SpaceX’s giant Starship rocket explodes after launch

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SpaceX’s giant Starship rocket exploded after its launch from the US state of Texas on Thursday. The rocket got off the launch pad in SpaceX’s Starbase in South Texas but exploded minutes later. The spacecraft failed to reach orbit.

The launch was the first test flight of SpaceX’s fully integrated Starship and Super Heavy rocket, Xinhua news agency reported.

Starship experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly before stage separation, according to SpaceX.

“Today’s test will help us improve Starship’s reliability as SpaceX seeks to make life multi-planetary,” the company tweeted.

Teams will continue to review data and work toward the next flight test, said SpaceX.

“Learnt a lot for next test launch in a few months,” Elon Musk, founder, CEO, and Chief Engineer of SpaceX, tweeted.

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said that the launch of SpaceX’s Starship rocket is “a good first step”.

“It looks like they got through the first stage of this big monster rocket. That’s a real accomplishment. We’ll get a report on what happened to the second stage, but I’m very encouraged that they’ve gotten along this far,” Nelson told Media.

It was the second launch attempt of Starship after the first attempt was scrapped on Monday owing to technical issues.

A ‘mini-heart’ has been developed by German scientists.

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‘mini-heart’ known as organoid

A ‘mini-heart’ has been developed by German scientists, that is just 0.5 millimeters in size to study the earliest development phase of the human heart and facilitate research on diseases. The team from the Technical University of Munich (TUM) are the first researchers in the world to successfully create the ‘mini-heart’ known as organoid — containing both heart muscle cells (cardiomyocytes) and cells of the outer layer of the heart wall (epicardium).Although these do not pump blood, they can be stimulated electrically and are capable of contracting like human heart chambers. In the young history of heart organoids — the first were described in 2021 — researchers had previously created only organoids with cardiomyocytes and cells from the inner layer of the heart wall (endocardium).
Led by Alessandra Moretti, Professor of Regenerative Medicine in Cardiovascular Disease, the team developed a method for making a sort of ‘mini-heart’ using pluripotent stem cells. Around 35,000 cells are spun into a sphere in a centrifuge.

Over a period of several weeks, different signaling molecules are added to the cell culture under a fixed protocol. “In this way, we mimic the signaling pathways in the body that control the developmental programmed for the heart,” said Moretti. The team published their work in the journal Nature Biotechnology with an accompanying study published in Nature Communications. Through the analysis of individual cells the team determined that precursor cells of a type only recently discovered in mice are formed around the seventh day of the development of the organoid. “We assume that these cells also exist in the human body — if only for a few days,” said Moretti. These insights may also offer clues as to why the foetal heart can repair itself, a capability almost entirely absent in the heart of an adult human.

This knowledge could help to find new treatment methods for heart attacks and other conditions. Further, the team also showed that the organoids can be used to investigate the illnesses of individual patients. Using pluripotent stem cells from a patient suffering from Noonan syndrome — a genetic disorder that prevents normal development in various parts of the body, the researchers produced organoids that emulated characteristics of the condition in a Petri dish. Over the coming months the team plans to use comparable personalized organoids to investigate other congenital heart defects. With the possibility of emulating heart conditions in organoids, drugs could be tested directly on them in the future. “It is conceivable that such tests could reduce the need for animal experiments when developing drugs,” Moretti said.

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WhatsApp rolling out ‘sticker maker’ tool to everyone on iOS

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Meta-owned WhatsApp has started to roll out its “sticker maker” tool to everyone on iOS.

The sticker maker tool, along with all the other improvements introduced in the previous beta versions of the app, is finally available for iOS users that install the latest update of WhatsApp from the App Store, according to WABetaInfo.

The sticker maker tool allows users to create stickers right within the app.

The feature provides a more integrated experience for users by eliminating the need to switch between different third-party apps, saving time and making the process faster.

Moreover, the report said that this feature is rolling out to all users on iOS 16, but there are no plans to bring it to older versions of iOS.

According to the changelog on the App Store, some customers may receive the feature in the coming weeks, the report said.

Meanwhile, WhatsApp has released a new feature, allowing users to add descriptions to forwarded images, videos, GIFs, and documents on Android, which is currently available to some beta testers.

This feature can come in handy if the current caption doesn’t accurately describe the image or if you want to add a different description.

By removing the existing caption and replacing it with your own, the new description will be sent as a separate message. This will help ensure that the recipients know that it doesn’t belong to the original message

Apple previews Delhi Saket store, Tim Cook to greet 1st customers on Thursday

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After receiving huge crowds at the Mumbai retail store, Apple on Wednesday previewed its second physical store in the country, at Select CityWalk mall in New Delhi.

Delhi’s first Apple Store, to be inaugurated by the company’s CEO Tim Cook on Thursday, will offer personalized support and unique experiences for customers to discover the technology.

“We’re thrilled to bring the best of Apple to our customers in Delhi with the opening of our second store in India, Apple Saket,” said Deirdre O’Brien, Apple’s senior vice president of Retail.

