Hyundai to invest $2.45 bln in India in EV push; WhatsApp moves to curb phishing; Julia 1.9 released
Hyundai Motor has pledged to invest $2.45 billion in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu over the next decade to boost its electric vehicle plans, according to multiple reports yesterday. WhatsApp has rolled out back-end updates to address the surge in spam calls, which have been a major problem for users in India. Also in this brief, Julia programming language’s version 1.9 is out, and Google has launched its latest budget smartphone, the Pixel 7a, in India at a price of Rs43,999, TechCrunch reports. Notes: Hyundai Motor has pledged to invest $2.45bn in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu over the next decade to boost its electric vehicle (EV) plans, according to multiple reports yesterday. The South Korean automaker signed an agreement with the state government of Tamil Nadu to increase production capacity at its Sriperumbudur plant and assemble EV battery packs, as well as to install 100 charging stations across the state in the next five years. Hyundai Motor India's managing director said the long-term investment would enhance manufacturing capabilities and increase production volumes to create the best EVs and internal combustion engines in Tamil Nadu for the rest of the world. Tamil Nadu currently accounts for almost 6 percent of all EVs manufactured in India, according to the state's industries minister. WhatsApp has rolled out back-end updates to address the surge in spam calls, which have been a major problem for users in India. The messaging app, owned by Meta, has bolstered its AI and ML systems to counter the issue, which has led to widespread reports of harassment and scams through fraudulent calls from unknown international numbers. The new measures are expected to reduce spam calls by at least 50 percent, the company said in an emailed statement yesterday. Julia, the popular programming language for scientific data analysis, has released a new upgrade, version 1.9, that eliminates the issue of slow start-up times for complex packages, according to a press release from JuliaHub yesterday. The update allows Julia to generate and save machine code for packages when they are installed, which Julia reuses every time it is launched, making it much snappier for day-to-day usage. Core contributors to the new version include JuliaHub, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, among others. Julia is open source and free to download and is rapidly being adopted by scientists doing exploratory data analysis. It is also used in the pharmaceutical industry for modelling drug interactions and vaccine dosing, among other applications. Google has launched its latest budget smartphone, the Pixel 7a, in India at a price of ₹43,999 ($536), TechCrunch reports. While this is not an affordable price for the Indian market, it is closer to the US price of $499 (₹40,937). The company will also continue to sell the Pixel 6a in India with a reduced price tag of ₹29,999 (~$365) to make it more affordable for customers. Despite marketing efforts, Google has yet to capture any significant market share in India, which saw 144 million smartphone shipments last year. However, the company has already shipped more than 175,000 devices in Q1 2023, largely thanks to the Pixel 6a. Google will face stiff competition from rivals such as Nothing, OnePlus, Vivo, and Xiaomi, who sell multiple models in the $300-$500 range.