Udacity Expands Services And Announces Scholarships In India

Online computer programming educator Udacity announced on Monday it would expand on the ground in India, the country where the service is growing the fastest.

Udacity’s free and nanodegree services are available worldwide, but with Monday’s announcement, the company will begin offering the service in rupees and expanding its staff in the country. Nanodegrees are credentials recognized by many companies, such as Google and Salesforce.

Courses will cost $9,800 rupees a month, which is about $50 less than the price in the United States of $200 per month.

“Udacity’s mission is to democratize education, and India is one of the world’s fastest growing economies,” said Udacity CEO Sebastian Thrun in an interview with TechCrunch.

Google and Tata Trust will each offer 500 full Android nanodegree scholarships to students in India. Google will also host a job fair in India for standout Nanodegree graduates and potential employers next year. Udacity said it is seeking to increase partnerships with more companies based in India.

Udacity’s foray into India is a logical step as the number of programmers in the country continues to surge. Currently India is home to the second largest programmer population in the world, a Udacity spokeswoman said. In general Udacity nanodegree students tend to be college graduates with some programming experience.

Thrun said Udacity plans to use the same “recipe” it has to achieve growth that it used in the United States.

“One of the big questions is can we get the same growth in India?” Thrun told TechCrunch. “We’re very optimistic we can.”

Google is in trouble in Russia.

The company has been found guilty of forcing Russian vendors to preload Android smartphone devices with Google apps and banning them from installing Russia's antitrust office said Google (GOOGL, Tech30) could be punished with a fine of up to 15% of its income in Russia for the violations.

It will issue details of the ruling later this month, including changes Google will have to make to its strategy in Russia.

"In particular, the agency can request [Google] to adjust contracts with vendors of mobile devices," said Alexei Dotsenko, a senior antitrust official.

Russia's investigation followed a complaint by Yandex (YNDX), the country's largest search engine.

Yandex is Google's biggest competitor in Russia, but its market share fell below 60% last year. The company accused Google of breaking the law to try to squeeze it further.

According to research from Gazprombank, around 86% of smartphones in Russia are powered by Android, which limits Yandex's ability to compete with Google in the mobile market.

Yandex welcomed the ruling, and its shares jumped nearly 7% Monday as the news emerged.

Google said it has not yet received the ruling.

Google is facing similar antitrust investigations in the European Union. The European Commission has been probing Google's business practices in fits and starts for five years. It launched a formal investigation into the Android app bundling issue in April.

An Aspect of Love, Alive in the Ice and Fire

In a package of minutes there is this We.

How beautiful.

Merry foreigners in our morning,

we laugh, we touch each other, 

are responsible props and posts.

A physical light is in the room.

Because the world is at the window

we cannot wonder very long.

You rise. Although

genial, you are in yourself again.

I observe

your direct and respectable stride.

You are direct and self-accepting as a lion

in Afrikan velvet. You are level, lean,

remote.

There is a moment in Camaraderie

when interruption is not to be understood.

I cannot bear an interruption.

This is the shining joy;

the time of not-to-end.

On the street we smile.

We go

in different directions

down the imperturbable street.

Verizon to start 5G wireless testing ahead of schedule

The announcement aims to accelerate the deployment of the new wireless system that could unleash innovation and new services such as driverless cars and remote surgery.

Global carriers have been in talks to deploy 5G wireless by 2020, but Verizon said its "aggressive roadmap" is "accelerating the expected rate of innovation."

"5G is no longer a dream of the distant future," said Roger Gurnani, chief information and technology architect for Verizon.

"We feel a tremendous sense of urgency to push forward on 5G and mobilize the ecosystem by collaborating with industry leaders and developers to usher in a new generation of innovation."

Verizon's statement did not include a timetable for 5G rollout but Gurnani told the news website CNET he expects "some level of commercial deployment" by 2017.

Verizon said it was working with partners including Alcatel-Lucent, Cisco, Ericsson, Nokia, Qualcomm and Samsung, establishing working teams for testing the technology.

5G was a key topic for participants at this year's Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, a mega-trade show for telecom innovations.

The new 5G technology is expected to deliver data speeds up to 1,000 times faster than the current 4G systems enabling fast transfer of data from Internet-connected devices from fitness bands to self-driving cars.

Verizon launched the first US network using 4G long-term evolution (LTE) which is a standard being adopted in many countries for wireless phones, tablets and other devices.

To fulfil the 5G dream, manufacturers must build infrastructure that can carry mobile phone signals powerful and quick enough to unfailingly support split-second activities, such as surgical operations or automatic traffic movement.

The GSMA, the world mobile operators' consortium that organizes the Barcelona gathering, said in a report in December that with ultra-fast 5G, "an operation could be performed by a robot that is remotely controlled by a surgeon on the other side of the world."

Tech specialists at the Boston Consulting Group estimated in a report that mobile companies would have to spend $4 trillion (3.6 trillion euros) on research and investments by 2020 to develop 5G.

Damaged Photos

You get into puddles with the sky
and when this fails
pit your girl against an ocean.

Choices blur and make off with rooms
in the whiteness. Winged enough to manage
your red kimono’s 37 cranes in various
trajectories while you make the coffee.

You as God with rattlesnakes
and His Admiral Death holding down the muscle,
headless and breath swollen.

You scattered in her facelessness
behind the screen door, not frowning, not joyous,
just working her hands in a dish towel,
folding them away.

You as ether, over-exposed bursting place,
dulling with these selves, spun by light and
dropped into shadow places,
forgotten as you put the photos down.

Intel putting $50 mn into quantum computing research

Intel Corporation plans a 10-year collaboration with Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands and TNO, the Dutch Organization for Applied Research, to make real the kind of quantum computing that could tackle seemingly insurmountable problems.

Intel said that potential applications for the computing power include intricate simulations such as large-scale financial analysis and more effective drug development.

"A fully functioning quantum computer is at least a dozen years away, but the practical and theoretical research efforts we're announcing today mark an important milestone in the journey to bring it closer to reality," managing director of Intel Labs Mike Mayberry said.

Unlike digital computers, quantum computers use quantum bits that can exist in multiple states simultaneously, offering the potential to compute a large number of calculations all at once, speeding up results.

Here's Google's new logo

The makeover has a practical motivation. This kind of lettering is easier to read when shrunk down, as Google products increasingly are on mobile devices and wearables.

The new branding replaces the last Google logo, which the company has used since September 2013.

"We've taken the Google logo and branding, which were originally built for a single desktop browser page, and updated them for a world of seamless computing across an endless number of devices," said Google's Tamar Yehoshua and Bobby Nath in a blog post announcing the change.

In addition to the new static logo, Google created an animated set of four dots that show up when a Google product is processing. Google also unveiled a new multicolored "G" logo for places where the whole company name won't fit.

The logo was created earlier this year during a one-week collaboration between various Google designers. They wanted to create a smaller version of the Google logo for tiny screens, add some movement and have a consistent look across Google products, according to a detailed post about the redesign.

"The Google logo has always had a simple, friendly and approachable style. We wanted to retain these qualities by combining the mathematical purity of geometric forms with the childlike simplicity of schoolbook letter printing," said the post.

Google should brace itself for strong reactions. Many big companies have struggled with rebrandings. Gap (GPS), Coke (CCE) and Hershey (HSY) are just a few of the brands that switched back to their classic logos after negative receptions.

"It's just a disaster," said Ina Saltz, a typography expert and professor at CCNY. "It looks childish, it looks unsophisticated, it looks like play dough."