Skip to main content

Sphero Indi Is a Tiny Robotic Car That Helps Children Learn Programming

[Update: TSMC Not Taking New Orders] US Imposes New Restrictions on Huawei to Isolate it From Global Chipmakers


[Update: TSMC Not Taking New Orders] US Imposes New Restrictions on Huawei to Isolate it From Global Chipmakers

By Techtonic group

Having extended the trade sanctions on Huawei until May 2021, the US government on Friday imposed further restrictions on the company as part of its continuing efforts to isolate the Chinese telecom giant from global trade.

According to the country's Commerce Secretary, Wilbur Ross, the move will prevent Huawei from using American technology to design and manufacture semiconductors (chipsets) by circumventing existing trade sanctions. In a recent interview with Fox Business, Ross said: "There has been a very highly technical loophole through which Huawei has been able to, in effect, use U.S. technology. We never intended that loophole to be there". These new regulations, he said, are "a highly tailored thing" intended to plug that loophole.

Under the new rules, foreign chip makers that do business with Huawei's HiSilicon chip-making unit must obtain a license from U.S. officials in order to manufacture Huawei-designed semiconductors using US technology. The rule is effective with immediate effect, but the Commerce Department granted foreign foundries, like Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), a major producer of Huawei's chips, a 120-day grace period to comply with the new regulation.

Reacting to the latest developments, China urged the US to put an end to the escalating trade war between the two countries. Calling the latest round of restrictions "unreasonable suppression of Huawei and Chinese enterprises", the country's Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a statement Saturday, saying"The Chinese government will firmly uphold Chinese firms' legitimate and legal rights and interests. We urge the US side to immediately stop its unreasonable suppression of Huawei and Chinese enterprises".

While China hasn't officially threatened retaliation, a Global Times editorial on Friday claimed that if provoked further, "China will carry out countermeasures, such as including certain US companies into its list of 'unreliable entities,' imposing restrictions on or investigating US companies such as Qualcomm, Cisco and Apple, and suspending purchases of Boeing aircraft". It will be interesting to see if the trade war between the two largest economies in the world will escalate that much or if cooler heads will prevail going forward.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Here is the First-Ever Video That Was Posted on YouTube

Here is the First-Ever Video That Was Posted on YouTube By Techtonic group Fifteen years ago, on Valentines' Day of 2005, the domain name "www.youtube.com" went live. The following months saw developments of the website and the first-ever video on the platform was posted on April 23, 2005. The YouTuber who shared the video was none other than one of the founding members, Jawed Karim. The YouTube that we know now is a massive video streaming platform with innumerable audience members. However,  it is fascinating to see from where the platform started its journey . So, in this article, I want to talk about the very first video that was uploaded on the platform, and surprisingly, it still exists. So, the 240p, grainy video, titled "Me at the zoo", shows a 25-year-old Jawed Karim, one of the founders of YouTube, standing in front of a group of elephants at the San Diego Zoo.  The 18-second video went live on April 23, 2005, and it is still there with ove...

Instagram Parteners with Swiggy, Zomato to Let Resturant Add 'Food Order' Stickers in Stories

Instagram Parteners with Swiggy, Zomato to Let Resturant Add 'Food Order' Stickers in Stories By Techtonic group Instagram recently gave users the option to promote small (and local) businesses by placing a sticker in their Stories. Now, the company has partnered with two of India's renowned food delivery apps -  Swiggy and Zomato  - to bring a similar feature to the restaurant owners. It has debuted a new  'Food Order' sticker  that restaurants can include in their Stories to drive sales. The Coronavirus-led lockdown saw almost all restaurants and eateries shut shop for several days. And even when they opened, netizens have been wary to eat outside or order in due to hygiene concerns. Well, as restaurants open up in line with the WHO safety guidelines, they can now head to Instagram to find a new 'Food Orders' sticker in the Stories section. This new sticker is interactive and will  enable users to place food orders  simply by tapping on the sa...

Sphero Indi Is a Tiny Robotic Car That Helps Children Learn Programming

Robotic toys for learning are becoming more common in the market as kids turn more towards STEM learning. As a result, we’ve seen several modular and advanced robotic toys that are designed to help children learn the basic concepts of programming and problem-solving. And the Sphero indi is not that different. The Sphero indi Developed by renowned robotic-toy maker Sphero, the indi is essentially a toy car that helps children learn about the core concepts of problem-solving and logical thinking. The learning set comes with the indi, which the tiny robotic car, and a bunch of color-coded silicone-based tiles, designed to give the indi specific instructions. For instance, a green tile tells the car to move faster, a pink tile tells it to turn left, a yellow one instructs the car to drive slowly, and a red tile stops the car. So, the car comes equipped with a color sensor to detect the color of a tile over which it is driving and respond accordingly. Hence, using the Sph...