Technology News

Free Chromebooks for Class 9 High Scorers — Prime Minister's Digital Pakistan Initiative

All principals and heads of government schools in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa are informed that Class 9 students who obtained 424 or more marks in the Science group or 315 or more marks in the Arts group (SSC Annual-I Examination 2026) are eligible for free Chromebooks under the Prime Minister's Digital Pakistan Initiative Programme.

BISE Peshawar has already submitted the data of eligible students to the Inter Boards Coordination Commission (IBCC), Islamabad. School heads must check the list of their institution's eligible students, fill in the official proforma with complete, accurate and verified information, and submit the duly signed hard copy to the Office of the Director Equivalence, IBCC, Plot No. 25, Street No. 38, G-10/4, Islamabad, with intimation to the Director Research & Development, BISE Peshawar.

Official links:
📄 Official Notice — BISE Peshawar (eligible students list & proforma)
🇵🇰 Digital Pakistan — Official Website

All KP Education Boards (check your own board for its list):
BISE Peshawar • BISE Mardan • BISE Swat • BISE Abbottabad • BISE Kohat • BISE Bannu • BISE Dera Ismail Khan • BISE Malakand

AI Giants Give Publishers One Shared Way to Block AI Scraping

Four of the biggest AI companies — OpenAI, Google, Microsoft and Anthropic — have promised publishers a single, standard way to tell AI systems not to use their content for training. Until now, a website owner had to set separate blocking instructions for each company’s web crawlers; under the new plan, one instruction in the site’s robots file will be recognised the same way by all four firms.

The change will not arrive overnight — Microsoft plans to start in February 2027 and Google sometime in 2027, while OpenAI says it will roll it out “in the coming months” and Anthropic says it has already begun — and it covers future training only, with scraping allowed by default until a publisher switches it off. Still, for teachers, students and newsrooms it is an important step in the long argument over who owns the words AI learns from, coming after years of lawsuits from publishers, including the New York Times case against OpenAI and Microsoft.

More headlines: Tech markets had a rough Friday: Intel plunged about 30% after a weak outlook linked to softer personal-computer demand, Amazon missed profit and revenue expectations, and the Nasdaq fell about 2.7% (Malay Mail, Dimsum Daily). Apple, by contrast, overtook Nvidia to become the world’s most valuable company at $5.03 trillion, and introduced its first touchscreen MacBook Pro on 29 October (The Edge Malaysia, Particle News). DoorDash agreed to buy grocery delivery firm Instacart for $17 billion, and China’s DeepSeek raised about $15 billion in a second funding round (KIMKJ).