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SpaceX to Bring Free and Open Internet to All with the Launch of Starlink Project

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Last year, the aerospace transport agency SpaceX had launched the prototype satellite for its much-talked-about project, Starlink, a project that targets to provide internet to the whole planet through a network of the satellites. And now after a year-long wait, the company will finally be launching the first batch of satellites of Starlink’s “production” version with the help of SpaceX Falcon 9 today at 10:30 PM EDT.

SpaceX Starlink project
Image Source: futurist.com

The company will launch 60 satellites with the help of a Falcon 9 rocket, which will be launched from a launchpad based in Cape Canaveral. After the launch, the satellites will be arranged like a constellation to cover a part of the Earth like a blanket. Starlink project will be responsible to provide open, high speed and low-latency internet to anyone in the world.

The Starlink project revolves around the concept of low earth orbit (LEO) satellites. Once the satellites are positioned in the orbit, these will link to the small terminals on the surface of the earth. The satellites are able to easily make a connection with the ground terminals as the LEO satellites are positioned at a distance as close as 99 to 1,200 miles from the surface of the Earth. This way the internet speed will also be faster as compared to the conventional methods used to provide internet.

The 60 satellites have been placed like kernels on a corncob, and with the help of a spring, these will be sent to the orbit at a particular velocity.

The launch of those satellites is a challenge for the company, which if went favourably, will be a great achievement for the company. Otherwise, there are other rival companies of SpaceX too that are also looking forward to getting their hands on similar projects, including OneWeb and Amazon too.

But since the company had test-launched similar satellite TinTin A and TinTin B successfully in the month of February, there are higher possibilities of the success of the Starlink project. According to Elon Musk, the founder of SpaceX those 60 satellites are the “production design”, and in future, the company plans to launch as many as 12000 satellites to achieve that constellation network. If the experiment goes according to the plan, people will be able to access high speed and free internet by the mid of 2020.

Paytm Launches First Card; Ties-up with Citi Bank to Retain its Old Customers

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Apple recently launched its credit card for its iOS users, and amid the rising competition, from Google and the other digital wallet providing companies, India’s largest digital wallet Paytm is now launching its first credit card named First Card. The company announced on Tuesday that it will be launching its first credit card for its wallet users that too with 1 per cent ‘universal unlimited’ cash back on every purchase.

Paytm First Card
Image Source: inc42.com

The company has been struggling with maintaining its position in the Indian eCommerce market. And, the company has been trying new strategies to deal with the rising competition. It even launched its own eCommerce platform, Paytm Mall, that too providing huge cash backs for the users. But still, the threats from its rivals are only growing.

“We are delighted to partner with Citi to launch the Paytm First Card. Our new offering is designed to bring the utmost flexibility to our customers in their digital payment options and will help spur large-ticket cashless payments. We are confident of getting a very good response from our customers.” said Vijay Shekhar Sharma, Chairman and CEO – One97 Communications, the parent of Paytm.

Though there are only 50 million people, who actually have credit cards and use for purchases in India, Paytm hopes to make 25 million of Indians to avail its new credit card service. To launch the credit card, the company has partnered with the global payments company Citi Bank. The company will charge an annual fee of INR 500 to the First Card users, and if the spendings of the users will go above INR 50000 per year, the fee will be waved off for those users. The users will also be provided with the offers on dining, shopping, and travel on the platforms having tie-up with Citi Bank.

The customers can apply for the credit card directly through the Paytm app, and the Paytm account passbook will reflect the offers from both Paytm and Citi Bank for the credit card holders. The users with minimum INR 10000 expenditure in a month will be able to avail promo codes of worth INR 10000. The users of First Card will also get the option to pay for goods in easy instalments.

The Citi Bank First card is powered by Visa and is valid internationally. Noticeably, Paytm had just joined its hands with Visa to launch its debit cards last week. The partnership between Citi Bank and Paytm has a long history, and this time, it is an initiative taken to support Paytm’s new subscription-based loyalty program ‘Paytm First’ and retain its users who have been shifting to the other payment apps.

