The hype around 10-minute delivery apps and online retail in general often blinds us to the still-relevant truth that even today, more than 85% of global retail sales still happen through physical stores. This is classic availability bias—we’re surrounded by people who rave about ordering everything from groceries to the latest smartphones online, even as…
Data for 2024-25 released this week shows a notable shift in India’s trade trends with its big partners. With the US, India’s merchandise exports jumped 11.6% to $86.5 billion last fiscal year, while imports rose 7.4% to $45.3 billion. As a result, our bilateral trade surplus widened to $41.2 billion. In contrast, our exports to…
The move may pose a challenge to Google’s significantly larger technology ecosystem, which saw the Android operating system platform power over 92% of the new phones that were sold in India last year. Between them, Apple and Google cumulatively control more than two out of every three consumer gadgets in the world. And, for the…
New Delhi: The government on Monday notified rules to harmonize all Indian clocks with indigenous atomic clocks to lend the Indian Standard Time a “millisecond to nanosecond accuracy”.   The draft Legal Metrology (Indian Standard Time) Rules, 2025, notified by the Department of Consumer Affairs (DoCA), seeks to ensure uniformity and precision in timekeeping…
SAO PAULO (AP) — Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva on Monday signed a bill restricting the use of smartphones at school, following a global trend for such limitations. The move will impact students at elementary and high schools across the South American nation starting in February. It provides a legal framework to ensure…
Philo of Byzantium, an inventor of the third century BC, described how crushed gallnuts, dissolved in water, could make invisible ink. Technology has shaped spycraft for millennia, but today it is having an unprecedented effect. The internet enables covert action on a grand scale. Biometric border controls impede spies operating abroad. Smartphones haemorrhage secrets. Some…
“Let me sleep yaar,” she replied. “Oh, get up and smell the coffee.” Mairaa took a few seconds to register the smell of freshly brewed coffee and then woke up: “That’s nice,” she said, taking a sip. “And why are you glued to your phone at 7am?” “I was reading this very interesting piece on…
Now that a jobs crisis is weakening its hold on power in India, how serious is the BJP government about reviving Indian factories? We will know in the budget, which offers it a chance to remedy a disastrous lurch toward protectionism. Without fixing that folly, the country could miss an opportunity to join key global…
