Gadgets
Bitcoin Price Takes a Hit After Turkey Bans Cryptocurrency Payments
In legislation published in the Official Gazette on Friday, the central bank said cryptocurrencies and other such digital assets based on distributed ledger technology could not be used, directly or indirectly, as an instrument of payment.
Turkey’s growing crypto market has gained momentum in recent months as investors joined a global rally in bitcoin, seeking to hedge against TRY depreciation and inflation, which topped 16% last month.
Bitcoin was off nearly 3 percent at $61,490 (roughly Rs. 46 lakhs) versus the dollar at 0754 GMT after the Turkish ban, which was criticised by the main opposition party.
In a statement, the central bank said crypto assets were “neither subject to any regulation and supervision mechanisms nor a central regulatory authority,” among other security risks.
“Payment service providers will not be able to develop business models in a way that crypto assets are used directly or indirectly in the provision of payment services and electronic money issuance,” and will not provide any services, it said.
“Their use in payments may cause non-recoverable losses for the parties to the transactions … and include elements that may undermine the confidence in methods and instruments used currently in payments,” the central bank added.
This week Royal Motors, which distributes Rolls-Royce and Lotus cars in Turkey, became the first in the country to say it would accept payments in cryptocurrencies. Globally, giants such as Apple, Amazon, and Expedia also accept such payments.
‘Bullying’
Main opposition leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu slammed the decision as another case of “midnight bullying”, referring to President Tayyip Erdogan’s decision last month — announced in a midnight decree — to fire the central bank governor.
“It’s like they have to commit foolishness at night,” he said on Twitter.
Turkish annual inflation is at a six-month high of 16.19 percent, well above a 5 percent target, and unemployment remains high, at 13.4 percent.
Crypto trading volumes in Turkey hit TRY 218 billion (roughly $27 billion; Rs. 2 lakh crores) from early February to 24 March, up from just over 7 TRY billion (roughly $868 million; Rs. 6,453 crores) in the same period a year earlier, according to data from U.S. researcher Chainalysis analysed by Reuters.
Cryptocurrency worth TRY 23 billion (roughly $2.85 billion; Rs. 21,200 crores) was traded in the first few days after Erdogan shocked markets by ousting the central bank chief last month, the data showed, versus TRY 1 billion (roughly $124 million; Rs. 922 crores) in the whole of March 2020.
Last week, Turkish authorities demanded user information from crypto trading platforms.
“Any authority which starts regulating (the market) with a ban will end up frustrated (since this) encourages fintech startups to move abroad,” said economist Ugur Gurses on Twitter.
The legislation goes into effect on April 30.
Gadgets
Microsoft Partners With Inworld to Bring AI Game Development Tools to Xbox
“At Xbox, we believe that with better tools, creators can make even more extraordinary games,” Haiyan Zhang, GM, Xbox Gaming AI, said in a blog post. “This partnership will bring together: Inworld’s expertise in working with generative AI models for character development, Microsoft’s cutting-edge cloud-based AI solutions including Azure OpenAI Service, Microsoft Research’s technical insights into the future of play, and Team Xbox’s strengths in revolutionizing accessible and responsible creator tools for all developers.”
The aforementioned AI design copilot is a toolset that will help game designers turn prompts into scripts and dialogue trees. In contrast, the character runtime will enable dynamically generated plot beats and quests. We’ve already seen heavy AI integration in games by way of procedural generation — a more recent example being the 1000+ planets in Starfield. Not to mention, enemy AI has been around for way longer.
Inworld made headlines in August when it launched a modded story mode for Grand Theft Auto V, Sentient Streets, in which players had to investigate the rise of a bizarre AI-worshipping cult — a segment loaded with characters that spoke in AI-generated dialogue, on the fly. The mod was later taken down by publisher Take-Two, leaving a permanent strike on the creator Bloc’s YouTube channel. As per The Verge, Inworld’s AI technology can also be used for narration in top-down RPGs to warn players about any events awaiting off-screen and respond to questions like we’ve seen in the past year with AI chatbots like ChatGPT and Bing Chat. Microsoft has also been heavily banking on artificial intelligence, having made a $10 billion (about Rs. 83,254 crore) investment in OpenAI. The company has also integrated AI tools into its popular suite of services and also added an AI copilot to Windows.
Despite being a Microsoft-affiliated AI toolset, it would be interesting to see whether titles using them will be allowed to thrive on other platforms. In July, Valve claimed that it would be cracking down on games that included AI-generated assets if the developer didn’t own the copyright to the piece of art. For the uninitiated, when you insert a prompt to create something in AI, the software simply repurposes existing assets found online and mushes them together — basically stealing from other artists and writers without appropriate commercial licenses. Infringing them would lead to the game not being distributed on Steam, forcing the developers to seek proper licenses for the asset by reaching out to the AI companies involved. It’s unclear how Microsoft’s partnership will play out — as long as AI content is being used as a catalyst to innovate and create something new, it should be fine.
Gadgets
BSNL Offers Free 4G SIM Upgrade: Here’s How to Get It
In a post on X shared by BSNL’s Andhra Pradesh (@bsnl_ap_circle) unit, the company confirmed that BSNL users can upgrade their older 2G or 3G SIMs to a 4G SIM for free. Not only will the upgrade be free, but a promotional image shared with the post suggests that users who opt for the upgrade will also receive 4GB of free data that will be valid for three months. It is speculated that BSNL is aiming to boost its upcoming 4G services with this offer. The announcement was first spotted by Telecom Talk.
To access the free data offer and the free upgrade, BSNL users are requested to get in touch with executives at BSNL’s Customer Service Centre, franchisee or retailer stores, or contact one of their Direct Selling Agents (DSA). The promo image also adds in a finer print that the offer is available with certain terms and conditions, but hasn’t detailed any, so far.
Reliance’s Jio recently launched the 4G-supported Bharat B1 feature phone in India. The handset is priced at Rs. 1,299 in India. Alongside 4G connectivity, the phone comes with JioCinema and JioSaavn applications pre-installed.
The Jio Bharat B1 is equipped with the JioPay application, which is said to allow users to make UPI payments. Aiming to increase accessibility, the phone supports 23 languages overall, including multiple regional languages.
Gadgets
Realme GT 5 Pro Teased to Feature 3,000 Nits Display; More Details Revealed
Realme, via Weibo, announced the arrival of the Realme GT 5 Pro in China. The display of the handset is confirmed to offer 3000 nits peak brightness. It has also been teased to offer heat dissipation with a surface area of around 10,000mm2. It is confirmed to ship with Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 SoC. The post doesn’t specify the exact launch date of the smartphone, however, given the release of the teasers, the launch could be just around the corner.
The Realme GT 5 Pro has been in the news a lot lately. It is expected to feature a 6.78-inch (1,264×2,780 pixels) AMOLED display and is tipped to come in 8GB, 12GB, and 16GB RAM options along with 128GB, 256GB, 512GB, and 1TB inbuilt storage options.
For optics, the Realme GT 5 Pro is said to have a triple rear camera unit comprising two 50-megapixel sensors and an 8-megapixel shooter at the rear. The camera setup might include a Sony LYTIA LYT808 sensor, an OmniVision OV08D10 secondary sensor, and a Sony IMX890 telephoto sensor. For selfies, there could be a 32-megapixel sensor at the front. It is said to carry a 5,400mAh battery with support for 100W wired charging and 50W wireless charging.
The Realme GT 5 Pro is expected to come with upgrades over Realme GT 5. The latter was launched in China in August with a price tag of CNY 2,999 for the base model with 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage.
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