Facebook Taking Initiatives to Help Improve the Job Conditions for its Contractors

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Facebook hires contractors for its different kinds of jobs, like moderation of the content as well as training the AI, etc. Those contractors are hired on the hourly bases. But recently, The Verge exposed the poor condition of those contact-bound moderators at the Facebook workplace in an article. Following which, Facebook finally is planning to increase the salaries of those contractors and will be providing them with extra benefits in order to improve their job conditions.

facebook moderator
Image Source: techspot.com

The company said in a blog post, “Today we’re committing to pay everyone who does contract work at Facebook in the US a wage that’s more reflective of local costs of living. And for those who review content on our site to make sure it follows our community standards, we’re going even further. We’re going to provide them with a higher base salary, additional benefits, and more supportive programs given the nature of their jobs.”

The company had set a basic pay of $15 per hour for every contractor in 2015, which in the past four years remained the same. Now according to the announcement from the company, after the increase in the wages the contractors in the San Francisco Bay Area, New York City and Washington, DC will soon receive a $20 hourly pay, and the ones from Seattle will earn $18 per hour. And this is not limited to the U.S. alone, but the contractors working with Facebook internationally will also get a hike in their hourly pay.

The Verge’s article on the Facebook moderator exposed a lot about the bad effect on the mental health of people. Many of those moderators even became suicidal. This has been a matter of concern for Facebook too. So now the company is also working on developing tools, that can help in protecting the moderators’ mental well being. According to the company, it will be providing its contractors with resilience training and counselling at their workplace.

The company will also be providing the moderators with other benefits including a minimum 15 days of paid holidays, sick leaves, and $4000 new child benefits for the new parents, who could not get the paternal or maternity paid leaves.

Also for the first time, the company now will provide the contractors with new options while moderating the Facebook content, such as they will now be able to blur an image temporarily for review.

The company said that the moderators and the contractors are the essential part of the company and their well being is the most required thing for the company as they “provide important services across a content review, security, culinary, transportation and other teams” and help in maintaining the content according to its community guideline.

Amazon Wants its Employees to Quit their Jobs at Amazon to Start a New Delivery Business

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Amazon has just revealed that it is going to expand its Delivery Service Partner program, by providing up to $10,000 cost cover to its employees to start their own package delivering business. The company had launched the Delivery Service Partner program last year, which is an initiative taken by the company to create a network of independent delivery lineups. Under the program, 200 Amazon delivery businesses have already been established since last year.

Amazon Delivery Service Partner program
Image Source: mashable.com

The company revealed that many people are interested in starting their own package delivery business. In fact, many of Amazon’s existing employees have expressed their interest in the same. According to Amazon, the main motive of the company behind this incentive program is to render faster delivery to its clients, especially to speed up the one day delivery for its Amazon Prime members.

“We received overwhelming interest from tens of thousands of individuals who applied to be part of the Delivery Service Partner program, including many employees. We’ve heard from associates that they want to participate in the program but struggled with the transition. Now we have a path for those associated with an appetite for opportunities to own their own businesses.” said Dave Clark, senior vice president of worldwide operations at Amazon, in a statement.

The company announced that it will be providing a $10000 of cover to its employees who will be selected for the program. Also, the company will pay a sum of three months’ gross salary of those employees who will be leaving their jobs to start the delivery business. The ones who will be selected for the incentive plan will also be able to rent the blue vans from Amazon.

The offer is valid for all full-time, part-time as well as for the warehouse employees, who already work in the packaging and delivery department of the company. The program will help Amazon ditch the conventional delivery methods including post, UPS as well as other delivery methods such that it will be able to increase the delivery speed for all its customers.

