Tech and Telecom

US trade officials rejected Tesla Inc’s bid for relief from President Donald Trump’s 25-per cent tariffs on the Chinese-made Autopilot “brain” of its Model 3 and other electric vehicles, one of more than 1,000 product denials linked to China’s industrial development plans. According to documents filed by the US Trade Representative’s office (USTR) and reviewed by Reuters, exclusion requests from Tesla and others for Chinese-made products from aircraft parts to biotechnology instruments were denied because they were deemed “strategically important” to the “Made in China 2025” program. Tesla declined to comment. The company has separate pending tariff exclusion requests for duties on the Chinese-made Model 3 Centre Screen and for the Model 3 Car Computer before USTR. Tesla is a victim of US-Sino Trade war which has effected its cost of production and hurt its sales. This is not first time that US has put tariffs in a nation. US accuses China for stealing cutting edge Ameri...

Firefox users may have noticed that some of their add-ons/extensions have suddenly stopped working today. Under the extensions tab Firefox displays “could not be verified for use in Firefox and has been disabled”. According to Mozilla’s bug tracker, this is actually a bug and is explained as “all add-ons are disabled due to the expiration of intermediate signing certificate”. This issue occurred at 5 AM (local time) or 12 AM GMT/UTC, all thanks to the above mentioned bug. The affected extensions include LastPass, Ghostery, Download Manager (S3), Dark Mode, Honey, uBlock Origin, Greasemonkey, NoScript, and others. The affected extensions have completely stopped working and cannot be re-downloaded from the store. Temporary Fix Currently, the only solution to this issue is to either find a replacement or just remove the affected extensions. However, if you use the Firefox developer or Nightly Build, there is a temporary solution. Look under about:config and set the ...

In June 2018, the honorable Supreme Court suspended withholding tax, sales tax, and service charges on prepaid recharge cards. The Cellular Mobile Operators (CMOs) complied with it in letter and spirit and a balance of Rs. 100 was received on a recharge of Rs. 100. It is imperative to mention that Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) is not regulating prices of CMOs except for Significant Market Power (SMP) operator as the mobile market is competitive. As a result of the suspension of taxes and service charges, CMOs adjusted the prices of standard prepaid tariff packages. In the case of hybrid bundles/monthly cards, additional incentives were provided to the subscribers in the form of voice, SMS, and data. On 24th April 2019, the Supreme Court of Pakistan passed the following order: "For reason to be recorded later this Human Rights Case is disposed of without interference in the collection of public revenues and all the interim orders." After the restoratio...