Technology

Parisians will be invited to vote on whether to allow electric scooter rental services to continue operating in the city as authorities weigh banning the controversial for-hire vehicles, the capital’s mayor has said. The issue is “extremely divisive”, mayor Anne Hidalgo told the weekend edition of Le Parisien newspaper, with critics saying riders show only cursory respect for the rules …

PARIS: The hottest startup in Silicon Valley right now is OpenAI, the Microsoft-backed developer of ChatGPT, a much-hyped chatbot that can write a poem, college essay or even a line of software code. Tesla tycoon Elon Musk was an early investor in OpenAI and Microsoft is reported to be in talks to up an initial investment of $1 billion to …

KARACHI: The State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) on Friday issued no-objection-certificates (NOCs) to five applicants — Easy Paisa DB, Hugo Bank, KT Bank, Mashreq Bank, and Raqami — for establishing digital banks. In January last year, the SBP introduced a Licensing and Regulatory Framework for Digital Banks in line with international best practices. The framework was the first step towards …

NEW DELHI: The growth of Google’s Android ecosystem is on the brink of stalling in India due to an antitrust order that asks the company to change how it markets the platform, the US company has said in a Supreme Court challenge. The Competition Commission of India (CCI) fined Alphabet Inc-owned Google $161 million in October for exploiting its dominant …

WASHINGTON: Companies including GM, Ford, Google and solar energy producers said on Tuesday they would work together to establish standards for scaling up the use of virtual power plants (VPPs), systems for easing loads on electricity grids when supply is short. Energy transition nonprofit RMI will host the initiative, the Virtual Power Plant Partnership (VP3), which will also aim to …

Microsoft Corp is in talks to invest $10 billion into OpenAI, the owner of ChatGPT, which will value the San Francisco-based firm at $29bn, Semafor reported on Monday, citing people familiar with the matter. The funding includes other venture firms and deal documents were sent to prospective investors in recent weeks, with the aim to close the round by the end of 2022, …

SHANGHAI: Hundreds of Tesla (TSLA.O) owners gathered at the automaker’s showrooms and distribution centres in China over the weekend, demanding rebates and credit after sudden price cuts they said meant they had overpaid for electric cars they bought earlier. On Saturday, about 200 recent buyers of the Tesla Model Y and Model 3 gathered at a Tesla delivery centre in Shanghai …

Twitter Inc made further staff cuts in the trust and safety team handling global content moderation and in the unit related to hate speech and harassment, Bloomberg news reported on Saturday. At least a dozen more cuts on Friday night affected workers in the company’s Dublin and Singapore offices, the report said, citing people familiar with the matter. Those laid off at …

A newly discovered comet could be visible to the naked eye as it shoots past Earth and the Sun in the coming weeks for the first time in 50,000 years, astronomers have said. The comet is called C/2022 E3 (ZTF) after the Zwicky Transient Facility, which first spotted it passing Jupiter in March last year. After travelling from the icy …

LONDON: Hackers stole the email addresses of more than 200 million Twitter users and posted them on an online hacking forum, a security researcher said on Wednesday. The breach will unfortunately lead to a lot of hacking, targeted phishing and doxxing, Alon Gal, co-founder of Israeli cybersecurity-monitoring firm Hudson Rock, wrote on LinkedIn. He called it one of the most …