The world of computing is full of buzzwords: AI, supercomputers, machine learning, the cloud, quantum computing and more. One word in particular is used throughout computing – algorithm.

In the most general sense, an algorithm is a series of instructions telling a computer how to transform a set of facts about the world into useful information. The facts are data, and the useful information is knowledge for people, instructions for machines or input for yet another algorithm. There are many common examples of algorithms, from sorting sets of numbers to finding routes through maps to displaying information on a screen.

To get a feel for the concept of algorithms, think about getting dressed in the morning. Few people give it a second thought. But how would you write down your process or tell a 5-year-old your approach? Answering these questions in a detailed way yields an algorithm.Input

To a computer, input is the information needed to make decisions.

When you get dressed in the morning, what information do you need? First and foremost, you need to know what clothes are available to you in your closet. Then you might consider what the temperature is, what the weather forecast is for the day, what season it is and maybe some personal preferences.

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It’s that time of the year when the celebrations commence. And this year will be witness to a unique festive season with the prolonged impact of the pandemic. Due to the economic uncertainty, the consumers are expected to be measured in their category choices. There is an increasing value-seeking behavior, with a preference for trusted brands. Brands need to nudge consumers and get into their consideration set, on the media platforms where the consumers are spending a lot of time. With digital acceleration like never before discovery, inspiration and purchase is all happening on mobile. Facebook family of apps with wide scale and deep penetration offer opportunities to marketers to get discovered in new ways. Around 80% of Gen Z and Millennial consumers, say their festive shopping is influenced by Facebook and Instagram.

Industry experts recommend marketers to leverage social media for driving brand discovery this season. In this light, industry leaders from Facebook, Maruti Suzuki, Hyundai, Samsung and Lenovo have shared insights about driving brand discovery, understanding evolving consumer media habits, newer consumer experiences, and building the capability of digital commerce.

Across most categories, Indians say that the Facebook Family of Apps is their leading online source for discovery

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OnePlus on Wednesday launched its new flagship 5G smartphone, the ‘OnePlus 8T’ with 120Hz Fluid AMOLED display and quad-camera set up, in the Indian market.

The OnePlus 8T will be available in two colours, aquamarine green and lunar silver at Rs 45,999 (12GB RAM+ 256GB internal storage) and Rs 42,999 (8GB RAM+128GB internal storage).

Customers buying the smartphone will also enjoy 10 per cent instant discount on purchase through HDFC Bank Debit and Credit cards on Amazon.in as well as upto 6 months no cost EMI on purchase through HDFC Bank debit and credit cards

“As a growing company, OnePlus is consistently exploring opportunities to fuel our growth, and meet the needs of more users worldwide, by starting to strategically diversify into new product categories and new price points, but at the same time, not compromising on our OnePlus promise,” Navnit Nakra, VP and Chief Strategy Officer OnePlus India, told IANS.

The smartphone will be available for early access at 12 am on October 16 for Amazon Prime members on Amazon.in and OnePlus Red Cable Club members on oneplus.in and OnePlus Store app.

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Twitter on Friday said a system change that was initiated earlier than planned affected its services, leading to a global outage.

Several users reported having issues with the micro-blogging platform early on Friday morning.

There was an irregularity with Twitter application programming interfaces (APIs) as some parts of the service were able to load but users reported that tweets were not flowing into timelines.

“We’re working hard to bring Twitter back to normal and expect things to be fully resolved in 1-2 hours. We appreciate your patience,” Twitter Safety said in a tweet.

In an earlier tweet, the company said Twitter has been down for many and it was working to get it back up and running.

“We had some trouble with our internal systems and don’t have any evidence of a security breach or hack,” it said.

Later, it acknowledged that a system change caused the outage worldwide.

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One in 10 queries on Google Search are misspelled and the tech giant has now introduced a new spelling algorithm that uses a deep neural net to significantly improve the ability to decipher misspellings, in under three milliseconds.

According to Google, this single algorithm makes a greater improvement to spelling than all of its improvements over the last five years.

The company on Thursday detailed how artificial intelligence (AI) is powering its Search engine, announcing numerous improvements made to Search over the year and some new features coming soon.

Google has invested deeply in language understanding research and last year, it introduced how BERT language understanding systems are helping to deliver more relevant results in Google Search.

“We’re excited to share that BERT is now used in almost every query in English, helping you get higher quality results for your questions,” said Prabhakar Raghavan, Senior Vice President, Search and Assistant, Geo, Ads, Commerce, Payments & NBU.

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The Samsung Galaxy S20 FE (Fan Edition) is a new smartphone model in South Korean electronics maker’s flagship Galaxy S20 series launched earlier this year. Priced at Rs 49,999, the Galaxy S20 FE is touted as a flagship smartphone with features inspired by premium siblings.

