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In its bid to suppress a memo revealing information about a plan to launch a censored search engine in China, Google has sent an email to employees asking them to delete the sensitive document, The Intercept reported. Authored by a Google engineer familiar with the project, the memo disclosed that the search system would require users in China to log in to perform searches. Codenamed Dragonfly, the search engine would track the location of users and share the data with a Chinese partner who would have "unilateral access" to the data, said the report on Friday, citing the memo. The news about Google's plan to build a censored search engine in China broke in August when The Intercept reported that the search platform would blacklist "sensitive queries" about topics including politics, free speech, democracy, human rights, and peaceful protest, triggering internal protests among some Google employees. Two weeks after that report, Google CEO Sundar Pichai told the company's employees that the China plan was in its "early stages" and "exploratory". A group of Google employees who were organizing internal protests over the censored search system got access to the memo detailing information about the project. The Google leadership, according to The Intercept report, were furious when they discovered that the memo was being passed among employees who were not supposed to know about the Dragonfly project. The China search engine would link users' search history to their personal phone numbers, according to the memo. This means if security agencies were to obtain the search records from Google, individual people could easily be tracked and users seeking out information banned by the government could potentially be at risk of interrogation or detention.

Reliance Jio, the 4G telecom operator said that it is the only service provider in the country to offer eSIM activation for prepaid users. "Jio will exclusively enable the advanced eSIM feature on Apple’s latest iPhones for both Jio prepaid and postpaid users. Currently Jio is the only service provider in the country to offer eSIM activation for prepaid users," Jio said in a statement on Friday. Both Jio and Bharti Airtel are Apple's official eSIM telco partners for latest iPhones - iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max. Apple, for the first time ever, introduced dual SIM to its iPhone through iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max models. The dual SIM capability is offered through a nano-SIM and digital eSIM with these latest iPhones. In India, Jio and Airtel came up with eSIM activation plans for Apple Watch Series 3 last year.

OnePlus 6 has become the first smartphone from the Chinese phone manufacturer to receive the final stable build of Google's latest Android 9.0 Pie version. To recall, Android 9.0 Pie first rolled out to the flagship handset earlier this month with OxygenOS Open Beta 1, and subsequently with Open Beta 2. Prior to the open betas, the handset was part of the Android P Beta programme, and received several Android P Developer Preview builds. The stable Android 9.0 update comes in the form of OxygenOS 9.0, and brings new features like a refreshed Do Not Disturb mode, gaming mode, and accent colour customisations. OnePlus has stated that Android Pie will soon be rolled out to the OnePlus 5, OnePlus 5T, OnePlus 3, and OnePlus 3T. File size of the OxygenOS 9.0 update on OnePlus 6 is about 1521MB, although it may differ on certain units. Changelog of the update, as posted on OnePlus forums, includes an upgrade to Android Pie, a new Do Not Disturb (DND) mode that comes with certain adjustable settings, a new Gaming mode 3.0 with a text notification mode and notification for third party calls, and support for accent colour customisation. As before, this OTA update will have a "staged rollout" meaning it will be rolled out to a limited number of users initially, followed by a broader rollout in the few days. "Using VPN to download this build might not work as the rollout Is not based on regions and is randomly pushed out to a limited number of devices," said Manu J, Staff Member, Beta Program and Developer Relations. We managed to receive the build on our OnePlus 6.

Researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have developed a new battery made partly from carbon dioxide captured from power plants. While still based on early-stage research and far from commercial deployment, this battery could continuously convert carbon dioxide into a solid mineral carbonate as it discharges, said the study published in the journal Joule. The researchers believe that the new battery formulation could open up new avenues for tailoring electrochemical carbon dioxide conversion reactions, which may ultimately help reduce the emission of the greenhouse gas into the atmosphere. The battery is made from lithium metal, carbon, and an electrolyte that the researchers designed. Currently, power plants equipped with carbon capture systems generally use up to 30 per cent of the electricity they generate just to power the capture, release, and storage of carbon dioxide. Anything that can reduce the cost of that capture process, or that can result in an end product that has value, could significantly change the economics of such systems, the researchers said. However, "carbon dioxide is not very reactive, so trying to find new reaction pathways is important", explained Betar Gallant, Assistant Professor at MIT. While interest has grown recently in the development of lithium-carbon-dioxide batteries, which use the gas as a reactant during discharge, the low reactivity of carbon dioxide has typically required the use of metal catalysts. Not only are these expensive, but their function remains poorly understood, and reactions are difficult to control. By incorporating the gas in a liquid state, however, Gallant and her co-workers found a way to achieve electrochemical carbon dioxide conversion using only a carbon electrode. The key is to pre-activate the carbon dioxide by incorporating it into an amine solution, the study said. "What we've shown for the first time is that this technique activates the carbon dioxide for more facile electrochemistry," Gallant said. "These two chemistries -- aqueous amines and non-aqueous battery electrolytes -- are not normally used together, but we found that their combination imparts new and interesting behaviours that can increase the discharge voltage and allow for sustained conversion of carbon dioxide," she added. They showed through a series of experiments that this approach does work, and can produce a lithium-carbon dioxide battery with voltage and capacity that are competitive with that of state-of-the-art lithium gas batteries.

MAVEN spacecraft released a selfie image of the spacecraft at Mars, celebrating its four years in orbit studying the upper atmosphere of the Red Planet. MAVEN'S selfie image looks at ultraviolet wavelengths of sunlight reflected off of components of the spacecraft. The image was obtained with the Imaging Ultraviolet Spectrograph (IUVS) instrument that normally looks at ultraviolet emissions from the Martian upper atmosphere, the US space agency said in a statement. "MAVEN has been a tremendous success," said Bruce Jakosky, MAVEN principal investigator from the University of Colorado, Boulder. "The spacecraft and instruments continue to operate as planned, and we're looking forward to further exploration of the Martian upper atmosphere and its influence on climate," Jakosky added. The IUVS instrument is mounted on a platform at the end of a 1.2-m boom (its own "selfie stick"), and by rotating around the boom can look back at the spacecraft. The selfie was made from 21 different images, obtained with the IUVS in different orientations, that have been stitched together. In the selfie image, lines are sketched in to show approximately where components of the spacecraft are that were not able to be imaged due to the limited motion of the instrument around its support boom. Thrusters can be seen at the lower left and right, the Electra communications antenna at the bottom toward the left, the magnetometer and sun sensor at the end of the solar-panels at the upper left, the tip of the communications antenna at the top middle. In addition, the shadow of the IUVS and of its support boom can be seen down the middle of the spacecraft body. MAVEN mission was launched on November 18, 2013, and went into orbit around Mars on September 21, 2014. Currently, the spacecraft carries out about one relay pass per week with one of the rovers. This number will increase after NASA's InSight mission lands on Mars in November, NASA said. In 2019, engineers will initiate an aerobraking manoeuvre by skimming the spacecraft through Mars' upper atmosphere to slow it.

