Technology
A NEW space race is on, not between superpowers, but between three billionaire businessmen with their space-based enterprises. Their goal, each in their own way, is to pioneer space tourism and to move space travel … Read moreBillionnaires’ Space Race
FACED with scathing and mounting criticism of its mishandling of the Covid pandemic in India, the government seems to have launched an orchestrated defence of its policies and actions. Significantly, the task of opening this … Read moreMisuse of Scientists, abuse of Science
TWO major hacks – SolarWind and Microsoft Exchange server hacks – have affected a whole range of computer systems. Both are supply-chain hacks, meaning what appeared to be a routine software upgrade to a particular … Read moreAs US Loses its Edge, Game of Cyber Chicken Could Have Deadly Consequences
THEgovernment has released a Science, Technology and Innovation Policy 2020 (STIP 2020) and invited responses by January 31, 2021. The Department of Science & Technology and the Office of the Principal Scientific Advisor to the … Read moreScience, Technology & Innovation Policy 2020
WHATSAPP, a company owned by Facebook since 2014, has issued a new privacy policy changing its data-sharing rules, which will come into effect by February 8, 2021. In this new policy, WhatsApp has declared that … Read moreThe Ugly Truth Behind WhatsApp’s Data Privacy
AIR India Express ‘Vande Bharat’ Flight IX 1134 evacuating stranded Indians from Dubai to India, tragically crashed in rainy conditions on August 7, 2020 evening at Calicut International Airport in Karipur near Kozhikode, Kerala. The … Read moreAir Crash in Kozhikode: Haunting Issues
THE US tech war on China continues, banning Chinese equipment from its network, and asking its 5-Eyes partners and NATO allies to follow suit. It is a market and a technology denial regime that seeks … Read moreUS Tech War on China & the 5G Battlefield
IN his latest Mann-ki-baat address on June 28, 2020, the prime minister expressed some extraordinary views on defence manufacturing and self-reliance before independence, since then, and he took office in 2014. His own words, as … Read morePM Re-writes History on Defence Self Reliance
THE two sets of questions in the Parliament to two different ministries on the Israeli software Pegasus being used to hack smartphones of Indian activists have drawn different replies. It makes clear that the government … Read moreMinisters Playing Hide and Seek in Parliament on Pegasus
NO, quantum computing did not come of age with Google’s Sycamore, a 54-qubit computer solving a problem in 200 seconds, which would take even a super computer 10,000 years. Instead, it is the first step … Read moreQuantum Computers Brings Uncertainty Knocking at Our Doors
THE Netflix film, The Great Hack, relates Cambridge Analytica’s role in Trump’s 2016 elections to a much larger issue – the threat to our democracy from global tech giants. It is not the Facebook data that Cambridge … Read moreHacking Elections: Tales from Far and Near
It was one of those seminal moments in human history, when those fortunate to have been around ask “where were you when humans first landed on the Moon.” This writer was lucky to have been … Read more50 Years of First Moon Landing