Benin has joined a fray and growing list of African states imposing spurious taxes on citizens for using the internet. The government passed a decree in late August taxing its citizens for accessing the internet and social-media apps. The directive, first proposed in July, institutes a fee (link in French) of 5 CFA francs ($0.008) per megabyte consumed …
Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp users were in a frenzy after many attempted to log in today only to find that the sites were down. The outage appeared to have affected users around the world, with thousands of reports within the first hour. According to Down Detector, the outages appear to have started around 4:48 p.m. …
The Trump administration on Tuesday said it would explore regulating Google — an effort that would challenge protections around free speech online — in response to the president’s allegations that the tech giant manipulates its search results to prominently display negative stories about him and other Republicans. In the United States, regulating search results could …
Uber says it plans to focus more on its electric scooter and bike business, and less on cars, despite the fact it could hurt profits. Boss Dara Khosrowshahi said that individual modes of transport were better suited to inner city travel. He also forecast users would make more frequent shorter journeys in future. “During rush …
Cargo shipping giant Maersk and IBM today announced TradeLens, a technology that applies blockchain to the global supply chain. TradeLens takes advantage of blockchain, the decentralized public ledger behind such tech as cryptocurrency — to enable global trade to be more efficient and secure. More than 94 companies and organizations are supporting the project in …
GongBox is a music platform, similar to Spotify, Apple Music, iTunes and the like. But it’s tailored for an African market. “If you think about how these products [Apple Music, Spotify etc.] are constructed,” says Simukayi Mukuna, a member of Soulistic Music, who is explaining the technicalities of the app today, “the product team lives …
Will this be a security risk for its own software? Tesla might just get into the habit of releasing source code for its in-car tech. Elon Musk has signaled his intention to post the source code for Tesla’s car security software, letting any automaker roll it into their own machines. It would be “extremely important” …
Jack Dorsey, chief executive officer and co-founder, said in a tweet Thursday that he lost 200,000 followers, bringing his total down to 4 million, after Twitter made good on its pledge to remove suspicious accounts. Twitter has announced it will remove suspicious accounts from follower counts. It warned that the number of followers displayed on many profiles …
The debate over the effects of artificial intelligence has been dominated by two themes. One is the fear of a singularity, an event in which an AI exceeds human intelligence and escapes human control, with possibly disastrous consequences. The other is the worry that a new industrial revolution will allow machines to disrupt and replace …
In a new paper, titled ‘Is Bitcoin Really Un-Tethered?’, University of Texas finance professor John Griffin, and graduate student Amin Shams, look at how Bitcoin’s price may have been artificially inflated last year. Bitcoins incredible rise in value in the last 12 months has been down to massive market manipulation, a new study has revealed. During …