Technology

LONDON: Facebook said on Thursday it would start sending tailor-made warnings to users highlighting facts about the coronavirus pandemic, after the world’s leading social media platform was accused of tolerating the spread of outlandish conspiracy theories. The US giant has already been publishing fact-checking articles about the global outbreak through its partnerships with media organisations. “We will also soon begin …

Apple is releasing a new iPhone that will be vastly cheaper than the models it rolled out last fall at a time when the economy was booming and the pandemic had yet to force people to rethink their spending. The second-generation iPhone SE introduced Wednesday will sell for as little as $399, a 40 per cent markdown from the most affordable iPhone …

ISLAMABAD: The Islam­abad High Court (IHC) on Tuesday directed the Minis­try of Information Techno­logy to reconnect the erstwhile Federally Adminis­tered Tribal Areas (Fata) to the cyberworld, observing that people there could not be denied access to the internet. IHC Chief Justice Athar Minallah admitted a petition filed by a student, Syed Mohammad, and sought a reply from the IT ministry, …

APPLE Inc and Alphabet Inc’s Google said last week that they will work together to create contact tracing technology that aims to slow the spread of the coronavirus by allowing users to opt into logging other phones they have been near. The rare collaboration between the two Silicon Valley companies, whose operating systems power 99 per cent of the world’s …

THESE are perilous times. The entire human race is in a state of war against an invisible, implacable, and lethal enemy. There is no cure in sight. Health systems in many places are overwhelmed. The toll of infection as well as mortality is rising exponentially. Not only has the pandemic placed our life and health in jeopardy, it has what …

ISLAMABAD: Chairman of the Senate Standing Com­mittee on Interior Senator Rehman Malik has directed the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) to probe reports about data breach involving sale of data of 115 million Pakistanis on darknet. Addressing a press conference on Satu­r­day, he said there were reports suggesting that data of 115 million cellphone users from Pakistan, including details such as …

Ever got into a petty quarrel with a neighbourhood store owner over a payment you had already made but he didn’t remember? And it was simply your word against theirs with no way to prove? What if a third party could intervene and settle the dispute? Well, that’s the bet of one startup, trying to bring in more transparency in …

ISLAMABAD: While residents of northern areas are deprived of internet connectivity in the absence of 3G and 4G services, authorities and telecommunication companies continue their blame game on enabling the internet in the region. The senior management of all four telecom companies on Friday held a meeting with the information technology secretary and discussed the need for enabling 3G and …

KARACHI: A day after digital and human rights groups urged the government to protect the public’s right to privacy while adopting technological solutions to the Covid-19 outbreak, the authorities released a draft personal data protection bill for consultation. In a press release issued on Friday, the Ministry of Information Technology and Telecommunication (MoITT) said it had formulated a draft ‘Personal …

PARIS: The daily count of fatalities of the Covid-19 pandemic, whose official toll is hurtling towards 100,000, is a sensitive business, with data often incomplete and differing methods between countries. The place of death, identifying the cause, and the time lags in collecting the information, all can impact on the count, which will be an underestimate, but essential to overseeing …