isn’t much thicker or larger than the Pixelbook itself either, so you’re not giving up any portability. It even still fits in my backpack.

 

A clever design

Further, this case has a really clever design touch. By folding a flap inside of the case, you’ll be able to prop up the entire case to create an ergonomic stand for the Pixelbook. It doesn’t make a massive difference, but I’ve noticed that when it’s sitting on your lap, it makes typing more comfortable.

A special holster just for the Pen

One of the leather accents is hidden inside of the case is a loop that perfectly fits the Pixelbook Pen. It’s a convenient little touch that makes keeping your Pen close by, easy to access, and secure.


But it comes at a cost

This is a great sleeve with few complaints aside from a tight fit, but that comes at a cost. At $89, it’s not cheap at all. However, when you’re already spending $1,000 or more on this machine, the extra cash might not be too bad.

Where to Buy

• Bellroy
• Google store