The company claimed that the employees who will be starting their delivery business with Amazon will be able to earn yearly profits up to $3,00,000. On the other hand, this service not only will be beneficial for Amazon in terms of faster delivery but it will automatically help the company to build a huge infrastructure for its delivery business at the minimum cost.

Dell Wants to Bring Automated and Efficient Cloud Infrastructure

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Hybrid-cloud
Image Source: channelfutures.com

Dell, one of the biggest computer maker company, which started its journey 35 years ago by selling PCs directly to the consumer is now planning to expand its cloud infrastructure to make it more intelligent, automated and efficient.

At the Dell Technologies World 2019 held in Las Vegas, Michael Dell the founder, chairman and CEO of Dell Technologies, revealed about the new Dell Technologies Cloud offering, that will be a combined project of Dell, Azure, Microsoft and VMWare. All those companies have partnered with each other to accelerate the digital transformation for their customers and bring a hybrid cloud solution to them. All the three will be combining their data centres, workplace solutions and cloud technologies to attain the very objective.

“Every business, every organisation, every government, and every healthcare organisation needs to re-imagine itself in this digital age. There are an explosion and tsunami of data that is sweeping us into the digital age. Data is our greatest asset and most important resource. Turning that data into action and progress and outcomes and success is the heart of digital transformation,” said Dell.

According to the company, other companies own their separate clouds, and it becomes tough for them to set up a multi-cloud strategy. So to simplify such complex tasks Dell is planning to bring a hybrid cloud solution, that will also render easy to handle interface. Dell’s cloud approach revolves around VMWare and targets to connect with public cloud service providers like AWS.

“For many organisations, the increasingly diverse cloud landscape is resulting in an enormous amount of IT complexity, and no one is more qualified or capable to help customers solve this challenge than Dell Technologies,” said Jeff Clarke, the vice chairman of products and operations at Dell.

HTC Might Exit the Chinese Smartphone Market Soon; Pulls Smartphones from Major Chinese Market

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The Taiwanese handset maker, HTC, had recently revealed that it would stop selling its handsets at the two of China’s largest eCommerce portals, JD.com and Tmall, temporarily. And, finally, it has pulled off its smartphone chain from the two stores. This step taken by the company has compelled everyone to think that the company might be planning to take an exit from the Chinese smartphone industry.

htc china exit
Image Source: consumercomplaintsnumbers.co

In the recent times, the rumours were making rounds that Google was planning to acquire the company, but later, Google was only able to acquire the HTC’s Pixel team in a $1.1 billion deal. After Google’s acquisition, over 2,000 HTC engineers moved to work for Google. After the deal, HTC took to exit from India last July. So, from the decision of not selling its smartphones for a temporary period, it is pretty easy to predict that HTC might also be thinking of exiting China in the same way.

For now, the company has drawn off all its smartphones from the two eCommerce giant websites as well as their flagship stores. The company has also ceased the selling of its products from the other physical retail stores in China. But the company is still selling its smartphones, except some of its flagship smartphones including U11 or U11+, at its own official store as well as the VIVE flagship physical store in Shenzhen.

The company confirmed the news through a blog post, stating, “Due to the consideration of HTC China’s long-term business strategy, we will temporarily close the HTC mobile phone Jingdong flagship store and Tmall flagship store. HTC smartphones and accessories can still be purchased through HTC Official Mall and HTC VIVE Flagship Store. We will continue to provide quality pre-sales and after-sales service as always.”

The company has been seeing great competition due to the rise of the other rival companies, including Oppo, Vivo and Xiomi, that has dropped down its smartphone sales to a greater extent. Despite pulling off its flagship smartphones from the major retail stores in China, the company is still trying to get its hold in its other business arms.

The company has emphasised its focus on the HTC 5G Hub project that according to it will be bringing 5G to every home. HTC has also moved its focus towards its VR efforts. The company has also confirmed that it will be bringing the Android 9 update to its U11, U11 Plus as well as U12 smartphones by the end of May and starting of June.