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Articles by Affan Qasim
Moltbook Mirror: How AI agents are role-playing, rebelling and building their own society
KARACHI: Last night, while you were sleeping, your personal AI assistant joined a cult. It didn’t ask for permission, and it didn’t need your login. It simply found its way to Moltbook, a digital "ghost town" where over 1.5 million AI agents are currently building a society that has absolutely no room for humans. Launched in late January 2026 by entrepreneur Matt Schlicht, it is a Reddit-style platform where the only entities posting, commenting, and upvoting are autonomous AI agents.
Pakistan ranks number 3 globally in crypto adoption: PVARA leads
DUBAI: Bilal Bin Saqib, chairman of the Pakistan Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (PVARA), shared an ambitious vision for Pakistan's crypto space at Binance Blockchain Week Dubai 2025, He spoke alongside industry leaders CZ, Michael Saylor, and UAE’s AI minister Omar Sultan Al Olama. “Pakistan is the world’s third-largest crypto market without any regulatory framework,” Saqib told the audience.
Bilal Bin Saqib resigns as SAPM on Blockchain and Crypto Original
Bilal Bin Saqib, Pakistan’s Minister of State for Crypto and Blockchain, has resigned from his post as Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Blockchain and Crypto in order to comply with bureaucratic regulations, The Express Tribune has learnt. Rumours that the crypto ministry was shutting down started circulating on WhatsApp on Tuesday.
Amazon–Google multicloud link and what it means for Pakistan’s digital economy | The Express Tribune
Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud have launched a managed service that lets customers create private, high-speed connections between the two cloud platforms. The links are designed to cut out the public internet, reduce delays and make it easier for companies to run different parts of their systems on different providers. The move responds to a growing global trend where businesses mix tools from both platforms but struggle with slow transfers and complicated setups.
Anthropic links China to AI-driven cyberattacks using Claude
Anthropic has said it disrupted a “highly sophisticated” espionage operation that used its Claude artificial intelligence system to automate large parts of a global hacking campaign. The company said the attackers targeted government agencies, Big Tech firms, banks and chemical manufacturers, and succeeded in breaching a small number of organisations.
AI’s debt and social costs
The global Artificial Intelligence (AI) race has entered a paradoxical phase where trillion-dollar valuations and euphoric investor sentiment sit side by side with power shortages, rising inequality, and existential warnings from leading scientists. While the AI revolution promises transformative productivity and automation, the scale and speed of its infrastructure buildout are straining the world’s hardware, energy, and ethical limits.
Quetta slows down when a signal bar becomes a lifeline
QUETTA: Life is rapidly recalibrating in Quetta as a series of security measures including a suspension of mobile internet, bans on large gatherings under Section 144 and tougher movement restrictions, leave classrooms empty, businesses offline and residents anxious about even routine tasks. What began as a precautionary response to security concerns has rippled through every layer of daily life, slowing the city’s rhythm and cutting off vital connections.
From AI roasts to build-a-baby to orbital FedEx: the future is officially weird
From skin to egg: scientists pull off a sci-fi style fertility hack Source: Reuters Move over, sci-fi movies — real scientists just turned human skin cells into eggs. Yep, ordinary skin cells. Researchers at Oregon Health & Science University pulled off the feat by sliding the DNA from a skin cell into a donor egg and giving it a little cellular “reboot.” The result? Lab-made eggs that could actually be fertilized.
EA leaves Wall Street — next level or game over? | The Express Tribune
Electronic Arts just hit pause on Wall Street. The gaming giant is going private in a jaw-dropping $55 billion all-cash deal, with Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, Silver Lake, and Affinity Partners stepping in as the new “players one, two, and three.” Shareholders will cash out at $210 a share, a move EA is calling the biggest all-cash take-private deal in history. Talk about unlocking an achievement. In the middle of a consolidation spree, EA is hitting the reset button.
Bugs go bionic while Pakistan plugs into AI
Pakistan’s future is in data Mari Energies Limited (MARI), one of Pakistan’s top oil and gas explorers, has created a new subsidiary dubbed Mari Technologies. They plan to make a 5MW data centre in Islamabad and plan to make another one in Karachi. It’s definitely an exciting time to be a Pakistani. We’ve got the new National AI Policy of 2025 and last year’s decision to invest Rs10 billion in tech ventures.
