Technology

HONG KONG: The Hong Kong team behind celebrity humanoid robot Sophia is launching a new prototype, Grace, targeted at the healthcare market and designed to interact with the elderly and those isolated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Dressed in a blue nurse’s uniform, Grace has Asian features, collar-length brown hair and a thermal camera in her chest to take your temperature …

Uruguay on Tuesday released real-world data on the impact of Sinovac Biotech’s COVID-19 vaccine among its population that showed it was over 90% effective in preventing intensive care admissions and deaths. The shot reduced deaths by 95% and intensive care admissions by 92%, and also showed 61% efficacy in cutting coronavirus infections, the government said. A total of 795,684 people …

Google has been on a mission to raise its standards of inclusivity and conscientiousness. It previously worked to improve its recommendations and autocompletes, and now it’s improving its workspace products and services. Google’s new style guide will discourage users and programmers from unnecessarily using sexist, ableist or offensive language. What this means in practice is that when you type ‘policeman’, …

U.S. tech giants could benefit from the agreement of the Group of Seven rich countries’ agreement to create a global minimum 15% corporate tax rate if the final deal also scraps increasingly popular digital services taxes, according to industry lobbyists. The deal, reached Saturday, was designed to reduce companies’ incentives to shift profits to low-tax offshore havens and could bring …

KARACHI: The first solar eclipse of year 2021 will take place on Thursday (June 10). This ‘ring of fire’ solar eclipse will not be sighted in Pakistan, experts said. The eclipse will be seen in Russia, Greenland, Northern Canada, North Asia, Europe, and the United States. Astronomer and Director Institute of Space Science and Technology Karachi University Professor Dr Javed …

PARIS: France’s competition regulator on Monday fined Google 220 million euros ($267 million) after finding it had abused its dominant market position for placing online ads, as US tech giants face growing pressure in Europe. The penalty is part of a settlement reached after three media groups — News Corp, French daily Le Figaro and Belgium’s Groupe Rossel — accused …

Abhi, a Karachi-based startup, that provides employees salary advances based on accrued wages, has raised $2 million for their seed round. The funding round, led by VEF, the emerging market fintech investor, and Sarmayacar, the local lead, also included a number of international and local investors including Village Global, i2i Ventures, and Zayn Capital. This is Village Global’s first FinTech …

Amazon’s billionaire founder Jeff Bezos said on Monday he and his brother Mark will fly on the first crewed space flight from his rocket company Blue Origin next month. “Ever since I was five years old, I’ve dreamed of traveling to space. On July 20th, I will take that journey with my brother,” Bezos, who is one of the richest …

Facebook (FB.O) welcomes the progress made by the Group of Seven on a minimum tax rate and accepts this could mean the social network pays more tax, and in different places, its head of global affairs Nick Clegg said on Saturday. “Facebook has long called for reform of the global tax rules and we welcome the important progress made at …

BRUSSELS: The European Union and Britain launched parallel competition probes on Friday into whether Facebook uses data from advertisers to unfairly dominate the online classified market. The US social media behemoth sells classified advertising on its Marketplace service, but also gathers data from commercial advertising that may give it an unfair advantage _ a charge the firm declared “without merit”. …