“Our incredible team members look forward to connecting with the local community and helping them find new ways to pursue their passions and unleash their creativity through our amazing products and services,” she added.

The store has more than 70 highly skilled retail team members who come from 18 states in and collectively speak more than 15 languages.

For hands-on technical and hardware support, customers can make a reservation at the Genius Bar at Apple Saket for help from an Expert.

“Genius Bar appointments can help with everything from setting up a device, recovering an Apple ID, selecting an AppleCare plan, or modifying subscriptions,” said Apple.

At Apple Saket, “Today at Apple” programming will take place in a roundtable setting for a more personalized customer experience.

AI tech like ChatGPT can be used to aturbocharge fraud: FTC’s Lina Khan

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The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Chair Lina Khan has warned that modern AI technologies like ChatGPT can be used to “turbocharge” fraud.

In a Congressional hearing to protect consumers from fraud and other deceptive practices, Khan and fellow commissioners warned House representatives of the risks involved with AI technologies.

“AI presents a whole set of opportunities, but also presents a whole set of risks,” Khan told the House representatives.

“I think we’ve already seen ways in which it could be used to turbocharge fraud and scams. We’ve been putting market participants on notice that instances in which AI tools are effectively being designed to deceive people can place them on the hook for FTC action, she stated.

Khan also warned that AI’s ability to turbocharge fraud should be considered a “serious concern,” reports TechCrunch.

The agency launched a new Office of Technology (OT) in February with the goal of supporting the agency’s law enforcement and policy work by offering in-house technical expertise.

OpenAI’s ChatGPT may lead to aid scammers and create new mobile threats.

AI-driven ChatGPT, which gives human-like answers to questions, is also being used by cyber criminals to develop malicious tools that can steal your data.

The first such instances of cybercriminals using ChatGPT to write malicious codes were recently spotted by Check Point Research (CPR) researchers.

In a bizarre incident, AI chatbot ChatGPT, as part of a research study, recently falsely named an innocent and highly-respected law professor in the US on the list of legal scholars who had sexually harassed students in the past.

Jonathan Turley, Shapiro Chair of Public Interest Law at George Washington University, was left shocked when he realized ChatGPT named him as part of a research project on legal scholars who sexually harassed someone.

“ChatGPT recently issued a false story accusing me of sexually assaulting students,” Turley posted in a tweet.

Brian Hood, regional mayor of Hepburn Shire in Australia, also threatened to sue OpenAI if the Microsoft-owned company doesn’t correct false information about him.

ChatGPT reportedly named Hood as a convicted criminal, involved in the past and real bribery scandal at Australia’s Reserve Bank (RBA).

YouTube announces new policies on eating disorder content

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Google-owned YouTube has announced that it will update its approach to eating disorder-related content to create space for community, recovery, and resources while protecting viewers in the coming weeks.

“We’ve long had policies to remove content that glorifies or promotes eating disorders. Moving forward, we’ll be updating our Community Guidelines to also prohibit content about eating disorders that feature imitable behavior, or behavior that we worked with experts to determine can lead at-risk viewers to imitate,” Youtube said in a blog post.

According to the company, the policies could include — disordered eating behaviors, such as purging after eating or severely restricting calories, and weight-based bullying in the context of eating disorders.

The company has collaborated closely with NEDA (National Eating Disorder Association) and other organizations to deepen its understanding of imitable behavior, its potential manifestations in content, and its impact on vulnerable viewers as part of the development of its new policies.

Moreover, to ensure appropriate content viewing, the company has implemented ‘age restrictions’ on certain materials discussing disordered eating behaviors in the context of recovery, as well as those that feature EDSA, as they may not be suitable for all ages.

“Some videos will not be available to viewers under 18 if you’re signed out, or if the video is embedded on another website,” the company said.

Further, Youtube has introduced eating disorder crisis resource panels under videos, which are currently available at the top of search results related to eating disorders in the US, UK, India, Canada, Japan, Korea, Mexico, France, and Germany, the company said.

Meta to slash around 4K high-skilled jobs this week: Report

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Meta (formerly Facebook) is reportedly set for another round of mass layoffs on Wednesday that will affect at least 4,000 highly-skilled employees, the media reported.

This week’s layoffs could be in the range of 4,000 jobs, according to a report in Vox, citing sources.

In March, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the company would cut 10,000 jobs in the coming months.

In an internal memo seen by The Washington Post, Meta said that “the company will begin notifying employees on its technical teams whose jobs are being cut”.

Meta will also announce newly reorganized teams and management hierarchies, the report mentioned.

“Facebook parent company Meta will announce details about new job cuts on Wednesday, part of a months-long downsizing and restructuring effort that will trim 10,000 employees amid multiple waves of layoffs,” The Washington Post tweeted on Wednesday.

In March, Zuckerberg announced to the sack of an additional 10,000 employees via several job cut rounds in the coming months.

