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eCommerce Pakistan, Karachi (2026)

14/02/2024

Apple has won an exemption for its iMessage and Microsoft for its Bing search engine from new EU tech rules after the companies convinced antitrust regulators their services are not gateways for businesses to reach end-users, The European Union's Digital Markets Act (DMA), which takes effect in three weeks' time, requires Microsoft, Apple, Alphabet's Google, Amazon, Meta Platforms and ByteDance to allow third-party apps or app stores on their platforms and make it easier for people to switch to rivals, The companies are also prohibited from favouring their services over rivals.

Following a five-month investigation, the European Commission found iMessage, Bing, Edge and Microsoft Advertising "did not qualify as gatekeeper services," the EU executive said in a statement, The Commission said Apple's App Store, iOS operating system and Safari browser will continue to be classified as gatekeepers as will Microsoft's Linkedin social network and Windows operating system, It made "a thorough assessment of all arguments, taking into account input by relevant stakeholders", the Commission said without providing details of the companies' arguments.

Apple had said iMessage usage is negligible, even on its devices, compared to rival messaging services in the EU and that iMessage is not an important channel for businesses to reach users in the bloc "Consumers today have access to a wide variety of messaging apps, and often use many at once, which reflects how easy it is to switch between them," an Apple spokesperson said Microsoft said that Bing, Edge and Microsoft Advertising operate as challengers in the market and are of relatively small scale, meaning they are not important gateways for business users.

14/02/2024

A U.S. government data breach disclosed earlier this year was tied to a bug in enterprise software maker Atlassian's Confluence suite of collaboration tools, an IT contractor said on Tuesday, CGI Federal, an IT contractor and unit of CGI Inc, said in a statement that it was working "with authorities and clients to identify and disclose any data affected by the Confluence exploitation," which was made public in October.

Has been unable to determine the size and scope of the breach. On Monday, the Government Accountability Office that 6,000 current and former GAO employees had been victims of a data breach by an unnamed "threat actor" in connection with the hack. Whether any other government agencies have been affected has not been publicly disclosed, Atlassian said in a statement that it had warned customers that hackers were exploiting the bug on Oct. 4 and that it had been assisting clients with their response. The U.S. cyber watchdog agency, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, referred questions back to CGI

14/02/2024

Nvidia NVDA.O was on the verge of overtaking Alphabet GOOGL.O as Wall Street's third most valuable company on Tuesday as the dominant AI chipmaker ended the day with a market capitalization above Amazon's AMZN.O for the first time in two decades. Nvidia's shares slipped 0.17%, leaving its stock market value at $1.78 trillion, eclipsing Amazon's $1.75 trillion value after the online shopping and cloud-computing heavyweight's stock declined 2.15%, Google-owner Alphabet's stock dipped 1.62%, leaving its market capitalization at $1.81 trillion.

Nvidia has been a top beneficiary of technology companies' race to build AI into their products and services, with its graphics processors in short supply as Meta Platforms META.O and other Big Tech companies buy billions of dollars worth of its components, Mizuho in a client note raised its price target for Nvidia's stock to $825 from $625 ahead of the Santa Clara, California, company's quarterly results due on Feb. 21. The stock ended Tuesday at $721.28, Lead times for Nvidia's top-shelf H100 processor have declined, "but overall demand far outstrips supply," Mizuho analyst Vijay Rakesh wrote, adding he sees "substantial AI upside" for Nvidia, Broadcom AVGO.O and Advanced Micro Devices AMD.O.

Nvidia controls about 80% of the high-end AI chip market, a position that has sent its stock up 46% this year after more than tripling in 2023. Technology-related companies, including Microsoft MSFT.O and Meta, have also rallied to record highs on AI optimism.

14/02/2024

Andrej Karpathy, an artificial intelligence researcher and one of the founding members of OpenAI, said in a post on social media platform X that he departed the Microsoft-backed company on Monday, The news marks a significant departure from OpenAI, one of the top labs competing to develop increasingly capable artificial intelligence. "My immediate plan is to work on my personal projects and see what happens," Karpathy said in the post on Tuesday, Karpathy, who joined OpenAI in his second stint last year, was previously a senior director for AI at Tesla where he played a key role in developing the electric car maker's artificial intelligence and driver assistant technology, Karpathy had studied under prominent Stanford AI scientist Fei-Fei Li and joined OpenAI as one of its earliest staffers before moving to Tesla. He recently spoke about the idea of AI known as large language models acting as a new kind of computer operating system.

