TECHNOLOGY

Once confined to rectangular screens, chirpy plumber Mario and pointy-eared Princess Zelda are popping up in theme parks and toy stores as Nintendo goes all out to win non-gamer fans.

The tech industry is holding its breath to see what Trump's second term will bring when he takes over in January, especially as SpaceX and Tesla chief Elon Musk is expected to have a huge influence on the next US government.

The event will bring together some 70,000 attendees with more than 3,000 startups and 1,000 investors, according to the organizers.

Deputy Minister for Women, Youth, and Persons with Disabilities Mmapaseka Steve Letsike emphasized that collaboration between government, private businesses, academic institutions and disability organizations can drive innovation in the ICT sector, ensuring that people with disabilities benefit from rapid technological advancements.

Ottawa is not imposing restrictions on Canadian users of TikTok, which has come under scrutiny for its ownership under China-based ByteDance.

The upgraded version of Sony's flagship gaming console is retailing for $699.99 in the United States -- $250 more than the previous PlayStation 5 model.

The firm, which also owns Instagram, violated South Korean laws prohibiting the use of information on political opinions, religious beliefs and people's sex life unless the individual provides explicit consent, Seoul's Personal Information Protection Commission said.

Analysed by AFP over several days, the large-scale operation, powered by artificial intelligence, points to a sophisticated, coordinated influence campaign not unlike those carried out by Russia in recent years -- though its instigator and objectives remain unclear.

OpenAI on Thursday beefed up its ChatGPT generative AI chatbot with search engine capabilities, as the startup takes on Google's decades-long dominance of web search.

The tech giant saw quarterly revenue of $94.9 billion in the three months ending September 28, up from the same period last year, in a closely watched report as investors seek to gauge demand for its latest iPhones.

Jakarta is seeking to boost investment from foreign tech companies with restrictive measures that require their phones to be 40 percent sourced from parts in Indonesia.

Microsoft delivered solid quarterly results on Wednesday, beating analyst expectations with revenue jumping 16 percent to $65.6 billion, but questions were raised about the company's big spending on the AI boom.

Facebook owner Meta saw net income and revenues top expectations on Wednesday as the company said it would expand investments into artificial intelligence, drawing nervousness from investors.

The results showed that Google is holding its own despite worry that the search engine juggernaut has been caught short in the AI race.

The release, first previewed by the company in June, marks Apple's foray into an AI race that has seen the US tech giants rush into ChatGPT-style technology.

The new Tiangong team will carry out experiments with an eye to the space programme's ambitious goal of placing astronauts on the Moon by 2030 and eventually constructing a lunar base.

The US software giant bought the game's publisher Activision-Blizzard a year ago for $69 billion in the sector's biggest takeover.

President Ramaphosa noted that this shift presents a great industrialization opportunity for South Africa and the region, especially within the framework of the African Continental Free Trade Area.

The measures include stricter controls on who can follow or message teen accounts and safety notices in Instagram direct messages and Facebook Messenger about suspicious cross-country conversations.

Amazon, Microsoft, and Google are now looking to outgun each other with announcements on atomic energy, which they hope will power a technology that is consuming electricity at an alarming rate.

The advocacy group Global Witness submitted eight ads containing false election claims to the Chinese-owned video-sharing app TikTok, the Meta-owned Facebook, and Google-owned YouTube to test their ad systems in the final stretch of the November 5 election.

Data centers housing huge servers are springing up around the world to store the flood of data sucked up from billions of smartphones, tablets and other connected devices.

Myanmar and China have the world's worst internet freedom, with declines reported in a number of other countries led by Kyrgyzstan, a study said Wednesday.

A wave of touching photos showing great moments in time is fascinating amateur historians online.

The "super heavy booster" had blasted off attached to the uncrewed Starship rocket minutes earlier, then made a picture-perfect controlled return to the same pad in Texas.

The Europa Clipper mission will allow the US space agency to uncover new details about the moon, which scientists believe could hold an ocean of liquid water beneath its icy surface.

Elon Musk on Thursday unveiled what he said was a robotaxi capable of self-driving, predicting it would be available by 2027 -- about a decade after he first promised an autonomous vehicle.

The assault on the San Francisco-based nonprofit, claimed by a shadowy group that experts described as a pro-Palestinian "hacktivist," lays bare the perils of cybersecurity breaches ahead of the November 5 US presidential election.

Brazil's Supreme Court said Tuesday it was lifting a ban on Elon Musk's social network X, which was blocked in its biggest Latin American market for over a month amid a row over disinformation.