At first look, the smartphone appears to be an all-rounder, with a big AMOLED screen of 120Hz refresh rate, practical triple-camera set-up on the back, flagship processor, ample onboard storage, wireless charging, and ingress protection rating. But do these features and specifications translate into an experience one expects from premium smartphones? Let’s find out:Design and Display

The Galaxy S20 FE comes in several bright colour themes, including navy, lavender, mint and red. The phone’s bright colour theme looks stunning, especially the cloud mint version that we reviewed. Made of plastic, the back cover has a matte finish, which is resilient to smudges and fingerprints. It is, however, not as sturdy as the glass back seen in its premium siblings and gets scratched easily. Though part of the Galaxy S20 series, the phone has a rear design that seems inspired by the Galaxy Note20-series, especially the rectangular-shaped rear camera module in the top-left corner. The camera module protrudes significantly from the body and make the phone wobble on flat surfaces. It, however, does not look odd and seems very much part of the overall package.

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The insurance regulatory and development authority of India (Irdai) has come out with a standard individual term life insurance product, to be known as “Saral Jeevan Bima”, which will be mandatorily offered by all the life insurance companies from January 1, 2021 onwards.

The insurers have to file the product with the insurer latest by December 1, 2020.

The Saral Jeevan Bima product to be offered by all the life insurance companies will be non-linked non-participating individual pure risk premium life insurance plan. It will pay the sum assured in lump sum to the nominee in case of the life assured’s death during the policy term. Under the standard term product, there will be no exclusions, other than suicides. And, the product will be offered to individuals without restrictions on gender, place of residence, travel, occupation or educational qualifications.

The minimum sum assured under the product will be Rs 5 lakh, and the maximum can go upto Rs 25 lakh. However, the insurer will have the option of providing sum assured beyond Rs 25 lakh. While the minimum age of entry is 18 years, the maximum entry age has been capped at 65 and the maximum maturity age will be 70 years. The policy term will extend from 5 to 40 years.

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The US should build a formal tech alliance with India that will help develop an overarching Indo-Pacific strategy focused on emerging technology, an independent federal commission on artificial intelligence has said.

The newly-created National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence in its report on Tuesday said the Department of State and the Department of Defence should negotiate formal AI cooperation agreements with India, Australia, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea and Vietnam.

In the report submitted to the Congress and President Donald Trump, the Commission underlined that America must build on the strength of its allies and partners to win the global technology competition and preserve free and open societies.

This recommendation builds on growing support for the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, a strategic forum among the US, Australia, India, and Japan, and calls for formalising relationships with these and other nations in the Indo-Pacific region to focus on AI cooperation for defence and security purposes, it said.

The Commission recommended a comprehensive strategic framework to marshal international multilateral and bilateral cooperation to achieve this goal.

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More than three in four consumers (74 per cent) in India will begin shopping at least two weeks before Diwali, mostly on their smartphones, and Facebook and Instagram that influence nearly 80 per cent of festive shopping especially by Gen-Z and millennials can help brands build targeted campaigns based on current consumer trends, the social networking giant revealed in a report on Wednesday.

Festive shopping can be a positive outlet for businesses in these pandemic-hit times so the mantra is to start advertising early, utilising resources like video, augmented reality (AR), influencers, vernacular content and messaging to further drive the brand discovery, revealed Facebook’s ‘Festive Playbook’.

Forty-five per cent millennials prefer shopping early for the festive season and there is a 17 per cent increase in spending by early shoppers in the country.

“There is finally an uptick in the shopping mindsets of the consumers after several months of stay-at-home and social distancing times and saving for an uncertain future,” Sandeep Bhushan, Director and Head of Global Marketing Solutions (GMS) by Facebook India, told IANS.

“With over 400 million Indians connected on the Facebook family of apps in India, we will play a consequential role this festive season in both brand discovery and delivering truly incremental business outcomes,” Bhushan noted.

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Samsung has announced discounts and cashback offers on a wide range of products and consumers can get up to 40 per cent discount on select Galaxy smartphones such as its flagship Galaxy S20+.

Consumers shopping from Samsung.com will also get two-three day delivery of company products to their doorsteps across 16,000 pin codes in the country.

“This festive season, the Samsung.com online store is going to be the go-to destination for all Samsung products. Consumers can expect to find discounts as much as 60 per cent and cashback offers of up to 12.5 per cent on select products, but an exciting offer on every product for sure,” Asim Warsi, Senior Vice President, Samsung India said in a statement.

Samsung is also offering up to 60 per cent off on select accessories such as wireless chargers and JBL speakers.

Consumers can enjoy up to 45 per cent discount on a range of TV and Home Appliances such as The Frame television, Spacemax Family Hub French Door refrigerator and front-load Ecobubble with Hygiene Steam washing machine.

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