14/02/2024

U.S. worker safety officials fined Elon Musk’s SpaceX $3,600 this month after an accident at its site in Washington state led to a “near amputation,” investigation late last year found that Musk’s rocket company disregarded worker-safety regulations and standard practices at its facilities nationwide. Through interviews and government records, the news organization documented at least 600 previously unreported injuries of SpaceX workers since 2014, SpaceX has not responded to questions about any of the incidents, including the death of one worker and the injury of another who remains in a coma after his skull was fractured during a 2022 rocket engine malfunction. The company also did not respond to a request for comment about the new safety fine.

Inspectors from Washington state’s Department of Labor and Industries discovered new safety violations at the company’s Redmond, Washington, site last December, in a visit prompted by worker complaints, according to state inspection records obtained under an open records request. An agency spokesperson said that SpaceX can still appeal the decision, The inspectors concluded the site lacked a “thorough safety program,” adequate communication of work rules, and a system to “correct violations,” the records said. The “near amputation,” as inspectors called it, occurred after a roll of material fell and crushed a worker’s foot

14/02/2024

ByteDance-owned social media platform TikTok said on Wednesday it will ramp up its fight against fake news and covert influence operations in the run-up to European Parliament elections in June with a local language app in all 27 countries, Tiktok said the individual local language "election centres" build on work it first started in 2021, which accelerated last year when Greece, the Netherlands, Poland, Slovakia and Spain went to the polls, The app is designed to better inform Europeans about the electoral process, Governments and politicians around the world are concerned about the spread of misinformation and the use of AI-generated deepfakes to influence elections and especially the role of social media platforms.

"Next month, we will launch a local language Election Centre in-app for each of the 27 individual EU member states to ensure people can easily separate fact from fiction," TikTok's head of trust & safety EMEA Kevin Morgan said in a blogpost. "Working with local electoral commissions and civil society organisations, these Election Centres will be a place where our community can find trusted and authoritative information," he said The company worked with news checkers to produce educational videos about the electoral process and misinformation via the election centres during national elections in previous years Morgan said TikTok, which currently works with nine fact-checking organisations in Europe, plans to expand its fact-checking network and launch nine additional media literacy campaigns this year.

13/02/2024

A Moscow court on Monday said it had ordered the arrest in absentia of Meta Platforms spokesperson Andy Stone for two months pending trial on a number of terrorism-related counts, Meta did not immediately request for comment, while Stone declined to comment, Russia grew increasingly hostile towards Meta after Moscow sent its army into Ukraine in February 2022. Meta's main social platforms - Facebook and Instagram - were both banned soon after the conflict began and Meta was subsequently found guilty of "extremist activities" in Russia, Russia's interior ministry opened a criminal investigation into Stone late last year, without disclosing specific charges.

Moscow's Basmanny District Court on Monday said Stone had been charged with the "promotion of terrorist activities, public calls for terrorist activities, public justification of terrorism or propaganda of terrorism, and public calls for extremist activities".

13/02/2024

Bitcoin hit the $50,000 level for the first time in more than two years as the world's largest cryptocurrency was buoyed by expectations of interest rate cuts later this year and last month's regulatory nod for US exchange-traded funds designed to track its price, The cryptocurrency has risen 16.3% so far this year, on Monday touching its highest since Dec. 27, 2021. At 12:56 p.m. EST (1756 GMT), bitcoin was up 4.96% on the day at $49,899, having oscillated around the $50,000 level "$50,000 is a significant milestone for bitcoin after the launch of spot ETFs last month not only failed to elicit a move above this key psychological level but led to a 20% sell-off," said Antoni Trenchev, co-founder of crypto lending platform Nexo.

Crypto stocks also enjoyed a boost on Monday, with crypto exchange Coinbase up 4.9% and crypto miners Riot Platforms and Marathon Digital up 10.8% and 11.9%, respectively. Shares of software firm MicroStrategy -- a notable buyer of bitcoin -- were up 10.2%, The price of ether, the second-largest cryptocurrency, was up 4.12% at $2,607.57, Global stock indexes also edged higher on Monday, as traders looked for cues on when the US Federal Reserve might begin cutting interest rates. Analysts and financial market expectations both point to May as a potential start for rate cuts this year.

13/02/2024

Google has pledged 25 million euros ($26.98 million) to help people in Europe learn to use artificial intelligence (AI), Announcing the funding on Monday, the tech giant said it had opened applications for social enterprises and nonprofits that could help reach those most likely to benefit from training, The firm will also run a series of “growth academies” to support companies using AI to scale their companies and has expanded its free online AI training courses to 18 languages, “Research shows that the benefits of AI could exacerbate existing inequalities — especially in terms of economic security and employment,” said Adrian Brown, executive director of the Centre for Public Impact, which is running the nonprofit scheme alongside Google.

