Russia's communications regulator Roskomnadzor said on Friday it had opened administrative cases against Alphabet Inc's Google and six other foreign technology companies for alleged violations of personal data legislation. Russia fined Google 3 million Roubles ($46,540) last year for not storing the personal data of Russian users in databases on Russian territory, and on Friday said it had opened a new case over what it called Google's repeated failure to comply with Russian legislation. The regulator also said it had opened cases against six other companies – Airbnb, Pinterest, Likeme, Twitch, Apple, and United Parcel Service – for alleged first-time offences carrying a potential fine of 1-6 million Roubles.
2/9
Unions in the US are gaining steam with Amazon warehouse workers in Staten Island, New York forming the company’s first unionised warehouse in the US. However, that success seems to be driving union efforts all around the country. And is now spreading into the video game industry as Raven Software, despite efforts from parent company Activision Blizzard to undermine those attempts. A small group of employees at Raven Software voted to unionize, making it the second certified gaming union in the US. The push to unionize began when Activision Blizzard laid off a dozen QA workers in December 2021. The unionisation of a subsidiary of one of the biggest gaming studios can have far-reaching effects on unionisation drives throughout an industry that is known for its exploitative practices.
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Prime Minister Narendra Modi recently inaugurated India’s biggest drone festival at Delhi's Pragati Maidan. Bharat Drone Mahotsav 2022 will bring together key stakeholders including StartUps with the aim of increasing India's presence in the drone sector. As many as 1600 delegates comprising government officials, diplomats, armed forces, central armed police forces, PSUs, private companies and drone startups are expected to participate in the two-day event. More than 70 exhibitors will display various use cases of drones at the exhibition," the statement.
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This week, AMD officially announced the new Ryzen 7000 series processors for desktops. The new line is based on AMD's Zen 4 microarchitecture and will feature up to 16 cores on a 5nm node. The new processors will use a new AM5 socket, which means they will need compatible 600-series motherboards. AMD says that the new 7000 series processors will offer a performance bump of more than 15 percent in single-threaded applications. While there are no details on SKUs or their price points at the moment, AMD is aiming for a launch in Fall 2022.
5/9
Meta recently announced that it would be rewriting and re-designing its privacy policy after four years to make it easier for people to understand and provide more clarity about how they make use of their information, even as it faces regulatory scrutiny across various parts of the world including India. According to a report by The Verge, the old Facebook Data Policy is now Meta’s Privacy Policy, rewritten “to make it easier to understand and to reflect the latest products we offer. John Davisson, the senior counsel for the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said in a comment to The Verge that the promise that this policy won’t share data in new ways sounds good, but “the problem is that Facebook already funnels user data at industrial scale into a vast targeted advertising ecosystem. So the status quo is not good for privacy.”
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Nvidia announced a slew of new designs from companies like MSI, Gigabyte, Asus, Acer, Lenovo and more. The devices use Nvidia's top-end laptop GPUs and are powered by the RTX 3070Ti, RTX 3080 and RTX 3080Ti. Nvidia also announced the first next-generation line of 1080p monitors with a refresh rate of 500Hz. The semiconductor manufacturer also added 12 games to its roster of DLSS supported titles. Nvidia said that there were more models based on Nvidia's 4th Gen Max-Q technologies from other OEMs, coming soon.
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Xiaomi has officially announced its partnership with German camera maker Lecia. The first flagship smartphone to take advantage of this partnership is expected to launch in July this year. Xiaomi Founder and CEO said: “Xiaomi focuses on creating the ultimate user experience and has always hoped to explore the capabilities of smartphone photography to the extreme.” While there is no confirmation about the smartphone in question, it will likely be the Xiaomi 12 Ultra.
8/9
Oppo recently launched the Reno 8 series in China. The line-up included the Oppo Reno 8, Oppo Reno 8 Pro, and Oppo Reno 8 Pro+. Of the three phones, the Oppo Reno 8 Pro debuted as the first smartphone to feature the Snapdragon 7 Gen 1 chipset, while the Reno 8 Pro+ used the MediaTek Dimensity 8100-Max SoC. The Oppo Reno 8 series featured a starting price of CNY 2,499 (Roughly Rs 29,000) in China. The Oppo Reno 8 line-up is expected to debut in India soon.
9/9
Xiaomi recently launched three new smartphones in its Redmi Note series in China. The Redmi Note 11T Pro, Redmi Note 11T Pro+, and Redmi Note 11T SE. The Redmi Note 11T Pro is priced at 1,799 yuan (Rs 20,850) for the base 6GB/128GB model. The Redmi Note 11T Pro+ is priced at 2,099 yuan (Rs 24,300) for the base 8GB/128GB model. The Redmi Note 11 SE is priced at 1,099 yuan (Rs 12,750) for the base 4GB/128GB model.