Zuckerberg said that overall, “we expect to reduce our team size by around 10,000 people and to close around 5,000 additional open roles that we haven’t yet hired”.

The fresh cuts came just four months after he laid off 11,000 employees, or 13 percent of the company, in November last year.

Dead satellite to crash into Earth on Wednesday, no threat to humans: NASA

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A retired NASA satellite Reuven Ramaty High Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager (RHESSI) is expected to re-enter Earth’s atmosphere in April, almost 21 years after launch. It does not present any threat to humans, the US space agency said.

Launched in 2002, the RHESSI observed solar flares and coronal mass ejections from its low-Earth orbit, helping scientists understand the underlying physics of how such powerful bursts of energy are created. NASA decommissioned it after 16 years, in 2018, due to communications difficulties.

The US Department of Defense, which is monitoring the satellite, expects the 660-pound spacecraft to re-enter the atmosphere at approximately 9:30 p.m. EDT (7 a.m. IST) on Wednesday, but the timings can vary.

While NASA expects most of the spacecraft to burn up as it travels through the atmosphere, some components are expected to survive re-entry.

“The risk of harm coming to anyone on Earth is low – approximately one in 2,467,” the agency said in a statement.

The spacecraft launched aboard an Orbital Sciences Corporation Pegasus XL rocket with a mission to image the high-energy electrons that carry a large part of the energy released in solar flares.

It achieved this with its sole instrument, an imaging spectrometer, which recorded X-rays and gamma rays from the Sun. Before RHESSI, no gamma-ray images nor high-energy X-ray images had been taken of solar flares.

Data from RHESSI provided vital clues about solar flares and their associated coronal mass ejections. These events release the energy equivalent of billions of megatons of TNT into the solar atmosphere within minutes and can have effects on Earth, including the disruption of electrical systems. Understanding them has proven challenging.

During its mission tenure, RHESSI recorded more than 100,000 X-ray events, allowing scientists to study the energetic particles in solar flares.

The imager helped researchers determine the particles’ frequency, location, and movement, which helped them understand where the particles were being accelerated.

Over the years, RHESSI documented the huge range in solar flare size, from tiny nanoflares to massive superflares tens of thousands of times bigger and more explosive. RHESSI even made discoveries not related to flares, such as improving measurements of the Sun’s shape, and showing that terrestrial gamma-ray flashes — bursts of gamma rays emitted from high in Earth’s atmosphere over lightning storms — are more common than previously thought.

Apple generated over 1 lakh direct jobs in India in 2 yrs: MoS IT

The Apple ecosystem in India has generated over one lakh new direct jobs in manufacturing in the last two years, Minister of State, Electronics, and IT, Rajeev Chandrashekhar, said on Tuesday.

Apple on Tuesday launched its first own-branded retail store in India, in Mumbai in presence of its CEO Tim Cook. The company will also launch its second store in Delhi on Thursday.

“Propelled by Prime Minister @narendramodi’s visionary PLI scheme @Apple ecosystem has generated over one lakh new direct jobs in manufacturing over the last 24 months,” the minister tweeted.

“About 70 percent of these are 19-24-year-old women, who are starting their careers, acquiring skills, and improving the ease of living for their families,” he added.

Apple has ramped up its India manufacturing and in FY23, the iPhone exports surged to over $5 billion from India.

Backed by Apple, India’s overall smartphone exports also crossed $10 billion for the first time in a financial year.

Apple began manufacturing iPhones in India in 2017, and since then, the company has worked with suppliers to assemble new iPhone models and produce a growing number of components.

Twitter adds more ‘govt-funded’ labels to global media, faces outcry

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Twitter has put more ‘government-funded media’ labels on the accounts of global news outlets like Australian Broadcasting Company (ABC Australia), Australia’s Special Broadcasting Service (SBS), New Zealand’s public broadcaster RNZ, Sweden’s SR Ekot and SVT, and Catalonia’s TV3.cat.

The micro-blogging platform earlier placed the ‘publicly-funded’ label to the BBC account and applied the ‘government-funded’ label to US-based NPR.

ABC News said in a tweet that it is a publicly funded broadcaster, “governed by the ABC Charter which is enshrined in legislation”.

“For more than 90 years, the ABC has always been and remains an independent media organization, free from political and commercial interests,” it argued.

SBS said the label might lead Twitter users to believe that the outlet is editorially controlled by the government.

“While we appreciate Twitter’s motivations with regard to transparency on its platform, we believe a ‘Publicly-funded media’ label better reflects the hybrid public-commercial nature of our funding model and the fact that SBS retains full independence from the government in our news editorial and content decision making,” a company spokesperson said in a statement.

CBC/Radio-Canada tweeted that “our journalism is impartial and independent”.

“To suggest otherwise is untrue. That is why we are pausing our activities on @Twitter,” it added.

Last week, American media outlet NPR became the first major news organization to quit Twitter after the Elon Musk-run platform labeled it as a government-funded organization.

After NPR, the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) also left Twitter after being labeled as government-backed media.