Author: Punit Panchal

New Delhi: On Thursday, Captain Smit Machhar was called a ‘hero’ by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The Indian pilot has been hailed by the survivors for his efforts in saving 174 lives on a flydubai flight when he was stabbed in midair by his co-pilot.A co-pilot stabbed in the air, the Indian pilot is credited with saving the 174 lives on a flydubai flight. The incident happened on September 30 aboard flight FZ1073, which was flying from Dubai to Tel Aviv. The majority of the passengers were Israelis. The co-pilot reportedly attacked the captain in the cockpit and the plane…

New Delhi: Alphabet’s Google on Wednesday has unveiled a new flagship artificial intelligence model, its latest effort to match its competitors, Anthropic and OpenAI. The model, dubbed Argon, is bigger than Google’s previous line of more sophisticated products, known as Argon ‘Pro’, says a company representative. It is “the most powerful model from Google” for complex workloads and “competitive” with OpenAI’s Astra and Anthropic’s Opus in key coding and cybersecurity metrics, says Google, which touts the newcomer as its best. Google released the figures which are of mixed-value. The company said in a separate press release it has beaten both…

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Tuesday accepted a fresh appeal next week to contest the running of the Election Commission of India (ECI) by Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar. The plea was read in the presence of the bench presided by Chief Justice of India Surya Kant, who had set a target of the next week for the plea to be put before him. Rakesh Kumar Singh in the petition has questioned whether the CEC can exercise the powers which are vested in the Commission in general. It is based on Article 324 of the Constitution which vests the…

New Delhi: Apple has spent years circling the smart home without really landing in it. According to reports, that changes on October 13. Reuters relayed the report on Wednesday, which cited people familiar with the matter. The centerpiece is a hub code-named J490. Apple is also said to be preparing the first HomePod mini update since the speaker debuted in 2020, plus its first new TV set-top box since 2022. Reports frames the launch as a critical expansion for the company under new CEO John Ternus. Apple hasn’t confirmed any of this, so treat the details as reporting, not announcement.…

New Delhi: OpenAI has released GPT-6.1 Sol, an upgrade to GPT-6 Sol, and the pitch is simple: nearly GPT-6 Astra’s ability without Astra’s bill. The company says the new model comes close to Astra on agentic coding, computer use and professional work. Most of the numbers, all from OpenAI’s own testing, lean on cost. On DeepSWE v1.1, which tests complex software tasks in real codebases, the model matches Astra at roughly a fifth of the price. It also beats GPT-6 Sol by 6.4 percentage points while using less reasoning effort. Document work follows the same pattern. On GDP.pdf, built around…

New Delhi: Chinese AI company DeepSeek announced on Wednesday it had teamed up with Huawei Technologies to develop programming tools for the Ascend chips. The transfer is another indication of the growing cooperation among China’s tech giants to look for alternatives to Nvidia’s ecosystem. DeepSeek has announced that it will open source all of the infrastructure for the Ascend platform, such as a high-level programming language called TileLang and the compute and communication libraries.DeepSeek has stated on its official WeChat blog that it will open source everything it has developed on the Ascend platform, including a high level programming language…

New Delhi: Six million is not an iPhone number. Apple sells that many phones in a quiet fortnight. For a foldable, though, it’s a big debut, and it’s the first real estimate of how the iPhone Duo might do. The figure comes from Counterpoint Research, which reckons Apple will sell roughly 6 million Duos in 2026. Senior analyst Ivan Lam attached a big condition: it all depends on how quickly Apple can ramp up production of the new hardware. The phone costs $1,999 and goes on sale in October. It sits at the very top of Apple’s lineup, and the…

New Delhi: If a company answers your WhatsApp query today, it’s likely paying for it. From October 1, Meta ends free service messaging on the WhatsApp Business API in India, with charges kicking in after a monthly free allowance. Service messages are the free-form replies a business sends after a customer writes first. They used to go out free inside an open 24-hour “service window.” That’s over. Each business phone number gets 1,000 free service messages a month, and anything past that costs Rs 0.115 each, the same rate as utility and authentication messages. There are no volume discounts on…

New Delhi: Based on data from Counterpoint Research, smartphone buyers in India are increasingly aware of the prices this year and are able to keep the hikes at a lane lower than that of its rivals, including OnePlus. The average price of smartphone increased by 16% in India during the first half of 2026. The companies, including Samsung and Apple, are raising the prices of their smartphones in response to the high costs of memory chips and weak rupee. OnePlus was the stand-out with an average growth of approximately 8%, which was well below the industry growth figure. Other competitors…

New Delhi: On Tuesday, OpenAI revealed its new always-on AI agents, dubbed Dots. The agents operate independently on apps to meet user requirements. The release is part of the company’s enterprise business strategy and puts it in competition with Meta to sell standalone AI. The product was announced at OpenAI’s developer day in San Francisco. This was also a chance to get more competitive business and consumer exposure and highlights the company’s newfound momentum since the introduction of its Astra model. Dots can execute tasks on OpenAI’s GPT-6 Astra model and adapt to project changes, such as changes in a…