Technical Information

Payments made by using international credit cards (ICC) during overseas visits will not attract Tax Collected at Source or TCS, as per the latest notification issued by the Finance Ministry. Putting to rest the controversy over usage of International Credit Cards, the ministry further amended the Foreign Exchange Management (Current Account Transactions) Rules, 2000, to exclude International Credit Cards from the purview of the Reserve Bank's Liberalised Remittance Scheme (LRS) which attracts TCS beyond a threshold at specified rates. "...the use of ICC for making payment by a person towards meeting expenses while such person is on a visit outside India" will not be covered under LRS, the notification said while inserting Rule 7 in FEM (CAT) Rules. The latest amendment will be effective retrospectively from May 16, the ministry said in a notification. The amendment reverses or scraps a May 16 notification by the ministry which omitted Rule 7 from FEM (CAT) Rules, ther...

The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has said recent applications by asset managers to launch spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) were not sufficiently clear and comprehensive, a source familiar with the matter said. The SEC has communicated its concerns to the exchanges Nasdaq and Cboe Global Markets which filed the applications on behalf of asset managers including BlackRock and Fidelity, the source added on Friday. Bitcoin, which has jumped since BlackRock filed its application on June 15, fell after the Wall Street Journal first reported the SEC rejection on Friday. The world's largest cryptocurrency was last down 1 percent at $30.142 (nearly Rs. 2,500). The SEC, Fidelity, BlackRock and Nasdaq declined to comment on the report, while Cboe was not immediately available. The ETF filings by such major firms had sparked renewed investor hopes that a bitcoin ETF would finally be approved by the SEC, and revived interest in cyptocurrencies , which have been hit ...

Housing finance major HDFC will merge with its subsidiary HDFC Bank on Saturday as their respective boards have cleared the proposal on Friday. Following the reverse merger, the 44-year-old institution HDFC Ltd would cease to exist from July 1 onwards. HDFC Ltd, the country's first home finance company, will lose its identity on Saturday. "Saturday, July 1, 2023, to be the 'Effective Date' of the composite scheme of amalgamation, on which date the certified order of the NCLT sanctioning the Scheme will be filed by HDFC Investments, HDFC Holdings, HDFC Limited and HDFC Bank with the RoC," HDFC Bank said in a regulatory filing. The board of directors of HDFC Bank in consultation with the board of directors of HDFC Limited has fixed July 13, 2023, for determining the shareholders of HDFC Ltd who would be issued and allotted the shares of HDFC Bank, it added. Besides, July 13 has been fixed for the continuation of warrants of HDFC Limited in the name of HDFC Bank....

Meta chief executive officer Mark Zuckerberg on Friday announced a new feature on the platform's instant messaging app,  WhatsApp . According to the Meta CEO, users will now be allowed to transfer their chat history between devices conveniently and in a secure way. Currently, both the devices need to work on the same OS (operating system) for the transfer to take place. The new feature makes the process easier and faster to transfer messages as well as larger attachments from one device to another. In a post shared by Meta CEO on his official Facebook handle, Zuckerberg wrote, "If you want to move your WhatsApp chats to a new phone, you can now do it more privately without your chats ever leaving your devices." Apparently, now the users will be able to share the chat history with the help of QR code authentication. He also shared a demonstration video to explain the new process.  While WhatsApp already allowed users to transfer their chat history from one phone to ano...

A South Korean chip executive imprisoned over industrial espionage charges rejected allegations he had sought to build a copycat chip factory in China with sensitive information developed by Samsung Electronics . In a handwritten letter to Reuters, his first comments to the media since he was detained on May 25, Choi Jinseog elaborated on his defense plan and said the allegations against him regarding the Xian plant were not substantiated. Prosecutors earlier this month indicted the former Samsung executive for illegally obtaining secret information to build a semiconductor plant only 1.5 km (1 mile) from a Samsung factory in Xian, China. Choi is in custody at a detention center in Suwon, a city south of Seoul where Samsung has its headquarters. He previously denied all the charges through his lawyer. In the letter, Choi said the factory was planned for Taiwan's Foxconn , for early test production of DRAM memory chips, while Samsung's plant in Xian was designed to manufactu...

