TECH & SCIENCE - Research Editorial

Good News for Technologists! TCS Makes a Big Announcement, To Hire Over 1.25 Lakh People Soon

2023 began with a bang for techies, TCS Makes a Big Announcement, To Hire Over 1.25 Lakh People Soon, as Amazon and enterprise software company Salesforce announced layoffs of more than 25,000 employees.

While Amazon announced on Wednesday that it will lay off over 18,000 employees, Salesforce laid off 10% of its employees beginning January 18 due to hiring too many people during the pandemic. In the midst of all of this, the country’s largest software exporter, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), announced that it will hire over 1.25 lakh people in FY24.

“Looking at our overall hiring trends, we are likely to continue (hiring) at the same level. Next year, we expect to hire between 1,25,000 and 1,50,000 people. We continue to have faith in our medium- to long-term outlook “Rajesh Gopinathan, the company’s CEO and Managing Director, told reporters.

Furthermore, he added, “Our posture is positive; we are not removing players from the field; we are fully engaged and present. We are fully committed in terms of talent capacity. We overinvested last year and are reaping the benefits this quarter.”

For the uninitiated, the software company reported a 2,197-person decrease in its employee base from October to December, totaling 6.13 lakh. The Tata group company, on the other hand, made it clear that this was due to increased hiring over the last 18 months, rather than the demand environment.

IN FY23, TCS HIRED OVER 55,000 EMPLOYEES
Despite reporting a net decrease of 2,197 people in the December quarter, the company has already hired over 55,000 people in FY23. In FY22, it added 1.03 lakh people to its total workforce.

Milind Lakkad, the company’s chief human resources officer, attributed the decline in the December quarter to attrition being higher than new hires.

IN FY24, 40,000 FRESHERS WILL BE HIRED
The HR chief also stated that the company will continue to hire approximately 40,000 new employees in FY24, and that over 5 lakh young people have applied to be hired.

Furthermore, he stated that TCS has hired 42,000 freshers in FY23 thus far, implying that the company hired only about 7,000 employees in the third quarter, compared to 35,000 in the first half. It could hire a few thousand more people in the fourth quarter, or it could remain quiet.

You May Be Also Interested in:

Follow us for more updates on Twitter, Tumblr, LinkedIn

Amazon confirms job cuts totaling 18000, with CEO Andy Jassy stating that several teams will be affected

Amazon has announced the elimination over 18,000 jobs, the majority of which will be in the Amazon Stores and PXT (People, Experience, and Technology, HR) departments.

In a blog post, the company stated that it is “eliminating roles” as part of its annual planning process for 2023. According to the post, Amazon typically communicates these outcomes internally, but it is doing so in public because the teammates “leaked this information externally.” The layoffs will begin on January 18.

The company laid off nearly 10,000 employees in November 2022. This year, the e-commerce behemoth has even put a halt to new hire hiring.

Amazon Cuts Over 18,000 Jobs, Salesforce Cuts 10% Of Workforce | Power Breakfast | CNBC-TV18 (CNBCTV18)

Amazon Cuts Over 18,000 Jobs, Salesforce To Cut 10% Of Its Workforce

You May Be Also Interested in:

Follow us for more updates on Twitter, Tumblr, LinkedIn

Apple iPhone manufacturer Foxconn apologises for a hiring blunder that resulted in violent protests

In Zhengzhou, the largest Apple iPhone factory, owned by Foxconn, is dealing with violent protests. On Wednesday, reports began to circulate that workers were smashing CCTV cameras with sticks. Workers were also seen damaging property at the factory in videos.

Foxconn has finally apologised for a “technical error” in the hiring process that resulted in the violent protests.

According to Reuters, Foxconn is investigating the matter and has discovered a technical problem in the onboarding process. “Our team has been investigating the matter and discovered a technical error occurred during the onboarding process,” Foxconn said.

Foxconn went on to say that the problem was caused by an input error in the computer system. They have promised that the pay will be the same as stated during the hiring process.

“We apologise for an input error in the computer system and guarantee that the actual pay is the same as agreed and the official recruitment posters,” the statement continued.

According to the report, the majority of the agitators have stopped protesting. The company claims to be working with a smaller group of protesters at the manufacturing facility to resolve the issue.

Some workers also complained about the factory’s poor working conditions during the lockdown. They didn’t even know if they’d get food while they were quarantined.