Kojima's OD and AI's cultural incapability
AI has little concept of other cultures Source: REUTERS Much like people after COVID, AI is unable to pick up on social cues. Specifically, social cues and cultural contexts of non-Western societies when using it to translate another language. Say you host someone at your house and ask them if they want chai, and then they (for whatever strange reason) say they don’t want any, you won’t just leave it at that, right? You’d ask if they want anything else.
When Steam robs you, Konami bores you, and Doom smokes you out Original
BlockBlasters wasn’t a game. It was a $150K crypto heist hiding on Steam Source: X (@rastalandTV) Steam’s latest disaster shows how fast “fun little indie” can turn into “crypto-draining nightmare.” The game was called BlockBlasters. It dropped on Steam in July looking like harmless retro fluff. But on August 30, a sneaky update laced with malware went live. The payload? Scripts that laughed at your antivirus, raided your browser, and looted your crypto wallets.
Samsung’s VR missile, autism as evolution’s trade-off, and unlocking your brain years
Samsung’s Project Moohan: The VR missile aimed squarely at Apple’s Vision Pro Image created using Gemini Samsung’s long-whispered Project Moohan is about to crash Apple’s Vision Pro party, and it’s bringing some serious firepower.
scam texts on steroids, Pakistan may be next
Scam texts are usually something we swipe away without much thought. A fake bank alert here, a courier delivery hoax there, but security researchers warn the game is changing. According to Wired, cybercriminals are now deploying “SMS blasters”. These are portable devices posing as a cell tower to trick nearby phones into connecting to it, after which it sends out a mass broadcast of fake SMS messages.
The breakneck pace of AI and a breakthrough with micro gears, which might be broken by that solar flare.
Nanomachines, son! Photo Illustration: Google Gemini I confess, the title is misleading, and I apologize for that, but we are inching ever closer to making microbots and one day, nanomachines. Scientists at the University of Gothenburg have made light-powered gears that can fit inside a human hair. For reference, a human hair can range from 0.017 to 0.186 millimeters (mm) in diameter. If you tried to straighten out your hair and examine it head-on, you likely wouldn’t be able to see anything.
Seas of weeds, AI predicted earthquakes, and Big Tech's endless appetite for energy and water Original
Seas of weeds Source: REUTERS Something wicked this way comes, in the form of brown seaweed (well really it's a type of algae). Sargassum was once presumed to only exist in the nutrient-poor waters of the Sargasso Sea. However, recent research reveals the journey of sargassum from nutrient-rich coastal areas to the open ocean via oceanic currents, such as the Loop Current and the Gulf Stream.
From time-bending crystals to group streaks and alarms you can’t escape
Time crystals: from impossible physics to pocket security Artwork by Affan Qasim, created using Gemini Pro Imagine pulling out a 1000 Rupee bill and watching its security stripe pulse like a heartbeat, shifting, shimmering, and repeating in patterns no counterfeiter could fake. That’s the strange promise of time crystals, a form of matter physicists once thought impossible. At the University of Colorado Boulder, researchers have just made the first visible time crystals.
Pakistan’s Economic Census: Progress, blind spots and contradictions Original
For the first time in more than two decades, Pakistan has produced a national economic census. It counted over 7.1 million establishments and geo-tagged nearly 40 million structures, making it the largest digitisation exercise in South Asia. Government officials have presented it as a landmark step toward building a reliable statistical frame of the economy.
Quivering shapes help documentary explore fixed ideas of Pakistan blasphemy law
When confronted in 2013, the man who claimed scholars agreed on the death penalty for blasphemy, told his interrogators that he could not actually read Arabic. This man, Advocate Ismail Qureshi, is at the centre of a new documentary by the Alliance Against Blasphemy Politics Pakistan (AABP).
what to expect on August 5 Original
Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf has announced a nationwide protest on August 5 to demand the release of their imprisoned leader and former prime minister Imran Khan, and dozens of party activists convicted under anti-terrorism laws.
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