Google said on Thursday it plans to block Canadian news on its platform in Canada, joining Facebook in escalating a campaign against a new law requiring payments to local news publishers. Alphabet -owned Google will remove links to Canadian news from search results and other products in Canada when the law takes effect in about six months. Facebook -owner Meta Platforms made a similar announcement last week after the passage of Bill C-18, or the Online News Act. Canada's media industry has called for tighter regulation of Internet giants to allow news businesses to recoup financial losses suffered in the years that Facebook and Google gained a greater share of the online advertising market. The independent budgetary watchdog in Canada estimated last year that news businesses could receive about CAD 330 million (roughly Rs. 20,436 crore) per year from deals mandated under the legislation. Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez, who introduced the bill last year, has said the pla...

Canada's Department of Justice has concluded that Microsoft's deal to buy Call of Duty maker Activision Blizzard "is likely to" lead to less competition in some aspects of gaming, according to a court filing on Thursday. In a letter dated Wednesday to Microsoft's US lawyers, the department said it had communicated to Microsoft's and Activision's lawyers in Canada that the deal would likely lead to less competition in "gaming consoles and multigame subscription services (as well as cloud gaming)." On Thursday, the letter was put on the docket of a US federal court proceeding in which the US Federal Trade Commission is asking a judge to temporarily stop the proposed transaction so that an FTC judge will have time to assess it. Closing arguments in the proceeding are set for later on Thursday. Microsoft has pressed for a decision in the court fight before the July 18 termination date for the deal. A ruling could come as early as next week. I...

Edtech major Byju's  is growing slowly but sustainably and is close to achieving profitability at the group level, the company's CEO Byju Raveendran said on Thursday. The company organised a town hall with Raveendran to allay apprehensions about the uncertainty around the company's growth and its future. According to sources, who attended the town hall, Raveendran said that issues with $1.2 billion (nearly Rs. 9,852 crore) Term Loan B lenders are being resolved through discussion and hopeful of a positive outcome in the next few weeks without the court's intervention. "Byju shared that Byju's is close to achieving profitability at the group level, demonstrating the company's commitment to financial management and optimization of operations," a source said. He said that despite the challenges faced by tech companies globally, Byju's has made substantial progress towards this significant milestone. Byju's had set a timeline to achieve profit...

Two US authors sued OpenAI in San Francisco federal court on Wednesday, claiming in a proposed class action that the company misused their works to "train" its popular generative artificial-intelligence system ChatGPT . Massachusetts-based writers Paul Tremblay and Mona Awad said ChatGPT mined data copied from thousands of books without permission, infringing the authors' copyrights. Matthew Butterick, an attorney for the authors, declined to comment. Representatives for OpenAI, a private company backed by Microsoft , did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Several legal challenges have been filed over material used to train cutting-edge AI systems. Plaintiffs include source-code owners against OpenAI and Microsoft's GitHub , and visual artists against Stability AI, Midjourney and DeviantArt. The lawsuit targets have argued that their systems make fair use of copyrighted work. ChatGPT responds to users' text prompts in a conversational way. I...

Apple's stock climbed to a record high close on Wednesday and was on the cusp of a $3 trillion market capitalization. The iPhone maker's stock rose 0.6% to end the day at $189.25, putting Apple's market value at $2.98 trillion, according to Refinitiv data. It was the second straight record high close for Apple's shares. Apple has yet to end a trading session with a stock market value above $3 trillion. It briefly peaked above $3 trillion in intra-day trading on Jan. 3, 2022 before closing the session just below that mark. The latest gains in shares of the world's most valuable company follow strong rebounds this year from several of Wall Street's technology-related heavyweights, fueled by bets that the Federal Reserve is nearing the end of its campaign of U.S. interest rate hikes, and by optimism about the potential for artificial intelligence. "There hasn't really been any new information fundamentally that would be supportive of the stock move,...

