Twitter on Wednesday announced it is testing voice messages in direct messages (DMs) up to 140-seconds long in India.

The experiment will be rolled out in phases to the audiences, making India one of three countries to have access to the feature, alongside Brazil and Japan.

According to the company, voice messages in DMs will make it easier for people to have conversations.

“We’re excited to bring the voice messages in DMs experiment to the country and give people a new way to express themselves and help them connect through the nuances, emotion, and empathy built by hearing someone’s voice,” said Manish Maheshwari, Managing Director, Twitter India.

Each voice message can be upto 140 seconds long and can help people chat quickly – whether on the move or when there’s just too much to type.

“We are dedicated to giving people more options to express themselves in conversations on Twitter – both publicly and privately,” said Alex Ackerman-Greenberg, Product Manager for direct messages at Twitter.

This is how the new feature will work.

In a DM conversation, tap the new voice recording icon once to begin recording.

Tap the stop icon when you’re done and you’ll have the option to listen to your recording before sending or deleting it.

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The smart speaker shipments crossed 10 lakh for the first time in India in 2020, generating Rs 463.4 crore ($63.6 million) in sales last year, a new report said on Wednesday.

Amazon led the segment both in value and volume market shares (80 per cent market share) while Google managed 11 per cent market share by volume in 2020.

The new entrant Xiaomi was at the second spot by market value share (10 per cent) and third by volume (8 per cent share).

Apple made a good start in this category in 2020 as its Homepod and Homepod Mini smart speakers started selling in India from October.

Within just one quarter of shipments, Apple’s share was 2 per cent in overall units. Over 84 per cent of Apple smart speaker shipments were of Homepod Mini model.

“The market is unfolding in India as a result of which we will see many more players foraying into this category in next two years, leading to it peak framentation. Thereafter, consolidation will start, leaving behind the serious players alone,” said Faisal Kawoosa, Founder and Chief Analyst, techARC.

Nearly 40 per cent of smart speakers were shipped in the festive quarter (Q4) alone.

Among the best-selling top five smart speakers, Amazon Echo devices featured at No 1, 2 and 5 ranks. Google managed the third position while Xiaomi’s smart speaker also featured in the top five sellers for 2020.

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Australia’s government said Google and Facebook Inc. are nearing agreements to pay domestic media companies for news, in a sign a regulatory standoff may be softening.

Australian Treasurer Josh Frydenberg held talks with Facebook Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg and Google counterpart Sundar Pichai over the weekend. “We’re very close to some very significant commercial deals,” Frydenberg told the Australian Broadcasting on Monday, according to a transcript sent by his office. “We have made great progress.”

Alphabet Inc-owned Google and Facebook oppose planned Australian legislation forcing them to pay media companies for news, and Google has threatened to shut down its search engine if the law is enacted. Parliament will consider the legislation from this week, giving the internet giants an incentive to agree compensation terms for news companies before the law is passed.

Facebook declined to comment on any specific talks. “We’ve been engaging with the Australian government to outline our concerns with the legislation,” the company said in a statement. A Google spokesman declined to comment.

If Facebook and Google fail to strike the deals, Australia’s pay-for-news law risks becoming a template for regulators in other jurisdictions including Canada and the European Union that are following the quarrel.

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Some of the world’s largest technology companies are complaining to US antitrust regulators about Nvidia Corp’s acquisition of Arm because the deal will harm competition in an area of the industry that is vital to their businesses.

Alphabet Inc’s Google, Microsoft Corp. and Qualcomm Inc. are among companies worried about the $40 billion deal and are urging antitrust officials to intervene, said people familiar with the process who asked not to be identified because they weren’t authorised to speak publicly. At least one of the companies wants the deal killed. Nvidia shares fell as much as 3.1 per cent in New York trading on Friday. The acquisition would give Nvidia control over a critical supplier that licenses essential chip technology to the likes of Apple, Intel, Samsung Electronics, Amazon.com and China’s Huawei.

ALSO READ: Google and Facebook nearing deals to pay for news, says Australia

UK-based Arm is known as the Switzerland of the industry because it licenses chip designs and related software code to all comers, rather than competing against semiconductor companies. The concern is that if Nvidia owns Arm, it could limit rivals’ access to the technology or raise the cost of access.

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As invite-only audio chat app Clubhouse becomes popular globally including in India, researchers at Stanford University in the US have warned that the app may be leaking users’ audio data to the Chinese government.

The Stanford Internet Observatory (SIO) has confirmed that Agora, a Shanghai-based provider of real-time engagement software, supplies back-end infrastructure to the Clubhouse app.

“The SIO has determined that a user’s unique Clubhouse ID number and chatroom ID are transmitted in plaintext, and Agora would likely have access to users’ raw audio, potentially providing access to the Chinese government,” the researchers said in a blog post.

The users’ metadata is sent over the internet in plaintext (not encrypted), meaning that any third-party with access to a user’s network traffic can access it.

