Technology

New Delhi: Google has launched a new organisation focused on extending the philosophy and definition of open source to project trademarks. Called the 'Open Usage Commons', the organisation will aim to help open source projects assert and manage their project identity through programmes specific to trademark management and conformance testing.

Historically, it has been observed that many open source projects stumble in managing their trademarks -- their project's name and logo. "How project trademarks are used is different from how their code is used, as trademarks are a method of quality assurance," Chris DiBona, Director, Open Source at Google, said in a blog post this week.

This includes the assurance that the code in question has an open source license. When trademarks are properly managed, those maintaining the project can define their identity, provide assurances to downstream users of the quality of their offering, and give others in the community certainty about the free and fair use of the brand. "Creating a neutral, independent ownership for these trademarks gives contributors and consumers peace of mind regarding their use of project names in a fair and transparent way," DiBona said.

New Delhi: Zoom CEO Eric Yuan has announced to double down on the efforts to bring meaningful change to its video meet app after the 90-day pledge ended, saying the company would put mechanisms in place to make sure that security and privacy remain a priority in each phase of its product and feature development. Bogged down by numerous privacy and security issues in March, Zoom took a 90-day pledge on April 1 to make a number of enhancements to address security and privacy.

"We cannot and will not stop here. Privacy and security are ongoing priorities for Zoom, and this 90-day period – while fruitful – was just a first step," said Yuan. "This period has brought about meaningful change at our company and made the safety, privacy, and security of our platform central to all we do, as we strive to be worthy of the trust customers place in us," Yuan said in a statement on Wednesday.

In the three-month period, the company has launched nearly 100 features including Zoom 5.0 with enhanced security and privacy tools, AES 256 GCM encryption (available to all users, free and paid), UI updates (Security icon, green encryption shield with data center location click through) and others.

New Delhi: Twitter on Friday disclosed it has removed a fake network comprising over 1.73 lakh accounts that were linked to a state-backed campaign in China involved in a range of manipulative activities including spreading disinformation about the political situation in Hong Kong. The micro-blogging platform said that these were two interconnected sets of accounts. While 23,750 accounts comprise the core of the network - the highly engaged core network - approximately 150,000 accounts were designed to boost this content called the amplifier network.

"Despite the volume, the core 23,750 accounts we are publishing to the archive were largely caught early and failed to achieve considerable traction on the service, typically holding low follower accounts and low engagement," Twitter informed. Of the approximately 150,000 amplifier accounts, the majority had little to no follower counts either and "were strategically designed to artificially inflate impression metrics and engage with the core accounts".

New Delhi: A day after unblocking the Amul account, Twitter on Saturday said that technical reasons led to the brief restriction imposed on the account.

The blocking of the account on Thursday led to public outrage, with many speculating that dairy brand's "Exit the dragon? Amul Made in India" creative on June 3 might have led to the restrictions.

Twitter, however, denied that the brief restrictions had anything to do with the content that the account published.

"Safety and security of the accounts is a key priority for us and to ensure an account has not been compromised, sometimes we require the account owner to complete a simple reCAPTCHA process," a Twitter spokesperson said in a statement.

"These challenges are simple for authentic account owners to solve, but difficult (or costly) for spammy or malicious account owners to complete. Once the account clears this security step the account regains full access. To protect the accounts we routinely require them to clear this security key for login verification."

It won’t be a stretch to say that over 90% of the people reading this would be doing so on a smartphone. A five to six-inch-long slab of plastic, metal or glass with a brightly lit coloured glass screen, people use it to watch content, browse the internet, chat with their friends and family, interact with people all around the globe and also sometimes use it to make phone calls. But have you ever wondered how did this intelligent slab of plastic, metal or glass make its way to your pocket?

How about a fact to give you an idea about just how powerful this device which you have in your hand is? The Apollo 11 spacecraft was powered by a computer which was called the Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC), the AGC had had 2048 words of memory which could be used to store “temporary results” i.e. data that is lost when there is no power. This type of memory is referred to as RAM. Which means that it had 4 kilobytes of RAM memory, along with this it had 72kb of ROM, i.e. the basic permanent storage to put that into perspective, an average smartphone in today’s day and age has 4GB of RAM and 64GB of ROM. Not to start up a numerical attack but those numbers make an average smartphone more than a million times more powerful in terms of RAM and ROM, can you believe that? Technology which is a million times more powerful than that which put Man on the moon rests casually in your hand.