Binance's European banking partner Paysafe Payment Solutions will stop supporting the US cryptocurrency exchange from September 25, CoinDesk reported on Wednesday. The crypto exchange will be changing the provider for euro deposits and withdrawals through the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA), while the current partner — Paysafe — will no longer be providing these services to Binance users, the report said, citing Binance's spokesperson. Binance typically accesses SEPA via payment intermediaries. Paysafe and Binance did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment. The report comes as Binance faces scrutiny from regulators keen to clamp down on money laundering. Earlier this month, Binance and its US affiliate had entered an agreement with the Securities and Exchange Commission to ensure US customer assets remain within the country until a sweeping lawsuit filed by the regulatory agency is resolved. Binance had tied up with Paysafe last year so that its use...

Twitter's new chief executive, Linda Yaccarino , is working on a slew of measures to bring back advertisers who left the platform under Elon Musk's ownership, including introducing a video ads service, pursuing more celebrities and raising headcount, the Financial Times (FT) reported on Wednesday. Yaccarino, who started as CEO on June 5, is planning to launch full-screen, sound-on video ads that will be shown to users scrolling through Twitter's new short-video feed, the newspaper reported, citing three people familiar with the situation. She is in talks about a broader partnership with Alphabet-owned Google that would include advertising and access to some of Twitter's data, the report said, citing someone familiar with the matter. Twitter also hopes to renegotiate multiple contracts with tech companies such as Amazon.com , Salesforce and IBM into single broader partnerships, according to the newspaper. Twitter did not immediately respond to a Reuters request f...

The Indian government met large global firms such as Foxconn , Samsung Electronics and Reliance Industries to find ways to boost manufacturing in the country with its production-linked incentive (PLI) scheme. The meeting, addressed by India's Trade Minister Piyush Goyal on Tuesday, comes amid concerns that some of the businesses were facing delays in availing the incentives from New Delhi amid complicated procedures. The discussions included ways to improve local manufacturing at competitive costs, higher domestic value-adds in production, and quick grievance redressal, the government said in a statement on Wednesday. The meeting was also attended by executives from iPhone maker Wistron , laptop maker Dell , telecommunications firm Nokia Solutions and others that benefited from the scheme's incentive payouts. The PLI scheme, introduced in late 2020, is Prime Minister Narendra Modi's main industrial policy to boost manufacturing. The government has so far announced i...

Activision Blizzard said its studio that developed Call of Duty  would set up shop in Barcelona, putting into action its pledge to invest in Europe after Brussels approved Microsoft 's $69 billion (nearly Rs. 5,66,000 crore) acquisition of the company in May. The US company said on Wednesday its game developer Infinity Ward, which created the blockbuster first-person shooter game, would join its Digital Legends mobile games unit in the Spanish city. The decision comes after Britain blocked the Microsoft takeover, prompting Activision, which has studios in Guildford and Warrington in England, to say it would "reassess" its growth plans in the country. In contrast, it said it would "meaningfully expand" its investment and workforce in the European Union after the deal received the green light there. Microsoft and Activision Blizzard are battling antitrust regulators on both sides of the Atlantic to clinch the deal, the biggest ever in video gaming. Activisio...

The chief executive of Call of Duty  maker Activision Blizzard , Bobby Kotick, went before a federal judge on Wednesday to urge her to allow his company to be bought by Microsoft for $69 billion (nearly Rs. 5,66,300 crore). Kotick said that any effort to make Call of Duty exclusive to one platform, as Microsoft critics have said might happen, would alienate some 100 million people who play the game each month. "You would have a revolt if you were to remove the game from one platform," said Kotick. He said that removing Call of Duty from PlayStation , which is made by Sony Group , would be "very detrimental" to Activision's business. The Federal Trade Commission has asked a judge to stop the Microsoft acquisition temporarily in order to allow the agency's in-house judge to decide the case. In the past, the side that lost in federal court often conceded and the in-house process was scrapped. Much of the testimony in the trial has focused on Activision...