“This new program will help people across Europe develop their knowledge, skills and confidence around AI, ensuring that no one is left behind, Last month, Google announced it would invest $1 billion into building a data centre just outside of London, as it moves to meet growing demand for internet services in the region, The data centre, located on a 33-acre (13-hectare) site bought by Google in 2020, will be located in the town of Waltham Cross, about 15 miles (24.14 km) north of central London, the Alphabet-owned, opens new tab company said in a statement.

13/02/2024

Shares of Arm Holdings surged more than 40% on Monday, adding to a staggering rally fueled by optimism around artificial intelligence. The stock last traded up 21% at $139.65 after reaching as high as $164, 42% above its close on Friday With Monday's jump, Arm's shares have gained more than 80% since the British tech company last Wednesday became Wall Street's newest AI-related darling following a quarterly outlook that beat Wall Street's expectations, Arm's stock market value has now reached a record $141 billion, nearly tripling since its initial public offering last September, About 10.5 million Arm shares, worth about $1.4 billion, have been sold short by traders betting the stock will fall, according to Ihor Dusaniwsky, managing director of predictive analytics atS3 Partners, which tracks short sellers.

However, there is little evidence Monday's stock surge is the result of a short squeeze, which occurs when short sellers rush to buy back shares in order to cover a potentially money-losing trade, Dusaniwsky said Although there has been some short covering, the primary reason for the stock move is long share buying," Dusaniwsky said. The recent spike in Arm's shares echoes sharp gains in Nvidia in May 2023 after the Silicon Valley chipmaker said AI computing was fueling massive demand for its chips After Nvidia's stock market value more than tripled last year, on Monday it overtook Amazon.com as the U.S. stock market's fourth most valuable company, just behind Alphabet.

Unlike Nvidia, only a fraction of Arm's shares are available for trading. Following its IPO, owner Softbank kept a 90.6% stake. The chip designer's 10 largest shareholders control almost 95% of its shares, according to LSEG data. That tiny supply of Arm shares available for trading may be contributing to the stock's recent surge.

13/02/2024

North American companies ordered about a third fewer robots last year as worries about a slowing economy and higher interest rates made it harder to justify buying the advanced machines, the first hiccup in five years in what has been a steady progression of the robot invasion of the region's workforce "When the economy isn't great, it's easier to delay purchases," said Jeff Burnstein, president of the Association for Advancing Automation, an industry group that tracks robot orders, Companies bought 31,159 robots in 2023, a decrease of 30% over the year before, the largest drop in percentage terms since 2006 and largest drop ever in net units, according to the group, known as A3. The pullback occurred in automotive-related industries - which made up about half of the market last year - as well as other sectors such as food and metals manufacturing.

Orders in the fourth quarter hit 7,683, an 8% drop from the same period a year earlier, Slowing robot orders came even as some companies announced initiatives to develop more advanced versions of the machines. Robotics startup Figure said last month it forged a partnership with Germany's BMW to deploy humanoid robots in the carmaker's South Carolina factory to take on certain physical tasks. Electric-vehicle maker Tesla also has a humanoid robot in development.

13/02/2024

Nvidia briefly surpassed Amazon.com Inc in market capitalization on Monday, as the euphoria around artificial intelligence catapulted the chipmaker to the fourth most valuable US company, At a record high of $734.96, Nvidia was worth $1.82 trillion in market value, compared to $1.81 trillion for retail giant Amazon.com and a few billions away from Google-owner Alphabet's $1.87 trillion, according to LSEG data, The last time Nvidia was more valuable than Amazon was in 2002, when they were each worth under $6 billion, After Amazon's higher-than-expected holiday quartersales last month, investors are looking to Nvidia's quarterly results on Feb. 21, the last of the megacap firms to report this earnings season.

Expectations have run high heading into the report with shares gaining 47% year-to-date, making it the biggest gainer among S&P 500 components, Blowout quarterly results and strong forecasts from Nvidia a year ago established that the chip designer was at pole position in supplying to tech companies working on so-called generative AI like chatbots and image creation The bet on strong AI demand has supercharged Nvidia shares, making it the best performing stock among the so-called "Magnificent Seven" with a 223% surge over the past 12 months. Meta Platforms is second with a 163% rise Microsoft in January overtook Apple to become the world's most valuable company, with Alphabet at the third spot.

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