Economic think tank GTRI (Global Trade Research Initiative) in its report said that India needs to cut its reliance on imported vegetable oils to promote better health outcomes and also reduce the import bill

The Cooperation Minister said that before the sowing operation, tur farmers can register on the portal to sell their produce to NAFED and NCCF

Centre says the Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee is a statutory body and the committee had examined relevant scientific data before giving the go-ahead for the environmental release

They have to declare stock position of paddy and rice every Friday

What are the measures the government is taking to bring down the increasing price of rice?

Minister Anurag Thakur says the decision will benefit 5 crore farmers, including family members, and lakhs of other persons involved in the sugar sector

BKS terms the government’s attitude towards farmers’ demands “regrettable”; seeks MSPs, abolition of GST on agri inputs, and increase in Kisan Samman Nidhi income support payments for farmers

Agriculture Ministry releases advance production estimates for 2023-24 and final estimates for the year 2022-23

Centre has permitted 24,400 MT shipments to the country amid ban on exports ‘till further orders’; exporters allege selling price being set too low, triggering windfall profits for selected UAE importers

Karnataka Agriculture Price Commission headed by Prakash Kammaradi submitted a report on the legally backed MSP to the government in 2018

Limited availability of chickpeas in the world market could force India to import of yellow peas, which are available in abundance, say officials

Reserve Bank of India’s annual report highlights MSPs, foodgrain stocks, and challenges faced by agriculture in 2023-24

The country is among those most vulnerable to water management risks, and has the poorest access to basic services, including water, among G-20 economies, the rating major flagged

A release said the award signifies the station’s unwavering commitment to maintain the highest standards in quality seed production and has emerged as a front runner setting an example for excellence in the field of seed production

Government allocates ₹1.52 lakh crore for agriculture and allied sectors in the Union Budget 2024-25; Finance Minister announces that the Centre will work with States to promote digital public infrastructure for agriculture

The data will be used for formulating policies and programmes for farmers and the dairy sector

The government initiated the sale of onions at a subsidised rate through mobile vans and outlets of NCCF and NAFED.

The Centre added that shipments by rail rake to Lucknow and Varanasi will be scheduled in next few days

When working through the early stages of a product design, it's common that labels for objects and actions emerge organically. No one is overly concerned about making these labels consistent (yet). But if this proliferation of terms doesn't get reined in early, both product design and strategy get harder.

Do we call it a library, a folder, a collection, a workspace, a section, a category, a topic? How about a document, page, file, entry, article, worksheet? And.. what's the difference? While these kinds of decisions might not be front and center when working out designs for a product or feature, they can impact a lot.

For starters, having clear definitions for concepts helps keep teams on the same page. When engineering works on implementing a new object type, they're aligned with what design is thinking, which is what the sales team is pitching potential customers on. Bringing a product to life is hard enough, why complicate things by using different terms for similar things or vice versa?

Inconsistent terms are obviously also a comprehension issue for the people using our products. "Here's it's called a Document, there it's called an Article. Are those the same?" Additionally, undefined terms often lead to miscellaneous bins in our user interfaces. "What's inside Explore?" When the definition of objects and actions isn't clear, what choice do we have but to drop them into vague sounding containers like Discover?

The more a product gets developed (especially by bigger teams) the more things can diverge because people's mental model of what terms mean can vary a lot. So it's really useful to proactively put together a list of the objects and actions that make up an application and draft some simple one-liner definitions for each. These lists almost always kick off useful high-level discussions within teams on what we're building and for who. Being forced to define things requires you to think them through: what is this feature doing and why?

And of course, consistent labels also ease comprehension for users. Once people learn what something means, they'll be able to apply that knowledge elsewhere -instead of having to contend with mystery meat navigation.

As the functionality and scope of Web sites and applications has grown over the years, so has the prevalence of Help pages. Nearly every feature has an explanatory article outlining how to use it and why. But most Help pages are walls of text making them hard to act on. So a few years ago, we tried something different.

First let's look at the status quo. This Help page from Amazon is both pretty typical and by those standards, pretty good. It's specific to one topic, brief, outlines steps clearly, and includes links to help people accomplish their intended task. Companies iterated to these kinds of Help pages because they mostly work and because they're less work.

Keeping Help text up to date and accurate is less labor-intensive than updating images or videos with the same information. But as the old saying goes, a picture is worth a lot of words and there's a reason many people turn to video tutorials to learn how to do things instead of reading about how to do them.

When building Polar several years ago, we wanted a more approachable and fun way of helping people learn how to use our product. And while you might say "the best Help pages are no Help pages -just make your app easy to use" not all Help pages are smearing over usability issues. Some introduce higher level concepts, others outline capabilities, and some serve as marketing for specific features.

