Technology

Silver dropped more than 4% on Tuesday and GameStop Corp sank 33% in early European deals, raising questions about how long a social media-fueled trading frenzy in stocks and other assets would last. The populist trading rally, organized in online forums such as Reddit’s WallStreetBets, has helped attract a flood of retail cash into stocks such as GameStop, burned hedge …

AARHUS (Denmark): The year Pakistan’s internet users crossed 90 million with a broadband penetration of 42.2pc, the government led consistent efforts to regulate the online experience of consumers. According to the annual report for 2020 released by the Pakistan Telecommuni­cation Authority (PTA), the country’s digital economy has grown enormously during the pandemic as more people are using the internet. Broadband …

CAPE CANAVERAL: A pair of Nasa astronauts ventured out on their second spacewalk in under a week on Monday and completed a four-year effort to modernise the International Space Station’s power grid. Over the weekend, flight controllers in Houston used the stations big robot arm to replace the last pair of old-style batteries with a single better-quality one. Astronauts Mike …

Visit any Pakistani news website and then go to a foreign one. What’s the one difference you’ll definitely notice? Contrary to what the boomer drawing-room expert who exclusively relies on WhatsApp for all sorts of information says, it’s not that the local media is doing lifafa journalism. The key distinguishing feature is that they ask you to pay to read. …

ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan Tel­ecommunication Authority (PTA) has told the Islamabad High Court (IHC) that till January 2021, the authority has blocked 980,000 links containing hate speech, controversial and objectionable content. The PTA in a report submitted to the IHC stated that out of blocked content an overwhelming majority was of pornographic material. According to the report, 865,187 links of pornographic …

OAKLAND:Social media services including Facebook and Reddit restrict discussions about weapons, drugs and other illegal activity, but their rules do not specifically mention another lucrative regulated good: stocks. Some people think they should. Users of a Reddit group, in which 5 million members exchange investment ideas, generated significant profits by gorging on shares of GameStop and other out-of-favor companies that …

UNITED NATIONS: The United Nations chief has called for global rules to regulate powerful social media companies like Twitter and Facebook. Secretary General Antonio Guterres said he believes it shouldn’t be a company that has the power to decide whether, for example, then president Donald Trumps Twitter account should be closed, as a questioner asked. Rather, he said, a mechanism …

LAHORE: Officials of the Pakistan Railways (PR) IT Directorate have restored online ticketing at 60 stations across the country, and they are also working to recover the data. The PR management has constituted two committees to probe into the Jan 26 system breakdown that has been restored through using host server of the National Telecom Corporation, according to a senior …

ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan Telecom­munication Authority (PTA) has deleted 778 links of the blasphemous content of a movie from social media. According to the PTA, it “detected 778 links on various platforms i.e. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Daily Motion, Instagram, TikTok, Reddit, Ladyofheaven.com, Moviefit.me and Bestnetflix.com having trailers and promos of the movie”. The PTA, however, clarified that no such links were …

WASHINGTON: Deciding its first-ever cases, Facebook’s oversight board ruled on Thursday that the social media company was wrong to remove four of five pieces of content the board reviewed, including posts Facebook took down for violating rules on hate speech and harmful Covid misinformation. The first rulings will be scrutinised to see how independent the board appears from the world’s …