TecQ is The Quint’s weekly roundup of top technology stories.
1. How Pilots Land Planes in Fog and the Tech They Use
It’s the same story every winter season in Delhi. Flustered flyers stranded at the Delhi airport waiting for hours for the green ‘Now Boarding’ sign to pop up on the information display.
Wednesday, 3 January, brought new troubles for fliers as air fares had been hiked by almost 28 percent due to cancellations and delays because of the dense fog.
What’s puzzling is that the Indira Gandhi International Airport in Delhi is equipped with the state-of-the-art anti-fog landing system, which in more technical language is called CAT IIIB Instrument Landing System (ILS). This helps planes land during dense fog and inclement weather conditions when visibility is low. And yet there are delays.
Why this happens isn’t really what I am here to focus on. Rather, I am here to talk about the tech that helps planes land safe.
Read the full story here.
2. Is Your Phone Mic Spying on Your Conversations & Suggesting Ads?
Imagine you’re having a conversation with your friend about buying a car and the next day, you see an ad about the same car pop up on your Instagram feed or as an ad on Facebook. This, after you didn’t even go online and search for it.
Many people around the world have shared similar experiences and think that tech giants like Google and Facebook spy on us using the phone’s microphone and then eavesdrop on our conversations to suggest advertisements.
To date, nothing of that sort has been proven.
Read the full story here.
3. This Govt-Owned Search Website Fetches Data From ‘Sarkari’ Portals
Currently, most of your online searches are directed towards Google, which is universally known to fetch information on anything and everything you’d want to know.
But, what if you were looking for stuff a bit closer to home and something much more intricate and detailed?
The Indian government has launched a search portal for all the ’sarkari’ information you’d want to look for online. We checked and found that the website is currently live at goisearch.nic.in.
Read the full story here.
4. You Won’t Be Able to Use Whatsapp on These Devices in 2019
Facebook-owned WhatsApp has been dropping support for dated devices and operating systems (OS) from time to time and now it is ending support for iOS 7 and older versions, Android 2.3.7 and Nokia Series 40 (S40).
What this means is that users of Nokia Series 40 device will no longer be able to create new WhatsApp accounts and some features of the app could stop functioning on the device at any time.
"When we started WhatsApp in 2009, people's use of mobile devices looked very different from today. The Apple App Store was only a few months old. About 70 percent of smartphones sold at the time had operating systems offered by BlackBerry and Nokia.
Read the full story here.
5. Honor Band 4 is the Affordable Rival to Xiaomi’s Mi Band 3
The past couple of months have seen an exponential growth in the fitness tracker and the wearable market. According to the International Data Corporation (IDC) December report, the wearable shipments have grown compared to the same period last year.
Apart from the premium fitness trackers in the market like the Fitbits and even the Apple Watch, there is huge potential in the budget segment that companies like Xiaomi and Honor are trying to tap.
Read the first impressions of the Honor Band 4 here.
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