So with those goals in mind, we iterated to a simple formula. Each concept or feature gets a Help page that has a title alongside 1-2 sentences and as many sections consisting of a title, 1-2 sentences, plus a graphic as needed.

This approach meant people primarily relied on images (or their alt tags if visually impaired) to figure out how to get things done. So we iterated a fair amount on the images to find the right balance of detail and abstraction. Make the UI too realistic and it becomes hard to focus on the relevant elements. Realistic UI images also need updating anytime the actual product UI changes. Conversely, make the image too simplistic and it doesn't provide enough detail for people to actually learn how to do things.

Of course, not all Help topics are well suited to an image but the process of trying to create one often triggers ideas on how to simplify the actual UI or concepts within a product. So it's worth the iteration.

But is a visual approach to Help pages able to scale? Assuming it works, can companies invest the time and effort needed to generate all these images and keep them up to date? Perhaps in a time of image generation AI models, it's increasingly possible through automated or supervised pipelines. Time will tell!

In her How to Use AI to Build Accessible Products presentation at Smashing Conf New York, Carie Fisher discussed using AI coding tools to test and suggest fixes for accessibility issues in Web pages. Here's my notes on her talk.

• AI is everywhere. You can use it to write content, code, create images, and more. It impacts how everyone will work.
• But ultimately, AI is just a tool but it might not always be the right one. We need to find the tasks where it has the potential to add value.
• Over 1 billion people on the planet identify as having a disability. Accessible code allows them to access digital experiences and helps companies be complaint with emerging laws requiring accessible Web pages and apps. Businesses also get SEO, brand, and more benefits from accessible code.
• AI tools like Github Copilot can find accessibility issues in seconds consistently, especially compared to the manual checks currently being done by humans. AI can also spot patterns across a codebase and suggest solutions.
• Existing AI coding tools like Github Copilot are already better than Linters for finding accessibility issues.
• AI can suggest and implement code fixes for accessibility issues. It can also be added to CI/CD pipelines to check for accessibility issues at the point of each commit. AI can also serve as an accessibility mentor for developers by providing real-time suggestions.
• More complex accessibility issues especially those that need user context may go unfound when just using AI. Sometimes AI output can be incomplete or hallucinate solutions that are not correct. As a result, we can't over rely on just AI to solve all accessibility problems. We still need human review today.
• To improve AI accessibility, provide expanded prompts that reference or include specifications. Code reviews can double check accessibility suggestions from AI-based systems. Regularly test and refine your AI-based solutions to improve outcomes.
• Combing AI and human processes and values can help build a culture of accessibility.

New device could boost telecommunications and be adapted for photonics

Spa cuisine is the new mantra for healthy eating. Luxe turns the spotlight on some of the places where the food is as delicious as it is beneficial

This year around, the Watch Oscars threw up some surprises by independent watchmakers

Samsung’s Galaxy Fold is quite a marvel despite being just a first step with a new form factor

Michelin-starred chefs are using high-tech tools in the kitchen and rooting for green

As a programmer, your desk is the platform to everything you do. Every line of code you write, CSS you minify or updates you push out is done right there. See how to set up your desk for maximum productivity.

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Malayalam director Vinayan’s latest film is a celebration of the life of social reformer Arattupuzha Velayudha Panicker

Kannada actor Kishore hopes the response to ‘Kantara’ will encourage Kannada filmmakers to explore new content in different ways

Kantara’s OTT release on Amazon Prime Video leaves viewers disappointed after makers replace ‘Varaha Roopam’ song following court order in case filed by Kerala band Thaikkudam Bridge

Aanu, starring Sajitha Madathil and Namitha Pramod, will be screened at the 27th International Film Festival of Kerala

Samantha Ruth Prabhu opens up on being all grace and poise for ‘Shaakuntalam’ to being covered in bruises while filming action sequences for ‘Citadel’

TheWriter of two of the best period dramas in the recent history of Malayalam cinema, Gopan Chidambaram talks speaks about how Thuramukham, a play written by his father in 1968, was adapted to the screen and why he often gravitates towards historical tales

The screenings at two other multiplexes in Kochi were cancelled

Uttar Pradesh becomes the second State after Madhya Pradesh to make the controversial film tax-free

Sashi Kiran Tikka, director of ‘Goodachari’ and ‘Major’, looks back at the indie approach to filmmaking, collaborative work atmosphere and his days at the New York Film Academy

Director Praveen Sattaru will be helming the Telugu spy thriller series ‘Mission Tashafi’ for Zee5, starring Simran Choudhary, Anish Kuruvilla and Srikanth Iyengar