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A new, minimalistic £10 phone with features like digital payments and streaming unveiled by Indian billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Jio could help expand internet services to a wider audience in the country. The affordable feature phone, priced at Rs 999 (about £10), can help bridge India’s “digital divide” by introducing 4G internet for the first time to scores of users, experts said. “Reliance Jio’s persistence to bridge the ‘digital divide’ by putting 4G internet-capable phones in hands of 2G feature phone users or first-time users continues!” industry analyst Neil Shah from the research firm Counterpoint said. Jio said in a press release earlier this week that the beta trial for its first million Jio Bharat phones would begin this week on Friday. The low-cost 4G-enabled phone with a 2-inch display comes with a number of pre-installed features. These include mobile payments through the United Payments Interface (UPI) – a form of instant digital payments that are widely used in India – as well as access to Jio’s own on-demand video and music streaming services JioCinema and JioSaavn. The low cost of the new phone may also bring the internet further within the reach of women in households. In low-income households in India, mobile phones remain a shared device with internet access shared on an individual mobile phone, explained digital rights activist Nikhil Pahwa, founder of tech policy analysis website MediaNama. “Typically, there is one person in the household whose mobile phone has internet access because devices are expensive and internet access prices have increased of late,” Mr Pahwa told The Independent. “So, a low-cost device means it will become affordable for low-income households to have more than one handset. This is great for women because typically it is the men in the house that have access to the internet,” he said. Reliance Jio said the phone will also come with a Rs 123 (£1.2) data plan valid for 28 days, offering 14GB of internet access (0.5 GB or 500 MB per day) – a price the company claims is 30 per cent cheaper than plans offered by competitors. This move may lead to other network operators in India such as Bharti Airtel reducing their tariffs too. “Bharti recently raised 2G prices from Rs99 to Rs155 across all circles while Vi [Vodafone Idea] took this in one circle. This disruptive step can halt incremental tariff increases for 2G and help JIO gain share in that segment,” JP Morgan said in a report on Tuesday. Following Jio’s announcement, shares for Bharti Airtel and Vi slipped by 2 to 3 per cent in early trading on Tuesday. The move also brings internet-enabled phones within the reach of the masses, and as more people understand the utility of the internet, it may lead to the further conversion of featurephone users to adopt smartphones, industry experts said. “There are still 250 million mobile phone users in India who remain ‘trapped’ in the 2G era, unable to tap into basic features of the internet at a time when the world stands at the cusp of a 5G revolution,” Reliance Jio Chairman Akash Ambani said. Telecom analyst Tarun Pathak tweeted that the featurephone-to-smartphone conversion in India has slowed down due to some “upgrade barriers”, adding that “Jio Bharat aims to bridge that gap”. Read More India rolls out 5G cellular network for eight cities in ‘step towards new era’ France riots: Aunt of teenager shot dead by police in Paris pleads for violence and looting to end Civil conflict in India’s Manipur threatens food supplies to 100,000 people, warns non-profit

Thousands of Reddit communities are planning a widespread blackout next week that will impact millions of users. The revolt comes in response to proposed charges for third-party app developers, which they claim will make the social media platform inaccessible for a significant proportion of users. On 12 June, many of the site’s biggest subreddits, including r/videos and r/gaming and r/bestof, will go dark for 48 hours in an effort to prevent the new pricing from coming into force. Reddit launched in 2005, but did not develop its own app until 2016. This meant that for the firs decade third-party apps became a popular way to access the platform, with many still preferred over the official app due to the user experience. These third-party apps need an API – which stands for Application Programming Interface – in oder to access the site’s information so that it can display it in the app for users. “Had a call with Reddit to discuss pricing,” a popular third-party app called Apollo announced in a post to Reddit. “Bad news for third-party apps, their announced pricing is close to Twitter’s pricing, and Apollo would have to pay Reddit $20 million per year to keep running as is.” According to Apollo, Reddit plans to charge $12,000 for 50 million API requests. “I’m deeply disappointed in this price,” Apollo wrote. “For reference, I pay Imgur (a site similar to Reddit in user base and media) $166 for the same 50 million API calls. “I don’t see how this pricing is anything based in reality or remotely reasonable. I hope it goes without saying that I don’t have that kind of money or would even know how to charge it to a credit card.” The Independent has reached out to Reddit for comment. Despite being owned and operated by Advance Publications, Reddit forums are controlled by volunteer administrators, who have organised the protest. One moderator named Toptomcat wrote in a post that the proposed pricing changes would make it “impossible” to keep operating in the way many Reddit users are used to. “Many subreddits will be going dark to protest this policy,” the user wrote. “Some will return after 48 hours: others will go away permanently unless the issue is adequately addressed, since many moderators aren’t able to put in the work they do with the poor tools available through the official app.” Read More Reddit founder says 90% of games will pay you to play them in 5 years Reddit boss calls TikTok 'fundamentally parasitic' for its privacy flaws Elon Musk responds to bizarre AI images of him as baby Apple finally fixed one of the most embarrassing things about typing on an iPhone Apple Vision Pro $3,499 VR headset unveiled at WWDC 2023 heralds ‘new era’