Three-dimensional maps that enhance the accuracy of self-driving technology have been under development through cooperation between the public and private sectors. They are likely to be put into practical use by March 2019 for all expressways and other highways for automobiles that are about 30,000 kilometres in total in both directions. The 3D maps will be sold to automobile manufacturers and other entities. The completion of the 3D maps will become an important base for the practical use of self-driving cars by 2020, a goal the government has set to be realised. Self-driving technology requires three main functions: - A "cognitive function" to understand the locations of automobiles and their surrounding situations with cameras and sensors. - A "judgment function" to choose the appropriate response, depending on the situation, using artificial intelligence or other devices. - An "operational function" to control the driving operation based on the judgment function. The 3D maps are intended to support the cognitive function, as well as concretely express both information to understand areas around a vehicle - including lane lines and centre lines - and information on driving restrictions, such as speed limits. By combining information from 3D maps with data based on the global positioning system, self-driving cars would be able to avoid crashing into the side of the road and run at a safe speed. In that sense, 3D maps are different from car navigation systems, which have the main aim of giving information on driving directions. The entities that are promoting the 3D map development are the Innovation Network Corporation of Japan, a public-private fund that the government has a more than 90 percent investment in; main map publisher Zenrin Co.; and Dynamic Map Platform Co., a Tokyo-based development company that automakers, such as Toyota Motor Corp. and Honda Motor Co., have invested in. Since summer last year, they have accumulated data through self-driving cars that have been equipped with cameras and other devices and that have run on roads. Dynamic Map Platform is seeking high-precision maps to lead them to enhanced self-driving technology and a safe driving support system, setting the goal of limiting errors of automobiles' locations on 3D maps to within 25 centimeters. In the future, the company also plans to create 3D maps for self-driving cars on ordinary roads. The government announced 3D maps for self-driving cars as an important item in the Comprehensive Strategy on Science, Technology and Innovation 2016, which was decided at a Cabinet meeting in May 2016. A development company was established for that purpose in June 2016. The government is promoting the public-private project to avoid a situation in which each company collects the same information on roads and to standardise 3D maps.

Kjellberg currently has the most subscribers on YouTube, sitting at a massive 66 million. However, it seems his PewDiePie channel will not be able to hold onto the crown of ‘Most Subscribed’ for too much longer. An Indian music production company called T-Series is set to overtake the Swede’s massive YouTube channel in the near future, currently sitting at almost 63 million subscribers, and averaging 150,000 new subscribers every day. Since the revelation that T-Series would eclipse his YouTube channel in subscribers, PewDiePie has launched a comedic feud with the channel, using his videos to take shots at the company’s chann

Google’s upcoming Pixel 3 and Pixel 3 XL smartphones may be among the most leaked devices in modern consumer electronics history. With just two weeks to go until the official October 9th press event, where both devices will be unveiled presumably alongside some other Google-made hardware products, we’re getting yet another visual leak of the handsets, courtesy of WinFuture. This comes after a torrent of leaks revealing what the devices look like and what the specs are, in addition to a look at a test device out in the wild when it was left in the backseat of a cab. This new leak, which includes a bunch of renders of the front and back of the devices, doesn’t tell us anything we don’t already know or have been almost certain of for quite some time now, thanks to prior leaks. The new set of i

Tech giant Samsung is set to unveil its long-rumoured foldable smartphone during an annual developer conference in November, while its line-up for 2019 will include the tenth Galaxy S device and a 5G-compatible handset. In an interview with Channel NewsAsia on Monday (Sep 24), Mr Koh Dong Jin, head of Samsung's global mobile business, confirmed that the foldable phone – a first for the South Korean electronics behemoth – will be ready soon. The company later added that details about the widely anticipated device, largely seen by market watchers as a way to help reinvigorate growth in Samsung’s mobile division, will be revealed at the upcoming two-day Samsung Developer Conference in San Francisco. Acknowledging that it will mark a technological breakthrough for Samsung, Mr Koh said: “A foldable phone will have lots of implication and impact for components, such as batteries and displays.” “You can use the smartphone without unfolding it but when you unfold it to see something, it becomes like a tablet,” he explained, before adding that the new device will differ from a tablet without elaborating. “But if they unfold it and it’s the same as today’s tablet, I don't believe that customers will love it.” Advertisement The mobile chief did not reveal if the phone will work like a traditional flip phone or feature bendable screens, though it is widely expected to be the latter – especially after Samsung Display, a subsidiary of Samsung Electronics, said in July that its newly developed unbreakable, bendable screen has passed safety testing in the United States. However, he said he hopes that the foldable phone can become a “fashionable item” when launched, attracting users as diverse as young millen