US Senate passes bill that could see TikTok banned
The US Senate has approved a controversial landmark bill that could see TikTok banned in America. It gives TikTok’s Chinese owner, ByteDance, nine months to sell its stake or the app will be blocked in the United States. The bill will now be handed over to US President Joe Biden who has said he will sign […]
Sri Lanka’s Piyumi Wijesekara among NASA’s new crew for next simulated Mars journey
NASA has selected a new crew of four volunteers to participate in a simulated mission to Mars within a habitat at the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. Jason Lee, Stephanie Navarro, Shareef Al Romaithi, and Piyumi Wijesekara will step into the agency’s Human Exploration Research Analog, or HERA, on Friday, May 10. Once inside, […]
Microsoft to separate Teams and Office globally amid antitrust scrutiny
Microsoft will sell its chat and video app Teams separately from its Office product globally, the U.S. tech giant said on Monday, six months after it unbundled the two products in Europe in a bid to avert a possible EU antitrust fine. The European Commission has been investigating Microsoft’s tying of Office and Teams since […]
Nissan to launch 30 new models by 2027, boost global sales volumes
Nissan Motor said on Monday it would launch 30 new models over the next three years and aim to raise its global sales by 1 million vehicles while cutting costs to improve profitability. Announcing an update to its medium-term business plan, Japan’s third-largest automaker by sales said it would target an operating profit margin of […]
SLCERT to introduce National Cyber Security Act within the year
The State Minister for Technology, Mr. Kanaka Herath, announced that the anticipated National Cyber Security Act will be introduced this year, followed by the establishment of the Cyber Security Authority. Additionally, the State Minister underscored the preparations made for the Digital Economy Summit scheduled to take place in Sri Lanka by the end of July. […]
Apple unplugs self-driving electric car project, reports say
Apple has reportedly cancelled its plans to build electric vehicles (EV) a decade after the iPhone maker was rumoured to be working on the project. The firm has never publicly acknowledged the project, which involves around two thousand people. Many employees from the project will be moved to the iPhone maker’s artificial intelligence (AI) division, […]
Don’t dry your iPhone in a bag of rice, says Apple
If your iPhone gets wet don’t dry it in a bag of rice, Apple has advised. Despite the technique’s popularity, experts have long warned against it, with tests suggesting it doesn’t work. And now the tech giant itself has published guidance telling users it could result in small particles of the grain damaging their devices. […]
OpenAI CEO warns that ‘societal misalignments’ could make artificial intelligence dangerous
The CEO of ChatGPT-maker OpenAI said Tuesday that the dangers that keep him awake at night regarding artificial intelligence are the “very subtle societal misalignments” that could make the systems wreak havoc. Sam Altman, speaking at the World Government Summit in Dubai via a video call, reiterated his call for a body like the International […]
Character.ai: Young people turning to AI therapist bots
Harry Potter, Elon Musk, Beyoncé, Super Mario and Vladimir Putin. These are just some of the millions of artificial intelligence (AI) personas you can talk to on Character.ai – a popular platform where anyone can create chatbots based on fictional or real people. It uses the same AI tech as the ChatGPT chatbot but, in […]
Facebook and Messenger to automatically encrypt messages
All Facebook and Messenger chats will be encrypted automatically, parent company Meta has announced. Messages and calls protected by end-to-end-encryption (E2EE) can be read only by the sender and recipient. It has been possible to opt in to encrypted messages for years, but now it will become the default position. Critics, including the UK government […]