Apple iPhones are manufactured in China’s Zhengzhou factory, which employs over 2 lakh people. The factory is also in charge of producing the iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max models, which are not currently produced in India. The factory’s size and operations can be understood by the fact that it alone is responsible for 70% of iPhone shipments worldwide.

China’s zero-covid policy, combined with an increase in Covid cases, has resulted in more lockdowns. After the protests began, the country declared a state of emergency in the city. Residents have been asked to remain inside.

The factory is also in charge of producing the iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max models, which are not currently produced in India. The factory’s size and operations can be understood by the fact that it alone is responsible for 70% of iPhone shipments worldwide.

You May Be Also Interested in:

Follow us for more updates on Twitter, Tumblr, LinkedIn

ISRO conducts the 200th successful launch of the RH200 sounding rocket

RH200, ISRO’s versatile sounding rocket, has completed its 200th consecutive successful launch from Thumba, Thiruvananthapuram. The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) called it a “historic moment” on Wednesday. Former President Ram Nath Kovind and ISRO chairman S Somanath were among those present.

RH200 successfully launched from the Thumba Equatorial Rocket Launching Station (TERLS). According to an ISRO statement, “Indian sounding rockets are used as privileged tools for the scientific community to carry out experiments on meteorology, astronomy, and similar branches of space physics.”

The sounding rocket platform has been used for scientific exploration of the Earth’s atmosphere in campaigns such as Equatorial ElectroJet (EEJ), Leonid Meteor Shower (LMS), Indian Middle Atmosphere Programme (IMAP), Monsoon Experiment (MONEX), Middle Atmosphere Dynamics (MIDAS), and Sooryagrahan-2010.

The Rohini Sounding Rocket (RSR) series were forerunners for ISRO’s heavier and more complex launch vehicles, and are still used for atmospheric and meteorological studies today, according to the national space agency headquartered here. “The 200th consecutive successful flight demonstrates Indian rocket scientists’ commitment to unrivalled reliability demonstrated over the years,” it said.

“The 200th consecutive successful flight demonstrates Indian rocket scientists’ commitment to unrivalled reliability demonstrated over the years,” it said.

You May Be Also Interested in:

Follow us for more updates on Twitter, Tumblr, LinkedIn

Closest Moon Fly-by by NASA’s Artemis 1 Orion Spacecraft Ends with Stunning Images

On Monday, NASA’s unmanned Orion spacecraft successfully accomplished its closest fly-by of the moon. The spacecraft was 81 miles above the lunar surface and travelling at 5,102 miles per hour, according to a tweet from James Free, NASA’s Associate Administrator for Exploration Systems Development.

The fourth orbital trajectory adjustment burn of the Orion spacecraft had been successfully accomplished on the sixth day of the Artemis I mission. The tweet stated: “Fly-by finished! NASA This morning, at a speed of 5,102 mph and 81 miles above the lunar surface, Orion successfully accomplished its closest fly-by of the Moon. We performed an outward-powered fly-by burn before the fly-by, accelerating at a pace of more than 580 mph. Look at it here:

**“Fly-by finished! NASA This morning, at a speed of 5,102 mph and 81 miles above the lunar surface**

Given that the Moon is four times larger than the World, one social media user who saw James Free’s image said, “It’s amazing how small the earth looks in comparison to the Moon… “Wait for a second”

“The moon is bigger than this dot when I look at it from the earth,” I said. The size of Earth exceeds that of the moon. There’s a problem here,” read a second comment.

“With how near it came to the moon, it would make sense to utilise a wide-angle lens,” a third user observed. This would then fill the frame with so much space that the Earth would appear tiny. It doesn’t imply that a person could have seen it as being so small. Others praised the image as being “amazing.”

At 6:44 AM UTC, the spaceship Orion, which is empty of the crew, finished its powered fly-by (12:14 PM IST). At 6:57 UTC, it passed our globe at a height of 81 miles (12:27 P.M. IST). Prior to the fire, the spacecraft was travelling at a speed of 2,128 miles per hour. After the burn, that speed rose to 5,102 miles per hour.

Following the outbound fly-by, Orion passed over the Apollo 11 landing site at Tranquility Base at a distance of about 1,400 miles at 7:37 A.M. UTC (01:07 P.M. IST), according to NASA. It then passed by the Apollo 12 site at a height of about 7,700 miles before flying over the Apollo 14 site at a height of about 6,000 miles.