Shares of US chipmakers fell on Wednesday following a report that the Biden administration was planning new curbs on export of computing chips for artificial intelligence to China as early as July. Companies such as Nvidia , Advanced Micro Devices and Intel , which rely on the world's second largest economy for at least a fifth of their revenue, fell between 0.8 percent and 1.8 percent, caught in the US-China crossfire. The Philadelphia chip index dropped 0.9 percent. Last year, US officials had ordered Nvidia to stop exporting its top two AI chips to China to limit the country's technological capability. Months later, Nvidia launched a new advanced chip called A800 in China to meet export control rules. The new restrictions being considered by the Commerce Department would also include a ban on the sale of Nvidia's A800 chip without a special US export license, the Wall Street Journal report said. Curbs on sales of datacenter graphics processing units to China wou...

Bitcoin on Tuesday, June 27, incurred a small loss of 0.13 percent alongside majority other cryptocurrencies. Amid a shaky crypto market, Bitcoin's trading value stayed at a healthy price point of $30,380 (roughly Rs. 24.9 lakh). This is the second consecutive day that the most expensive cryptocurrency has managed to maintain its price above the mark of $30,000 (roughly Rs. 24.3 lakh). In the last 24 hours, the value of Bitcoin notably dropped by $69 (roughly Rs. 5,656). Ether walked into losses alongside Bitcoin on Tuesday. With a minor dip of 0.75 percent, Ether is presently trading at $1,863 (roughly Rs. 1.5 lakh). The second most valued cryptocurrency, ETH lost $10 (roughly Rs. 820) from its last day's pricing. “Market experts predict July gains for Bitcoin based on historical data,” Rajagopal Menon, Vice President, WazirX, told Gadgets 360. As per the crypto price tracker by Gadgets 360, most of the popular altcoins found themselves struck by small losses today. Thes...

US Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan is set to testify on July 13 before the House Judiciary Committee led by Republicans who have sharply criticized her leadership of the antitrust enforcement agency, the committee, and commission confirmed on Friday. This will be her first appearance before the committee since Republicans assumed control. Republicans have been especially critical of the FTC's privacy investigation into Twitter since it was purchased by billionaire Tesla CEO Elon Musk . In March, the FTC confirmed it was conducting an investigation into Twitter's privacy practices. The agency has been concerned whether Twitter had the staffing to abide by a May 2022 settlement with the FTC in which it agreed to improve its privacy practices. In April, the committee subpoenaed Khan for documents related to the Twitter privacy probe following Musk's $44 billion (roughly Rs. 3,61,687 crore) purchase of the social media company in October. House Judiciary Commit...

Apple on Wednesday released the visionOS SDK, a set of tools that will enable developers to build apps for the Apple Vision Pro mixed reality headset. The Cupertino company's first spatial computer will go on sale in the US next year and Apple is providing app developers with the tools required to build apps for the device. Unlike other Apple products, the company's upcoming mixed reality headset will use a combination of three different modes of interaction using a person's eyes, hands, and voice. The visionOS SDK will allow developers to tailor their apps around this functionality while making use of the specialised hardware on the device.   The company announced  on the Apple Developer website that the visionOS SDK is now available to developers. In order to create spatial computing apps for the Apple Vision Pro, developers will have to download Xcode 15 Beta 2 that includes the latest visionOS SDK along with a tool to visualise and preview 3D content for the heads...

The US Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear a bid by Apple  and Broadcom to revive their challenges to Caltech data-transmission patents in a patent infringement case in which the university's earlier $1.1 billion (nearly Rs. 9,000 crore) jury verdict against the companies was thrown out. The justices turned away an appeal by Apple and Broadcom of a lower court's ruling affirming a trial judge's decision to prevent the companies from contesting the validity of the patents as they defended against the California Institute of Technology's lawsuit. The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, which specializes in patent cases, ruled against the companies' arguments because they failed to bring them up during earlier proceedings at the US Patent and Trademark Office. Apple and Broadcom have argued that they should have been allowed to raise the patent challenges during the trial. A jury found that the companies infringed Caltech's patents, ordering App...

