News Time

   India’s startup growth story racked up impressive numbers in the second quarter of 2021 (April-June). Apart from being the most funded quarter, it also saw the addition of the most number of unicorns. This report has been developed by Nasscom and PGA Labs to understand India’s tech startup landscape. Unicorn ecosystem Total unicorns as of June 2021 – 53; 15 added in H1 and 11 Q2, 2021 Tiger Global invested in  64%  of the unicorns in Q2 2021 CRED turned unicorn within just 29 months of its inception 6 unicorns have filed for IPOs, of which Zomato got listed More than  50%  of funding was concentrated on 3 sectors: FinTech, FoodTech and Enterprise Tech Growth-stage funding for B2C tech  startups  drives deal flows Deal split: B2C –  71% , B2B –  29% Series D & E together account for  45%  of deal value B2B  startups  raised $1.9bn across 85 deals B2C  startups  raised $4.2bn across 75 deals Prominent i...

   Apple Watch  — these two words no doubt bring to mind the sleek, smart device that puts a computer on your wrist. It’s a piece of technology that has permeated our lives. But the one Tim Cook debuted in 2014 (launched in 2015) wasn’t the first  Apple Watch.  A little-known, largely forgotten relic of the World Wide Web era came two decades earlier. Steve Jobs, the Apple co-founder and prickly visionary, had been ousted. In the ensuing years, the company endured a level of innovation-stasis, iterating on the same technologies year-in and year-out. As a result, it slowly began losing market share as rival Microsoft began preparing its true arrival onto the scene. In 1991, it released “Macin­tosh System 7” — a new operating system built on the original Macintosh interface. Unlike previous versions that required inserting a floppy disk into the computer to run, this was the first to utilise CDs. From 1991 to 1995, Apple made small adjustments to the OS, culminati...

  South Korean tech giant  Samsung  introduced the Galaxy Tab S7 FE in India in June, but it only launched the LTE variant of the tablet in the country. Now the company will launch the Wi-Fi version in India soon. As per GSM Arena, this revelation comes from Amazon India, which set up a promo page for the Galaxy Tab S7 FE's Wi-Fi model on its website. The online retailer didn't reveal the tablet's price or sale date and only said that it's "coming soon." The  Samsung  Galaxy Tab S7 FE is powered by the Snapdragon 750G SoC and runs Android 11-based One UI 3.1 out of the box. The LTE model comes with 4GB/64GB and 6GB/128GB memory options in India, and it remains to be seen if the Wi-Fi version will also have the same configuration. The Snapdragon 750G-powered tablet is built around a 12.4" 2,560x1,600-pixel resolution screen and packs a 10,090 mAh battery with 45W charging support. However, the bundled adapter only goes up to 15W, and people will ...

   Low-cost airline  SpiceJet  has been granted relief from the Punjab and Haryana High Court which has asked the  GST  department to consider and pass an order on the airline’s plea of paying the tax dues in instalments. GST  authorities issued a notice in late July, asking  SpiceJet  to pay tax liabilities of Rs 80.6 crore and furnish details of movable and immovable properties, warning that they would initiate recovery proceedings if the payment was not made. SpiceJet  did not dispute the tax liability in its petition. The company, however, opposed any recovery proceedings and requested the tax authorities to allow it to pay the dues in 24 instalments, instead of a single payment. “Having heard the learned counsel appearing for both the parties, we find the prayer of learned senior counsel for the petitioner to be a fair one. Consequently, we dispose of this writ petition with a direction to the Excise and Taxation Commissioner of Sta...

   More than 356,000 people died in 2019 as a result of extreme heat and that number is likely to grow, according to a study published in The Lancet this week. The Global Burden of Disease review, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, found while cold temperatures still cause a greater number of deaths, mortality rates attributable to heat are growing faster, particularly in hotter regions of the world. “This is very concerning, particularly given the risk of exposure to high temperatures appears to have been increasing steadily for decades,” said co-author Katrin Burkart from the University of Washington. The findings echo another report, a two-part series called “Heat and Health” that was also published in The Lancet this week. It calls for global warming to be limited to 2.7 degrees F, in line with the Paris Climate Accords, to reduce heat-related mortality in the future. Otherwise, deaths will increase further and extreme heat will also lessen worker productiv...

   American activity tracker and sports watch maker  Garmin  recently launched in India its Forerunner 55. Aimed at runners, this  smartwatch  is a successor to the company's budget-oriented health and fitness tracker the Forerunner 45. Priced at Rs 20,990, the Forerunner 55 brings meaningful upgrades over the predecessor with regard to design, features and utility. So does it make a good upgrade? Let’s find out: Design and build The  smartwatches  in the Forerunner series look identical, albeit few changes here and there. That said, the Forerunner 55 does not bring any drastic design changes. There are in total of five physical buttons familiarly placed -- three on the left side and two on the right. The Forerunner 55 has a 42mm plastic case with a 1.04-inch transflective display (208 × 208 pixels resolution) on the top, surrounded by thick bezels. The watch’s transflective display lacks the brightness, thus, suffers from sunlight legibility issu...

  Microsoft  has changed the way default apps are assigned in the upcoming Windows 11, make it extremely difficult for users to switch default browsers if they miss the first and only prompt. The move has left rivals like Google, Mozilla Firefox and Opera fuming. According to a report in The Verge, if you forget to set your default browser at first launch of Windows 11, the experience for switching defaults is now very confusing compared to Windows 10. "The default app prompt in Windows 11 that you'll only see once," the report said on Wednesday. In Windows 11, there's a prompt that appears when you install a new browser and open a web link for the first time. It's the only opportunity to easily switch browsers in Windows 11 which, once missed, will ask you to set defaults by file or link type instead of a single switch. "Chrome and many other rival browsers will often prompt users to set them as default and will throw Windows users into the default apps part...