You May Be Also Interested in:

Follow us for more updates on Twitter, Tumblr, LinkedIn

Last significant step before lunar orbit, the NASA capsule buzzes the moon

Last significant step before lunar orbit: On its journey to a record-breaking lunar orbit, NASA’s Orion spacecraft arrived at the moon on Monday, whirling around the rear side and passing within 80 miles (128 km) of the surface.

The crew capsule and its three test dummies were on the far side of the moon when the close approach took place. Flight controllers in Houston could not learn whether the crucial engine firing went smoothly until the spacecraft emerged from behind the moon, more than 232,000 miles (375,000 km) from Earth, as a result of the half-hour contact blackout.

The moon became larger in the video that was transmitted earlier that morning as the spacecraft travelled its final few thousand miles after taking out last Wednesday from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center atop the most potent rocket that NASA has ever produced.

Flight director Zeb Scoville stated, “This is one of those days that you’ve been dreaming about and talking about for a long, long time.”

Since NASA’s Apollo programme 50 years ago, no spacecraft has reached the moon. This marks a significant accomplishment for the $4.1 billion test flight that started last Wednesday. The first three lunar landings by humanity, Apollo 11, Apollo 12, and Apollo 14, were all passed by Orion on its flight path.

On its journey to a record-breaking lunar orbit, NASA’s Orion spacecraft arrived at the moon on Monday, whirling around the rear side and passing within 80 miles (128 km) of the surface.

Orion had to slingshot around the moon in order to gain enough speed to enter the wide, uneven lunar orbit. As the capsule swung out from behind the moon, onboard cameras transmitted back a picture of Earth — a blue dot surrounded by blackness. If everything goes according to plan, the capsule will be in that orbit by Friday after another engine firing.

The record for the greatest distance travelled by an astronaut-designed spacecraft, set by Apollo 13 in 1970 at almost 250,000 miles (400,000 km), will be broken by Orion the following weekend. And it will continue to go, getting up to 270,000 miles from Earth at its farthest next Monday (433,000 km).

Before returning to Earth, the capsule will spend almost a week in lunar orbit. A Pacific splashdown is planned for Dec 11.

Orion lacks a lunar lander; a touchdown won’t occur until NASA astronauts use SpaceX’s Starship to try a lunar landing in 2025. But as early as 2024, astronauts will board the Orion spacecraft for a trip around the moon.

Managers at NASA were thrilled with the mission’s progress. In its premiere, the Space Launch System rocket behaved remarkably well, officials told reporters late last week.

However, the launch pad at the Kennedy Space Center sustained more damage than anticipated from the 322-foot (98-meter) rocket. The 8.8 million pounds (4 million kg) of liftoff thrust produced such a powerful force that it tore the elevator’s blast doors off.

Orion lacks a lunar lander; a touchdown won’t occur until NASA astronauts use SpaceX’s Starship to try a lunar landing in 2025. Before that, as early as 2024 will see astronauts aboard the Orion spacecraft for a trip around the moon.

Managers at NASA were thrilled with the mission’s progress. In its premiere, the Space Launch System rocket behaved remarkably well, officials told reporters late last week.

At the Kennedy Space Center launch pad, the 322-foot rocket did more harm than anticipated. The blast doors of the elevator were torn off by the 8.8 million pounds of liftoff thrust’s tremendous energy.

You May Be Also Interested in:

Follow us for more updates on Twitter, Tumblr, LinkedIn

Twitter fired employees who publicly called out: Elon Musk

At least three Twitter employees who survived the major layoffs that slashed the company’s personnel in half were dismissed after publicly criticising their new leader on the network. Eric Frohnhoefer is one of them, and he responded to Elon Musk’s post apologising for Twitter’s slowness in several countries.

“The app is performing over 1000 badly batched RPCs only to render the home timeline!” Musk penned a letter. Frohnhoefer said that Musk’s assertion is “false” after six years of working on Twitter for Android.

The multi-company executive then asked him what the correct number was and what he had done to fix Twitter for Android, which had been “super slow.” He responded with the work his team had done for the app and listed a few reasons why it was slow: “First, it’s bloated with features that get little usage. Second, we have accumulated years of tech debt as we have traded velocity and features over perf. Third, we spend a lot of time waiting for network responses.”

Their conversation continued in multiple threads, and when one person suggested that Frohnhoefer should have notified his boss quietly, he responded, “Maybe he should ask questions discreetly. Maybe via Slack or email.” After that, Musk informed everyone on Twitter that Fronhoefer had been fired.

