Tech

Cloud has been a buzzword for some years. But with Covid-19 and the lockdowns, it looks like suddenly almost everyone is talking cloud. And the reason is, cloud can handle disruptions and distributed work better than inhouse data centres. This was the subject of our discussion on Times Techies Webinars last week, a discussion we organised in association with data management and hybrid cloud services company NetApp. Ravi Chhabria, MD of NetApp India, and VP of hybrid cloud engineering at NetApp, said speed and agility are the hallmarks of cloud. When the Covid lockdowns were suddenly announced and entire supply chains were disrupted, companies couldn’t possibly beef up their inhouse data centres to cater to the requirements of all employees working from home. “You don’t have the time to say I’m going to build it out,” said Chhabria. But with cloud, you can almost instantly scale up your compute and network requirements. If your software applications are … [Read more...] about Why post-Covid cloud has become the talk of the tech world

IIT Kharagpur’s centre for AI has tied up with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to develop a National Artificial Intelligence Resource Portal (NAIRP). NAIRP was launched with initial funding from the human resources ministry as part of the National Digital Library of India (NDLI) platform. “Various resources useful for learning AI will be made available under this portal, including textbooks, online courses, lectures, datasets, codes and tools. The first version should be ready in the next few months,” Sarkar says. The system will start off using AWS Cloud, and will also be connected in the future with the in-house cloud developed at IIT Kharagpur. The plan is to make it public. She says students should develop the ability to keep learning about emerging technologies. “One should have the foundational knowledge to pick up the new skills. The core topics of AI are search, reasoning, machine learning, and knowledge management. Higher studies in AI requires a strong … [Read more...] about IIT Kharagpur, AWS jointly developing AI learning, devt portal

Google prudently opted out of including a video camera on the Hub itself, getting ahead of some privacy concerns, and likely prompting Amazon to include a manual video shutter on its new, smaller Echo Show 5 display. If you really want a Google-based smart display that allows for video chatting, a few third-party options can make that happen. Even without it, the Nest Hub is the best, most affordable marriage of a voice assistant and a display interface on the market. Read our Google Nest Hub review. … [Read more...] about The best smart home devices for 2020: Amazon, Google and Apple race to control your home