Mozilla reportedly plans $25 Firefox OS phones for India this year, but will it succeed?

June 12, 2014

Jun 12: Mozilla plans to further intensify the low-budget smartphone war in India with its smartphone. According to a report by WSJ (paywall), the company plans to launch the Firefox OS -based smartphone priced as low as $25 – translating to around Rs 1,500 – in the Indian market.

Firefox has earlier launched low-budget smartphones in Europe and Latin America with a price tag of $60 and realized to tap in to Indian and South East Asian markets with an aggressive pricing. High conversion rates are to be blamed in developing nations for a $60 smartphone to still feel expensive. The US-based company has collaborated with four handset makers which include ZTE, LG and five wireless carriers that include Telefonica, Deutsche Telekom, America Movil to name a few. This isn"t the first time, we have come across such a news. LG built Firefox OS running device was earlier rumoured to launch last year.

Firefox OS phonesThe population of India is over 1.3 billion and most of it could afford a $25 phone with Web apps, though the proliferation of cheap Android-based smartphones has spoilt the Indian consumer for choice. Setting itself apart from Android, would be the biggest challenge for Mozilla in India.

Secondly, there"s very little that is attractive about the Firefox OS from a consumer point of view, since it would be yet another smartphone OS which has to catch up in terms of apps. If Windows Phone was any indication, Firefox OS will have a tough time of it.

In India, smartphones or phones in general are bought off the shelf without a network provider subsidy, and while Firefox may not opt for the subsidy model, it could go with operator tie-ups for free data plans, or app-specific plans. It could also tie up with content providers to get free multimedia content for the new phone.

These are the value-additions that have helped Nokia"s Asha series in India. And Firefox also has to make sure that basic apps such as Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, and perhaps other smartphone staples such as Instagram or Vine, are all on board from the word go. Firefox OS is coming to the market at a time when Android is king, and to dethrone it, Mozilla would need more than just a hot price tag.

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Agencies
June 10,2020

US dictionary Merriam-Webster will update the meaning of the word "racism" after being contacted by a Missouri black woman, who claimed the current definition fell short of including the systematic oppression of people of colour, according to media reports.

"A revision to the entry for racism is now being drafted to be added to the dictionary soon, and we are also planning to revise the entries of other words that are related to racism or have racial connotations," according to a statement of the 189-year-old dictionary shared by Kennedy Mitchum, a recent graduate of Drake University in Iowa, on her Facebook.

Mitchum, 22, emailed the dictionary last month, following the death of African American George Floyd in the custody of four Minneapolis police officers, Xinhua news agency reported.

"I kept having to tell them that definition is not representative of what is actually happening in the world," Mitchum told CNN. "The way that racism occurs in real life is not just prejudice, it's the systemic racism that is happening for a lot of black Americans."

Merriam-Webster's first definition of racism is "a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race."

"It's not just disliking someone because of their race," Mitchum wrote in a Facebook post on Friday. "This current fight we are in is evidence of that, lives are at stake because of the systems of oppression that go hand-in-hand with racism."

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Agencies
June 27,2020

Mumbai, Jun 27: The Bombay High Court observed that COVID-19 patients from poor and indigent sections cannot be expected to produce documentary proof to avail subsidised or free treatment while getting admitted to hospitals.

The court on Friday was hearing a plea filed by seven residents of a slum rehabilitation building in Bandra, who had been charged ₹ 12.5 lakh by K J Somaiya Hospital for COVID-19 treatment between April 11 and April 28.

The bench of Justices Ramesh Dhanuka and Madhav Jamdar directed the hospital to deposit ₹10 lakh in the court.

The petitioners had borrowed money and managed to pay ₹10 lakh out of ₹12.5 lakh that the hospital had demanded, after threatening to halt their discharge if they failed to clear the bill, counsel Vivek Shukla informed the court.

According to the plea, the petitioners were also overcharged for PPE kits and unused services.

On June 13, the court had directed the state charity commissioner to probe if the hospital had reserved 20% beds for poor and indigent patients and provided free or subsidised treatment to them.

Last week, the joint charity commissioner had informed the court that although the hospital had reserved such beds, it had treated only three poor or indigent persons since the lockdown.

It was unfathomable that the hospital that claimed to have reserved 90 beds for poor and indigent patients had treated only three such persons during the pandemic, advocate Shukla said.

He further argued that COVID-19 patients, who are in distress, cannot be expected to produce income certificate and such documents as proof.

However, senior advocate Janak Dwarkadas, who represented the hospital, said the petitioners did not belong to economically weak or indigent categories and had not produced documents to prove the same.

A person who is suffering from a disease like COVID-19 cannot be expected to produce certificates from a tehsildar or social welfare officer before seeking admission in the hospital, the bench noted and asked the hospital to deposit ₹10 lakh in court within two weeks.

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News Network
March 18,2020

San Francisco, Mar 18: Facebook said a bug in its anti-spam system temporarily blocked the publication of links to news stories about the coronavirus. Guy Rosen, Facebook's vice president of integrity, said on Twitter Tuesday that the company was working on a fix for the problem.

Users complained that links to news stories about school closings and other information related to the virus outbreak were blocked by the company's automated system.

Later on Tuesday, Rosen tweeted that Facebook had restored all the incorrectly deleted posts, which also covered topics beyond the coronavirus.

Rosen said the problems were unrelated to any changes in Facebook's content-moderator workforce. The company reportedly sent its human moderators home this week because of the coronavirus outbreak.

A representative for Facebook did not immediately respond to questions on the status of Facebook's content moderators, many of whom do not work directly for the company and are not always able to work from home.

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