According to Forbes, the former Twitter app engineer received no notification from Twitter regarding his firing and that his laptop “simply shut off.” He went on to say that “[n]o one trusts anyone within the firm anymore,” making it difficult to perform. According to the former Twitter employee, “people were more open and thought they could critique before Musk took control, and now that’s definitely not the case.”

**At least three Twitter employees who survived the major layoffs that slashed the company’s personnel in half were dismissed after publicly criticising their new leader on the network.**

According to Bloomberg, another engineer named Ben Leib was also sacked. Musk’s apology tweet was also met with a response from Leib, who said that as a former “tech head for timelines infrastructure at Twitter,” their new owner had no idea what he was talking about. Then there’s Sasha Solomon, a business tech lead who responded to Musk’s tweet with her own and later claimed that she, too, had been sacked.

Twitter has seen significant adjustments since Elon Musk officially purchased the company. He quickly fired its senior executives, including CEO Parag Agrawal, and ordered mass layoffs that resulted in the dismissal of roughly half of the social network’s staff. Twitter also debuted the $8-per-month Blue membership, which gave everyone who could afford it access to quick verification. However, making the blue checkmark easy to achieve resulted in an increase in impersonation and legitimate-looking fraudulent accounts on the platform.

Since Musk took over late last month, Twitter has been in disarray. Many employees are still furious that Musk sacked half of the company’s 7,000-plus employees, including the majority of senior management, within a week of his $44 billion buyout.

The billionaire also quickly altered corporate culture. While it was not previously common for employees to publicly challenge leadership at Twitter, employees frequently spoke out on internal Slack channels and via email before Musk arrived, sometimes posting criticism or concerns to the entire company.

According to current and former employees, Musk’s changes have resulted in a lack of communication internally about who is in charge and what the company’s priorities are.

The changes have also raised concerns that Twitter, based in San Francisco, is vulnerable to product failures or technical outages. Twitter implemented another coding freeze on Monday, halting app product updates, with no explanation given to employees.

Employee firings have also sparked a barrage of jokes emphasising Musk’s termination streak since taking over Twitter in October. Elon Musk has fired more than half of the company’s personnel, and Twitter began terminating contractual employees last weekend. He is believed to have terminated the services of over 4,400 contractual employees. The whole contractual workforce numbered 5,500 people.

**Elon Musk is considering making verification a Twitter Blue perk.: Twitter will charge USD 8 per month for blue tick**

News Headlines: Elon Musk: ‘I have too much work on my plate’

You May Be Also Interested in:

Follow us for more updates on Twitter, Tumblr, LinkedIn

China launches the remote sensing satellite Yaogan-34

On Tuesday, China successfully launched a new Yaogan-34 series remote sensing satellite into space from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China at 9:38 a.m. (Beijing Time).

On November 15, 2022, a Long March-4C rocket carrying a new Yaogan-34 series remote sensing satellite blasts off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China. (Photo courtesy of Wang Jiangbo/Xinhua)

The Yaogan-34 03 satellite was successfully launched into orbit by a Long March-4C rocket.

This remote sensing satellite will be used in a variety of applications, including land resource surveying, urban planning, crop yield estimation, and disaster prevention and mitigation.

You May Be Also Interested in:

Follow us for more updates on Twitter, Tumblr, LinkedIn

NASA has cleared the Artemis moon rocket for launch on Wednesday

NASA managers examined the threat posed by hurricane-damaged insulation on the Artemis moon rocket on Monday and certified the $4.1 billion booster for launch “as is” on Wednesday. The launch would begin a long-delayed mission to propel an unpiloted Orion crew capsule around the moon and back.

Engineers found that even if more strips of the caulk-like “RTV” insulation peel away during the Space Launch System rocket’s ascent to space, the material is not huge or dense enough to do substantial damage even if a piece hits one of the two lower stages or strap-on boosters.

As the countdown neared its end, NASA’s mission management team unanimously agreed to proceed with a third launch attempt at 1:04 a.m. EST Wednesday, the start of a two-hour window.

“I inquired if there were any dissenting perspectives, and there were none,” said Mike Sarafin, mission manager for Artemis 1. “That flight logic was accepted by us. So our intention to launch on the 16th remains unchanged.”

The 322-foot-tall Space Launch System rocket is the linchpin of NASA’s Artemis moon program, capable of boosting Orion moonships and other components directly into lunar orbit for rendezvous with a planned space station and lunar lander.

