Monday, 14 January 2019


Google Assistant breaks language barriers

Tech giant unveils 'interpreter mode' that can translate between two people in real time. 


Dumb charades in hotel lobbies between a concierge and tourists who don’t speak the local language may soon be a thing of the past. At the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2019 currently on in Las Vegas, Google has unveiled a new feature: the ‘interpreter mode’ in Google Assistant, its voice-based Artificial Intelligence (AI). This would enable Google’s virtual assistant to serve as a real-time language translator between two people. 

With this feature, which will be rolled out over the next few weeks on Google Home devices and Smart Displays, one can just tell the Google Assistant “Hey Google, be my Japanese interpreter”, and it would function as one. Currently, this feature supports 27 languages, including English, Hindi, Polish, Indonesian, Swedish, Thai, German and Korean.

[ReadMore]

Thursday, 10 January 2019

EPF rate hike likely in bonanza for salaried employees

Though the annual internal review is yet to be concluded, there was a good chance the EPF interest rate would be hiked. At the least, it will be retained at the existing level of 8.55%.


New Delhi: Retirement fund manager Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) may raise interest rates from the current level of 8.55%, bringing cheer to millions of employees in the organized sector. If indeed EPFO does follow through, it will serve up another sop in poll-bound India, this time for the salaried employees. So far, farmers—through farm loan waivers—have been the beneficiaries, while the middle class has gained indirectly, with the recent reduction in goods and services tax (GST) rates on several consumer goods. [ReadMore]

Wednesday, 9 January 2019


Dear departed data: Cloud storage is the way to go

by Deccan, Chroicle and Parthasarathy
Published Jan 7, 2019. 

If you are over 50 and were a desktop computer user in the 1980s, chances are you have a few floppy disks lying around — with photos or documents that you saved, every time you changed your PC. Today, chances are you can no longer open the floppy — and the contents are as good as lost. [ReadMore]