Namibia has ordered Starlink to cease all operations immediately, saying the satellite internet service owned by billionaire Elon Musk is operating without the required telecommunications licence.
“The public is hereby advised not to purchase Starlink terminal equipment or subscribe to its services, as such activities are illegal,” the Communications Regulatory Authority of Namibia said in an e-mailed statement. “Investigators have already confiscated illegal terminals from consumers and have opened criminal cases with the Namibian police in this regard.”
It ranked third and fifth in ‘technology’ and ‘knowledge’, respectively.
Hong Kong ranked seventh out of 67 economies in the latest World Digital Competitiveness Ranking (WDCR), climbing three places as it improved in “technology” and “knowledge.”
Hong Kong ranked third and fifth in ‘technology’ and ‘knowledge’, respectively. Its ranking in ‘future readiness’ also improved.
The ranking measures the capacity and readiness of economies to adopt and explore digital technologies for economic and social transformation.
“The Chief Executive announced a series of initiatives for the information and technology (I&T) sector including establishing the third InnoHK research cluster, development of new industrialisation, a $10b I&T Industry-Oriented Fund and launching the Pilot I&T Accelerator Scheme,” a government spokesperson said.
Join Hong Kong Business community The spokesperson added that the government will continue to enhance the I&T infrastructure, including the first-phase facility of Cyberport’s Artificial Intelligence (AI) Supercomputing Centre and the $3b AI Subsidy Scheme now open for applications.
Online forums and dating sites were the most targeted by scammers.
Digital frauds in Hong Kong are 10% higher than the global average, according to a TransUnion report.
Financial services saw the largest year-on-year jump (29%) in the rate of suspected digital fraud. Online forums and dating sites were the most targeted by scammers, with authorities detailing 500 fake dating scams involving $243m in losses.
In terms of attempt rate during the period, the retail sector (9.5%) reported the second-highest rate followed by financial services (5.5%).
Amongst generations, Gen Zs and Millennials were mostly targeted. Five in 10 of Gen Z respondents were targeted in the last three months. Meanwhile, 41% of Millennials said they were also targeted and had the highest rate of victimisation at 7%.
Join Hong Kong Business community Moreover, ‘vishing’ (fraudulent phone calls), was the most common scheme at 36%, followed by phishing at 33%.
OpenAI said on Friday it was testing new reasoning AI models, o3 and o3 mini, in a sign of growing competition with rivals like Google to create smarter models capable of tackling complex problems.
CEO Sam Altman said the AI start-up plans to launch o3 mini by the end of January, and full o3 after that, as more robust large language models could outperform existing models and attract new investments and users.
Microsoft-backed OpenAI released o1 AI models in September designed to spend more time processing queries to solve hard problems.
OpenAI’s new o3 and o3 mini models will be more powerful than its previously launched o1 models The o1 models are capable of reasoning through complex tasks and can solve more challenging problems than previous models in science, coding and maths, the AI firm had said in a blog post.
OpenAI’s new o3 and o3 mini models, which are in internal safety testing currently, will be more powerful than its previously launched o1 models, the company said.
The generative AI pioneer said it was opening an application process for external researchers to test o3 models ahead of the public release, which will close on 10 January.
Arms race OpenAI had triggered an AI arms race after it launched ChatGPT in November 2022. The growing popularity of the company and new product launches helped OpenAI in closing a US$6.6-billion funding round in October.
Microsoft says its researchers have found evidence of an exotic phenomenon that’s key to its plans to build general-purpose quantum computers.
The phenomenon, known as a Majorana zero mode, is expected to smooth the path for topological quantum computing — the technological approach that’s favored by Microsoft’s Azure Quantum program.
Quantum computing is a weird enough concept by itself: In contrast with the rigid one-or-zero world of classical computing, quantum computing juggles quantum bits, or qubits, that can represent ones and zeroes simultaneously until the results are read out.
NASA is inviting people to fly their names around the moon.
The names will be saved on a flash drive, which will be taken on board the Orion capsule.
The offer is free and participants will receive a virtual boarding pass.
NASA is giving people the chance to fly their name around the moon on an upcoming mission later this year.Those who sign up will have their name saved on a flash drive, which will be taken into space aboard the agency’s Orion capsule, as part of its Artemis 1 mission.No payment is required for participants, according to NASA.
Upon signing up, participants will receive a virtual boarding pass featuring their name and details about the spaceflight.
Harnessing the power of the sun to purify water. In southern France, an innovative system called Helio is doing that. The self-sufficient small sphere can distil dirty water or seawater. It also emits zero CO2, making it completely sustainable.
Helio engineer Matteo Beaudet told Euronews how the system works.
Clean drinking water
“We all need water to live. A human being needs two litres a day to live. This sphere is sized to make water for five people – that’s 10 litres per day,” he said.
The price of each sphere is approximately 5,000 euros. The system is designed to guarantee the supply of drinking water during natural disasters, wars or in any situation where the water supply has been damaged.
Fresh warnings from the US over the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline have thrust the controversial project back into the spotlight.
The US has indicated the new pipeline between Russia and Germany will not go ahead, and officials in Berlin say the project could face sanctions if Russia sends troops into Ukraine.
The multi-billion dollar pipeline is increasingly being seen as a key bargaining chip in Western efforts to prevent a possible Russian invasion.
So what is the pipeline and why is it still so divisive? It’s a new 1,200km (745-mile) gas pipeline running from western Russia to north-eastern Germany under the Baltic sea.
Evergrande stock (HK:3333) closed 7.6% higher in Hong Kong trading Monday as the Chinese central bank repeated its determination to keep market conditions orderly, although the fate of the debt-laden Chinese real estate developer remained uncertain.
The company missed a payment deadline on a dollar bond during the previous week, triggering the start of a 30-day grace period. Interest on its 9.5% March 2024 dollar bond is due Wednesday, however.
Shares of the beleaguered company are down 83% this year.
HONG KONG—One of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges said it would close all user accounts in mainland China by the end of the year, days after the country’s central bank declared all crypto-related transactions illegal.
Huobi Global, which was founded in 2013 and currently operates from offices in Singapore, South Korea, the U.S. and other countries, over the weekend said it stopped allowing new customers in mainland China to register accounts. The exchange will also gradually retire existing accounts in China by the end of 2021 to ensure the safety of its customers’ assets, it added.