However, since the spacecraft was wheeled out to launch pad 39B for the first time in March, more than 240 days ago, it has been plagued with hydrogen fuel leaks and other malfunctions that have disrupted multiple fueling tests and two launch attempts.

Engineers brought the SLS back out to the pad on November 3 to prepare for another launch attempt, despite the formation of a subtropical storm in the Caribbean, after devising a “kinder, gentler” strategy for fueling the rocket to minimise leaking.

*NASA managers examined the threat posed by hurricane-damaged insulation on the Artemis moon rocket on Monday and certified the $4.1 billion booster for launch “as is” on Wednesday.*

That storm eventually intensified into Hurricane Nicole, but it was too late to bring the rocket back to the safety of its assembly building. Instead, it was exposed to the elements while riding out hurricane-force winds and rain on the pad.

Surprisingly, neither the SLS rocket nor the launch pad sustained serious damage. Engineers discovered, however, that a 10-foot section of RTV insulation covering an indentation between the Orion crew capsule and the base of its protective nose cone had delaminated and been pulled away in smaller pieces by the high winds.

That section of the rocket cannot be accessed from the launch pad, necessitating a thorough engineering analysis to determine what threat, if any, might exist if any additional RTV detached during flight.

“The risk with RTV is that a tiny or large piece may come off, reach the correct location in the airflow, drop down and strike the vehicle and do damage,” Jim Free, NASA’s director of exploration systems, told CBS News in an interview.

“This could result in the vehicle being destroyed or degraded in some way. And we have to run all of those to the ground before we can proceed.”

Some of the concerns were similar to those raised prior to the launch of the shuttle Columbia in 2003, when a big piece of foam insulation fell off its external tank and killed the orbiter’s left wing. In that situation, the danger was not appropriately assessed during the pre-flight analysis.

“I believe it would be ridiculous for me to claim (Columbia) isn’t on everyone’s radar,” Free said. “The transportation study we’re performing is based on what we learned from the space shuttle.”

Engineers conducted a thorough analysis, keeping Columbia’s lessons in mind, and concluded that SLS insulation was not a credible threat. With forecasters predicting a 90 percent chance of good weather, the launch may well come down to whether previous fueling issues with the massive rocket have been resolved.

You May Be Also Interested in:

Follow us for more updates on Twitter, Tumblr, LinkedIn

NASA CAPSTONE probe overcomes a malfunction and enters orbit around the moon

NASA’s CAPSTONE CubeSat probe arrived in orbit above the moon Sunday night, a big victory for the space agency after a major engine malfunction during the summer nearly ruined the project.

CAPSTONE needed to fire its engines twice more to return to the moon, where it entered a highly elliptical near rectilinear halo orbit, or NRHO, about 7:39 p.m., according to NASA.

The news came on the heels of a flurry of recent test missions that laid the scene for astronauts to return to the lunar surface for the first time in more than 50 years.

The 55-pound spacecraft, which resembles a microwave oven, was rendered inoperable for several weeks after a failed engine burn launched it into space on Sept. 8.

Back on Earth, mission control needed until early October to repair the propulsion system and steady the orbiter, which was restarted approximately two weeks ago after resurfacing 69,000 miles off track.

Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment is abbreviated as CAPSTONE. The probe is being used to estimate the orbit of a future space station called Gateway, which NASA hopes to float around the moon as part of the Artemis program’s initial phase.

The mission, which debuted on June 28, appeared to be cursed from the start.

Early in the voyage, ground control lost touch with the probe after it mistakenly jettisoned a supplementary crew ship, but technicians soon identified and corrected the fault in a coding command that had been erroneously formatted.

The mission is planned to extend at least six months now that the probe is back on course, with the probe setting the path for Gateway as well as undertaking navigation and communication tests in collaboration with NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.

According to NASA’s blog, “Artemis is the first step in the next phase of human exploration.” “NASA, in collaboration with commercial and international partners, will build a long-term presence on the Moon in order to prepare for Mars missions.”

The mission is planned to extend at least six months now that the probe is back on course, with the probe setting the path for Gateway as well as undertaking navigation and communication tests in collaboration with NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.
NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter

Success! NASA’s CAPSTONE mission has arrived at the moon

You May Be Also Interested in:

Follow us for more updates on Twitter, Tumblr, LinkedIn