Here are 5 important things happening in tech around the world today.
The National Consumer Commission has issued a notice to retailers in South Africa, warning them against adding extra charges to customers when they make purchases with cards instead of cash.
Sony Music Publishing and other music publishers have sued generative AI giant Anthropic, alleging that the company has illegally scraped, and downloaded copyrighted music.
An onerous mock trading course is becoming an effective tool for South Korea to cool investor fervor over risky products that have turned the country’s $4.3 trillion stock market extremely volatile.
Leveraged exchange-traded funds targeting twice the daily returns of chipmakers Samsung and SK Hynix have seen their trading value collapse to 4% of its June peak.
They are set for their first monthly outflow. Key to sapping demand has been a series of regulatory tightening moves, most recently a rule to complete five-day simulated trading.
Investors must download a Windows-only program on PCs and spend at least an hour a day learning the ropes, and the risks, of leveraged trading with virtual cash.
Interviews with several Korean retail investors suggest the new requirement, effective 19 August, is too cumbersome to meet.
When Kim Jung-hoon, resident of Gyeonggi province outside Seoul, heard about the mandatory mock trading, his first reaction was that he wouldn’t even attempt it because it was “too much of a hassle.”
“The hours sound long and you can only download the program on PCs,” Kim said. “My work computer can’t download external programs. It doesn’t sound easy to bring an extra laptop with me to work.”
The mock trading exercises add to a slew of regulatory curbs since July to deter investors from trading the leveraged ETFs tied to Samsung and SK Hynix.
Earlier tightening measures included a higher minimum deposit.
These single-stock ETFs were introduced in May to draw retail money into the local market, but quickly became a political hot potato.
During their heyday, turnover of the leveraged products and the two chipmaker stocks combined accounted for over 80% of the market’s total and triggered wild price swings.
The system gives investors a virtual cash deposit of 100 million won ($72,872), offering a first-hand lesson on the perils of trading risky instruments. [Bloomberg]
284 million patient records exposed in McKesson breach: Major US healthcare company McKesson confirmed that it suffered a cyberattack on 25 August. Threat actor group ShinyHunters claimed that it has stolen more than 284 million records containing data from patients from the breach. [CyberNews]
Nvidia’s DLSS5 technology leaks and modders are putting in everything: Nvidia’s next-generation AI upscaling technology, DLSS5, leaked in an early-access build of NBA 2K27 when modders managed to extract the “neural rendering” file from the game. Since then, the modders have been applying the technology to other games, including Skyrim, GTA V and Cyberpunk 2077. [The Verge]
**Cell C positioning itself to capitalise on South Africa’s growing MVNO market: **Cell C is South Africa’s largest MVNO partner, holding an estimated 80% to 85% share of the market. The business has contributed significantly to Cell C’s turnaround strategy. It revealed in its latest results that MVNO Home Location Register (HLR) subscribers now sat at 5.7 million. [Daily Investor]
**National Consumer Commission warns retailers not to add charges to customers for using bank cards: **National Consumer Commission spokesperson Phetho Ntaba has issued a notice to retailers, warning them against adding charges to customers’ purchases simply because they want to pay with card instead of cash. [BusinessTech]
**Sony files copyright lawsuit against Anthropic: **Sony Music Publishing and other music publishers have sued generative AI giant Anthropic and its co-founders Dario Amodei and Benjamin Mann. The suit alleges that the company conducted a campaign of illegally torrenting, scraping and downloading copyrighted music. [TechCrunch]