“In this manner, an eavesdropper might learn whether two users are talking to each other, for instance, by detecting whether those users are joining the same channel,” the researchers warned.

In at least one instance, SIO observed room metadata being relayed to servers we believe to be hosted in the People’s Republic of China (PRC), and audio to servers managed by Chinese entities and distributed around the world via Anycast (a wireless display receiver).

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FRANKFURT (Reuters) – Germany’s Volkswagen is not concerned by any Apple plans for a passenger vehicle that could include the iPhone maker’s battery technology, its chief executive Herbert Diess said.

Reuters reported in December that Apple may have progressed enough to build a vehicle for mass markets by 2024, helped by cost cuts in battery technology.

“The car industry is not a typical tech-sector that you could take over at a single stroke,” Diess was quoted as saying an interview with Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung.

“Apple will not manage that overnight,” he added.

While Apple’s plans are not public, Diess said its intentions as such were “logical” because the company had expertise in batteries, software and design, and that it had deep pockets to build on these competencies.

“Still, we are not afraid,” he said.

Volkswagen plans to develop software needed for autonomous cars in-house to ensure it can compete against tech firms in the field of electric car data.

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Apple is reportedly planning to release its long-awaited AirTags item trackers along with a refreshed iPad Pro in March.

According to tipster Jon Prosser, who has a mixed track record when it comes to reporting on Apple’s plans, claims that AirTags and brand new iPad Pro models are set to be announced next month via a virtual event, reports MacRumors.

The Apple AirTags are said to be Tile-like Bluetooth-based item trackers that will help users locate their belongings like keys, wallet, backpacks, and would possibly notify users when they are separated from a tagged item.

Reports about Apple’s AirTags item trackers have been coming in for the past couple of years.

The iPad Pro (2021) series is rumoured to focus on two key additions. Namely, the models are set be the first to use mini-LED displays and some pricier variants will likely offer 5G connectivity.

Apple has been working on mini-LED displays for quite some time now and there are a total of six products in the pipeline ranging from iPads to Macs.

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Reliable Apple analyst Neil Cybart has shared a report showing there are currently over 100 million people wearing an Apple Watch.

According to the analyst, Apple Watch took less than six years to cross the 100 million milestone.

Some of the data points revealed by the analyst claim that 30 million new users started using an Apple Watch in 2020, which was way more than the users in 2015, 2016, and 2017 combined.

“At 100 million users, the Apple Watch is Apple’s fourth-largest product installed base behind the iPhone, iPad, and Mac. At the current sales trajectory, the Apple Watch installed base will surpass the Mac installed base in 2022. Surpassing the iPad installed base will take longer and likely be measured in a number of years based on the current sales trajectory,” the analyst said in a statement.

Since the US has been an Apple Watch stronghold for years, adoption in the country has trended materially high in comparison to global figures. At the end of 2020, approximately 35 per cent of iPhone users in the US were wearing an Apple Watch.

The analysis also highlights that Apple Watch has been popular among consumers because it has a “cool factor” for being a new kind of product and also for offering unique features such as monitoring activity and vital signs.

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JEE Main 2021 Admit Card: The Admit card for the JEE Main examination 2021 has been released by the National Testing Agency. Candidates can download the JEE Mains 2021 admit card from the official website, jeemain.nta.nic.in. The JEE Main 2021 admit card is available in the online mode only. This year, JEE Main will be conducted in four sessions in February, March, April, and May, starting from February 23 to 26, 2021. The next sessions will take place from March 15 to 18, April 27 to 30, and May 24 to 28.

JEE Main Admit Card 2021: Follow the below steps to download

1) Log on to the official website of JEE Main 2021: jeemain.nic.in

2) On the homepage, click on the link which says, “JEE (Main) 2021 admit cards”

3) Enter your application number, password and security pin

4) Click on submit

5) JEE Main Admit Card 2021 will be displayed on the screen

About JEE and NTA

National Testing Agency (NTA) has been established as a premier organization to conduct entrance examinations for admission/fellowship in higher educational institutions.

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Facebook has removed 26.9 million pieces of hate speech content in the fourth quarter of 2020 — up from 22.1 million in Q3 and the company gives credit to improvements in its automated systems that catch and purge such comments.

The social network also blocked 6.4 million pieces of organised hate content in the October-December period from its main platform, up from 4 million in Q3.

Instagram also saw significant jumps in hate speech, bullying and self-harm removals, according to the company’s ‘Community Standards Enforcement Report’.

Facebook took down 6.3 million pieces of bullying and harassment content from its platform in the fourth quarter of 2020 — up from 3.5 million in Q3.

“Last quarter, we shared the prevalence of hate speech on Facebook for the first time to show the percentage of times people see this type of content on our platform. This quarter, hate speech prevalence dropped, seven to eight views of hate speech for every 10,000 views of content,” Guy Rosen, VP Integrity at Facebook, said in a blog post late on Thursday.

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