PAKISTAN:
Check out the Durshal innovation lab in Peshawar in all its glory:
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Information Technology Board (KPITB) has launched its Durshal Innovation Lab in Peshawar. The Lab will provide all the facilities of a technology hub where young businesses, startups and entrepreneurs can flourish. Durshal (meaning doorstep in Pashto) Innovation Centres have been inaugurated in several cities of the province including Swat, Mardan, and now in Peshawar.
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Senate committee on it and technology to follow up on tax collections from telcos:
Senate Standing Committee on Information Technology and Telecommunications on Thursday decided to follow up on various issues related to Pakistan’s telecoms sector. The committee met under the Chairmanship of Senator Rubina Khalid, where a brainstorming session was held to discuss issues and matters to be taken up by the Committee in coming meetings.
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Pakistani startup develops a working bionic arm:
Not many entrepreneurs in Pakistan are working with hardware in Pakistan, especially because of the difficulties associated with manufacturing in the country. Even the companies that do develop their products in Pakistan tend to outsource the bulk of the work to other neighboring countries like China.
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Qualcomm unveils 10nm snapdragon 710 chip with AR & AI features:
Qualcomm is finally launching a new SoC in the Snapdragon 700 lineup, which it announced earlier, that comes with newer Kryo cores and AI features like Huawei’s recent Kirin processors. The Qualcomm Snapdragon 710 Mobile Platform will blur the line between flagships and mid-rangers as its performance is somewhere in between the mid-range Snapdragon 660 and the flagship 835/845 SoC’s. Moreover, the 710 uses the latest Kryo 360 CPU.
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Uber is raising $600 million at a $62 billion valuation:
Uber Technologies Inc, home to the most popular ride-hailing app Uber, is raising $600M in a secondary investment round at a valuation of $62 billion. In its quarterly report for Q1 2018, the company reported $2.5 billion in revenues and a net loss of $601 million. Below the list, the EBIDTA stands at a negative $304 million as the company’s loss streak continues.
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Lums student gets design award for a voice and smartphone controlled wheelchair:
Faaiz Arbab, an Electrical Engineering student from Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) has been awarded ‘Best Consumer Product Design Award for 2018’ by National Design Awards (NDA) for developing Pakistan’s first voice-operated smart wheelchair.
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Xiaomi redmi 6 is coming, looks like iphone x:
Xiaomi is a popular brand especially when it comes to budget mid-rangers. Among those, the Redmi 5 series has delivered amazing hardware at a value price. According to recent listings at TENAA, Xiaomi might be launching its successor, the Redmi 6, with a notched display.
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DG ISPR warns about scammers using ISPR’s name with malicious intent:
Director General Inter Services Public Relations (DG ISPR), Major General Asif Ghafoor has alerted his country folk about a cyber attack that fraudulently uses ISPR’s identity to spread fake information and for phishing purposes.
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PTCL launches nationwide training program for improving services:
Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited (PTCL) has launched a training program called ‘Building Culture of Service Excellence’ focusing on providing excellent customer services. The initiative is in line with PTCL’s firm belief that service is the main essence of its contributions in the society.
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INTERNATIONAL:
US news sites blocked to EU users over data protection rules:
A number of high-profile US news websites are temporarily unavailable in Europe after new European Union rules on data protection came into effect. The Chicago Times and LA Times were among those posting messages saying they were currently unavailable in most European countries.
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Youtube star John ‘totalbiscuit’ bain dies aged 33:
Popular video game critic John Bain – known as TotalBiscuit and the Cynical Brit – has died aged 33. He had 2.2 million YouTube subscribers, but retired from reviewing games at the start of May after a battle with liver cancer.
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Amazon Alexa ‘heard and sent private chat’:
A couple in Portland, Oregon joked that their Amazon Alexa might be listening in to their private conversations. The joke came to an abrupt end when they discovered a conversation was indeed recorded by Alexa – and then sent to an apparently random person in their contact list.
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The great data privacy panic:
If you are like me, the last week has provided a great chance to have a GDPR spring clean of your email inbox. Dozens of emails have arrived with increasingly frantic messages asking me to opt in to keep in touch once the General Data Protection Regulation comes into force. With an evil cackle, I simply delete them – and that means I should be getting far fewer emails from now on. I imagine plenty of big organizations will see their mailing lists decimated. And it is hard to feel sorry for them.
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Netflix eclipses disney in market milestone:
Netflix briefly claimed the title of the world’s most valuable media company on Thursday. Shares in the online streaming giant rose more than 2% trading in New York, pushing the firm’s market value to more than $153bn (£114bn). The ascent briefly eclipsed rival Walt Disney, which has been shaken by Netflix’s success at luring US households from cable TV providers.
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Apple awarded $539m in US patent case against Samsung:
A US court has ordered South Korea’s Samsung Electronics pay $539m (£403m) in damages for copying features of Apple’s original iPhone. The jury’s decision is the latest step in a long-running legal battle between the world’s top smartphone makers. It began in 2011 when Apple argued Samsung had infringed on some patents.
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Tech firms struggle with EU’s new privacy rules:
Several tech firms have opted to block EU residents from using their services because of concerns they are not compliant with a shake-up to the 28-nation bloc’s data privacy laws. The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) comes into force on Friday. It gives the public more rights over how personal information is used and raises the amount firms can be fined.
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Google ‘stole my videos’, says film-maker Philip Bloom:
Google has enraged a leading film-maker by using his footage in a corporate video that later leaked online. The technology company used material from more than half a dozen of Philip Bloom’s films to make a provocative presentation about ways it could exploit users’ data in the future. Mr Bloom makes a living from selling rights to his footage, among other activities.
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Uber car ‘had six seconds to respond’ in fatal crash:
The sensors of a self-driving Uber car spotted a pedestrian pushing a bicycle across the road six seconds before killing her, according to a report. The on-board identification system classified her as an “unknown object, as a vehicle, and then as a bicycle”. The car slowed slightly but failed to avoid Elaine Herzberg, 49, of Tempe, Arizona, or perform an emergency stop.
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FBI seeks to thwart cyber-attack on Ukraine”
Preparations for a cyber-attack on Ukraine have been thwarted by the FBI. It seized a website that was helping communicate with home routers infected with malware that would carry out the digital bombardment. More than 500,000 routers in 54 countries had been infected by the ‘dangerous’ malware and the FBI is now trying to clean up infected machines.