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The April 2020 supermoon will be the biggest and brightest of 2020 as its elliptical orbit brings it closer to the Earth in more than a year. On 7-8 April, the full moon will reach as close as 356,907km (221,772 miles), and will appear most impressive at moonrise on Tuesday and moonset on Wednesday. Clear skies in the UK, combined with unusually low air pollution due to the coronavirus lockdown, make it one of the best opportunities in years to view the rare celestial phenomenon. Here’s how to take the perfect picture of it: Use a landmark to get perspective Everyone will be taking pictures of the supermoon by itself, but some of the best pictures show the moon next to a land mark or trees and houses, which is what helps to give the picture “a sense of place”, says Nasa’s senior photographer, Bill Ingalls. “Think of how to be creative – that means tying it into some land-based object. It can be a local landmark or anything to give your photo a sense of place.” Pick the best spot Location isn’t everything, but it can definitely help with getting a perfect picture of the supermoon if you have time to plan it. You can look up the best monuments or statues in your area to photograph the image of the moon against, like Mr Ingalls does in Washington D.C., where he lives. “It means doing a lot of homework. I use Google Maps and other apps – even a compass – to plan where to get just the right angle at the right time,” he told Nasa. Use an app to find the moon Unless you're an astronomer, the best way to know where the moon will rise or set is to use a app on your smartphone to locate it. There are several free or cheap options you can choose from, each using your phone's inbuilt accelerometer to know which way you're facing. The apps can also tell you what phase the moon is in, while some even give other celestial details, like the location of planets and star constellations. Decent options for iOS and Android devices include Star Chart, Sky Safari and Skyview. Get the right exposure If you’re using a camera where you can control the shutter speed, don’t go for a long exposure even though the picture will be taken in low light, National Geographic photographer Mark Thiessen told the magazine, as it will lose any chance of capturing lunar detail and make the moon itself appear too bright. If you’re taking a picture on your camera, control the light balance by first tapping the screen where the moon appears to get the camera to focus on the object before dragging your finger up and down to play with the exposure. “You’ll usually want to drag it down for underexposure to be sure you have all the highlight detail,” National Geographic photographer Michael Christopher Brown said. Use a tripod for your camera or rest your phone on a solid surface David Reneke, an astronomer and writer for Australian science magazine told ABC.net that if you’re using an SLR or DSLR then it’s important to play with aperture settings on your camera to photograph the supermoon, but that using a tripod is essential. It’s worth using a tripod for taking pictures with a smartphone too, as any camera shake can compromise the quality of the pictures – but if you don’t have one to hand you can simply rest your phone on a window ledge. For older smartphones that use a digital zoom rather than an optical zoom, it’s generally best not to use the zoom as it could compromise the quality of the image. Instead, take the picture and then crop it. Newer phones like the Huawei P30 and P40 series feature incredible zoom capabilities that can take detailed pictures of far away objects. Other cameras come with special features to improve pictures of the night sky, such as the Google Pixel 4’s Astro mode. Read More How to take the perfect picture of tonight's supermoon Hundreds of years after it was discovered, one material could change the world Kanye West allowed back on Twitter following his ban over antisemitic conspiracies Hundreds of years after it was discovered, one material could change the world Kanye West allowed back on Twitter following his ban over antisemitic conspiracies As Twitter becomes X - Seven disastrous rebrands from Royal Mail to New Coke

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Google says it has made a significant step in identifying disease-causing genes, which could help spot rare genetic disorders. A new model named AlphaMissense is able to confidently classify 89 per cent of all possible “missense” variants in genes, identifying whether they are likely to cause diseases or benign. That compares with just 0.1 per cent of all missense variants that have been confidently classified by human experts. Missense variants happen when a single letter is substituted in the DNA, which in turn leads to proteins with a different amino acid. That small change can have significant effects – Google likened it to the way that changing a letter in one word can change the meaning of the whole sentence. Most of those variants are benign: the average person has more than 9,000 of them. But some of them can be disastrous, leading to rare genetic diseases. The new AlphaMissense looked at existing information about missense variants, and how commonly they are seen in humans and closely-related primates. It looked for those that were rarely seen, classifying them as pathogenic, and from that was able to use that information to analyse other protein sequences – giving not just a verdict on whether they were likely to cause problems, but also how confident it was. Experiments, conducted by humans, which look to find those mutations are expensive and slow: they require people to examine each unique protein and designed separately. Google says that the new system means that researchers can “preview” those results for thousands of proteins at a time, helping them decide where to focus. The company has used its systems to release a vast catalogue of “missense” mutations, so that researchers can learn about what effect they have. In some cases, those variations can lead to conditions such as cystic fibrosis, sickle-cell anaemia, or cancer, and understanding them could be key to researchers studying ways to treat or prevent those diseases. It is just the latest health breakthrough from Google’s Deepmind division, which is looking to use artificial intelligence to both identify and treat a variety of conditions. The new system was built on AlphaFold, the breakthrough model that helped unfold proteins, the building blocks of life. The research is described in a new paper, ‘Accurate proteome-wide missense variant effect prediction with AlphaMissense’, published in the journal Science. The catalogue is being made “freely available to the research community”, Google said, and the company will release the code behind the AI system. Read More BBC removes some Russell Brand content as monetisation suspended on YouTube Google Bard can now link to Gmail and other apps to help with responses Long-form video content is here to stay, says YouTube UK boss