India’s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology has announced a new program to encourage local developers and bridge the gap left behind by banned services like TikTok. It’s officially called “Aatma Nirbhar App Innovation Challenge” and was unveiled by India’s Prime Minister, Narendra Modi.

Atma Nitrbhar means “to be independent” or “self-sufficient” in one of India’s widely used languages, Hindi. A few days ago, the Indian government announced a blanket ban on a few listed Chinese apps. Within no time, they were off the Play Store and many services like TikTok and Mobile Legends voluntarily stopped service after the ban was announced.

The App Innovation Challenge includes the promotion of existing apps as well as the development of new apps. The program is split into two tracks. The first one includes already released apps that have the potential to scale and become world-class in their segment. The second track aims to identify companies as well as individuals who can build next-generation apps for the country.

Tthe government is looking for alternative apps of the ones that remain banned. Companies will have to submit their entries by July 18 and a jury for each of the tracks shall evaluate the entries.

The challenge is available in eight categories, ranging from office productivity or work from home solutions to news and games.

The government has allocated INR 20,00,000 (US$ 26,780), INR 15,00,000 (US$ 20,085), and INR 10,00,000 (US$ 13,390) for the first three winners, respectively. Adding to this, Each sub-category winner will also be rewarded.

India has suffered high casualties amid an ongoing border dispute with China. The Coronavirus pandemic has further fueled the anti-China sentiment and the Indian government is exploring options to reduce its trade deficit with the neighboring country.

After the Cambridge Analytica scandal, Facebook has become synonymous with privacy invasion. You’d ideally expect the social networking company to learn something and change how it operates to protect personal user data. However, the company is back to square one.

A blog post confirms that Facebook shared user data to thousands of developers and continued to receive updates to users’ non-public information.

According to internal policy, if you don’t use the service within a gap of 90 days, it’ll stop having access to your data and no updates will be sent forward. However, this wasn’t practically enforced and developers continued to have unprecedented access.

This is an extremely sensitive flaw since a similar modus operandi was leveraged to funnel data of 50 million users to Cambridge Analytica. Going by Facebook’s announcement, data here includes the user’s email addresses, birthdays, language, gender, and more.

VP of Platform Partnerships Konstantinos Papamiltiadis said that Facebook estimates 5,000 developers continued to receive user information after 90 days of inactivity.

The company hasn’t revealed the number of users affected. Facebook says the issue was fixed after it was discovered but did not state when it was found and how it went undetected for such a long time.

It’s common for people to use Facebook as a sign-in option on third-party apps or websites. These services fetch your details directly from Facebook after your consent. But, if you don’t use the third-party service actively, your data also shouldn’t be shared with it. However, the issue does not plague all Facebook Login apps.

Spotify offers multiple plans for its premium music streaming service. For a long time, the company offers a premium plan designed for one person. In recent years, it also started offering a family plan for up to 4 family members. Now, the company is expanding its portfolio once again by offering a plan for couples.

The new Premium Duo plan is Spotify’s answer to couples who want a cheaper premium plan. As the name implies, the plan is targeted towards two people. All features of Spotify Premium is here too. Couples can enjoy ad-free listening, unlimited skips, and offline songs along with new features unique to this plan.

Spotify included a Duo Mix playlist, which is unique to this plan. It works just like the Family Mix playlist on the premium family plan. Through this playlist, couples can enjoy the best songs they listen to on repeat. The playlist updates once in a while too.

The plan starts at US$ 12.99 per month, which is US$ 6.99 less than two individual plans. Like all other premium plans, there’s a free trial so couples can try out the plan first before shelling out cash.

With the new Premium Duo, there’s no need to share a single account between two people. Couples can keep listening to their own music, and it won’t affect each other’s accounts.