Meta Platforms plans to cut off access to news on Facebook and Instagram for all users in Canada once a new law requiring internet giants to pay news publishers takes effect, arguing news has no economic value to the company and that its users do not use the platform for news. Canada drafted new rules after legacy media companies complained about internet companies elbowing news businesses out of the online advertising market. Why are technology companies against the law?  The Canadian parliament passed "Bill C-18" into law, requiring internet giants to pay news publishers. The Online News Act forces platforms like Facebook and Alphabet 's Google to negotiate commercial deals and pay news publishers for their content. Both Meta and Google had warned they would withdraw access to news articles on their platforms in Canada if the legislation is passed into law without amendments. Facebook says links to news articles make up less than 3 percent of the content on it...

Google has urged India's Supreme Court to quash antitrust directives against it for abuse of the Android market, two sources said, as its presses its legal battle against the competition watchdog in one of its most important markets. The Competition Commission of India (CCI) said in October that Google, whose Android mobile operating system powers 97 percent of the 600 million smartphones in India, had exploited its dominant position. It ordered Google to remove restrictions imposed on device makers, including those related to the pre-installation of apps , and fined the US firm $163 million (nearly Rs. 1,300 crore), which it paid. In March, an Indian tribunal gave partial relief to the Alphabet  unit by setting aside four of the 10 directives in the case. The tribunal said CCI's findings of Google's anti-competitive conduct were correct, but gave Google some relief by quashing some of the directives that forced it to alter its business model. Google is now asking ...

Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw on Monday said current Central Government has succeeded in attracting investments in emerging technology, and stated that India is the next important location for semiconductor manufacturers. Congress has attempted to do so since the 1980s but was not successful.  During Prime Minister Narendra Modi's State visit to the US last week,  Micron  Technology announced a massive India-specific investment plan. On Thursday, hours after PM Modi met Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra in the US and invited him to boost semiconductor manufacturing in India, the global  semiconductor  major announced plans to build a new assembly and test facility in Gujarat in India with an investment of $825 million (nearly Rs. 6,800 crore). Once set up, the facility will address demand from domestic and international markets. Micron ...

Apple has come up with a promotional deal for university students in India. Under the new "Back to University" 2023 campaign, the Cupertino tech giant is providing discounts on the purchase of iPad, MacBooks, and desktop computers. Apple's iPad Pro 11-inch, iPad Pro 12.9-inch, and iMac 24-inch can be grabbed at discounted rates during the sale. Apple is offering free AirPods with select products as well. Further, students can avail of 20 percent discount on AppleCare+ plans. These offers are available across both online and offline channels. As part of the Back to University sale, university students as well as teachers and staff can purchase Apple products at discounted prices. The offers are valid from June 22 to October 2 across the company's channels — Apple BKC , Apple Saket as well as Apple Store Online. In the ongoing sale, as detailed on the company website , eligible customers can grab the iPad Pro 11-inch at a starting price of Rs. 76,900, down from the...

Xiaomi Pad 6  was recently  launched in India as the successor to the Xiaomi Pad 5 that made its debut in 2022. Just like last year's model, Xiaomi has attempted to equip its latest tablet with a range of features and a Qualcomm Snapdragon chipset, while keeping the price of the device under Rs. 30,000. The Xiaomi Pad 6 sports a 11-inch LCD display, runs on Android 13 out-of-the-box, and Xiaomi claims it can offer up to two days of battery backup. It is equipped with a 13-megapixel primary camera and an 8-megapixel selfie camera. This week on Orbital, the Gadgets 360 podcast, resident device expert  Pranav Hegde , who has spent some time with Xiaomi's latest tablet, talks to guest host Sheldon Pinto  about the device. Pinto reviewed the Xiaomi Pad 5 last year, and the duo discuss some of the changes and upgrades that have made their way to this year's model and how it fares against the competition. The Xiaomi Pad 6 isn't exactly a new device — it was l...