Shamayita Acharya

By Khanh Vu and Phuong Nguyen HANOI (Reuters) - Having sidestepped the worst of the coronavirus pandemic so far, Vietnam aims to rev up its economy over the next five years, trusting on its custom-tooled mix of free trade deals, privatisation and tight COVID-19 curbs. Armed with a raft of free trade deals envied by regional peers and increasingly luring factories away from China, the ruling Communist Party on Monday formally approved ambitions to raise growth beyond an annual 6% in the pre-pandemic era to 6.5%-7.0% for the 2021-2025 period. In an economic development blueprint confirmed at its five-yearly congress, it said it would boost its growing role as a key manufacturing hub for global giants like Samsung Electronics Co and Intel Corp. At the same time, the Party is targeting raising the country's profile beyond a low-cost labour destination to a ... Read More on Datafloq

By Anshuman Daga SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Southeast Asian ride-hailing and food delivery giant Grab has raised $2 billion from its first term loan, in what it said was the largest institutional debt in Asia's technology sector, as the company expands its regional services. The five-year senior secured loan was upsized from the initial $750 million after the company secured commitments from international institutional investors, Singapore-based Grab said in a statement on Monday. Anthony Tan, group CEO & co-founder of Grab said that investors recognised the value of Grab's super app platform, as "we continue making consistent progress in achieving our growth and sustainability milestones." Backed by investors including Softbank Group Corp, Grab has evolved from a ride-hailing app operator to a one-stop shop for services such as food delivery, payments ... Read More on Datafloq

By Stephen Nellis (Reuters) - Global semiconductor sales rose 6.5% overall in 2020, as a recovery during the last three months of the year helped offset a sharp dropoff in March and April, when pandemic stay-home orders rolled out around the world. Global sales were $439 billion in 2020, according to data from the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA), a trade group that represents most U.S. chipmakers along with many international firms. The group said sales from U.S. chipmakers were about $208 billion, or about 47% of the total. Chip sales into the United States were $94.15 billion, up 19.8% from the previous year. Falan Yinug, SIA's director of industry statistics and economic policy, said much of the rise in U.S. purchasing was driven by high-end memory chips used in ... Read More on Datafloq

SYDNEY (Reuters) - Software giant Microsoft Corp is confident its search product Bing can fill the gap in Australia if Google pulls its search over required payments to media outlets, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said on Monday. Australia has introduced laws that would force internet giant Google and social media heavyweight Facebook Inc to negotiate payments to domestic media outlets whose content links drive traffic to their platforms. However, the Big Tech firms have called the laws unworkable and said last month they would withdraw key services from Australia if the regulations went ahead. Those services include Google's search engine, which has 94% of the country's search market, according to industry data. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has since spoken with Morrison about the new rules, the tech company told Reuters, and on Monday, Morrison said the software company was ready to grow the ... Read More on Datafloq

(Reuters) - Online brokerage Robinhood narrowed trading limitations to eight companies from 50 on Sunday, according to an update on its blog. Companies that are still face limitations include GameStop Corp, AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc and Blackberry Ltd, it said. (Reporting by Aishwarya Nair in Bengaluru; Editing by Daniel Wallis) ... Read More on Datafloq

By Svea Herbst-Bayliss and Sujata Rao BOSTON/LONDON (Reuters) - Wall Street is gearing up for another week of market mayhem, with signs that the retail frenzy that pumped up the stock prices of the likes of GameStop Corp and AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc is spreading to other assets. Some of Wall Street's largest hedge funds are still licking their wounds after retail traders sought to drive up the prices of stocks that were heavily bet against, resulting in large losses for major investors. Melvin Capital, a hedge fund at the center of the GameStop drama, lost 53% in January but received commitments for fresh cash from investors in the last days of the month, Reuters reported on Sunday. Melvin ended January with more than $8 billion in assets ... Read More on Datafloq

By Svea Herbst-Bayliss and Maiya Keidan NEW YORK (Reuters) - On three hours of sleep a night and with no time to eat, one New York-based hedge fund manager overseeing billions in assets called last week the most stressful of his life. "Nothing was making sense anymore," he said, as he watched the stock of GameStop Corp soar, while he bet it would fall. Wednesday was the worst. Fueled by chatter on Reddit and other social media to take on Wall Street, investors used venues like online trading app Robinhood to bid up the brick-and-mortar retailer. GameStop surged 135%, on its way to gaining more than 1,500% in January without any change in its business outlook. Hedge funds scrambled. By this point trading had become so unpredictable across all sectors that funds were forced to dump their winning stocks ... Read More on Datafloq

HONG KONG (Reuters) - Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi Corp said on Sunday that its legal complaint against the U.S. Department of Defense and the Treasury Department was to protect the company's interests, in a notice on the Hong Kong stock exchange. The company filed a complaint in a Washington district court on Friday against the U.S. Defense and Treasury Departments, seeking to remove the Chinese smartphone maker from an official list of companies with ties to China's military. Xiaomi said the U.S. decision to include the company as a "communist Chinese military company" was "factually incorrect" and said it had asked the courts to declare the decision illegal. The Defense Department, under the Trump administration in mid-January, added Xiaomi and eight other companies to the list, which requires American investors to divest their holdings in ... Read More on Datafloq

SYDNEY (Reuters) - Facebook Inc CEO Mark Zuckerberg called Australian lawmakers last week to discuss rules that would make internet giants pay news outlets for content but failed to persuade them to change policy, the country's Treasurer said on Sunday. Zuckerberg "reached out to talk about the code and the impact on Facebook" and a constructive discussion followed last week between the social media billionaire, Australian Treasurer Josh Frydenberg and communications minister Paul Fletcher. "No, Mark Zuckerberg didn't convince me to back down if that's what you're asking," Frydenberg told the Australian Broadcasting Corp, without giving further details of the meeting. A Facebook spokeswoman in Australia said the company's executives regularly meet with government stakeholders on a range of topics. "We're actively engaging with the Australian government with the goal ... Read More on Datafloq

(Reuters) - Social media company Reddit was experiencing problems on its website briefly on Saturday, according to outage monitoring website Downdetector.com. Customers reported trouble logging in and sending messages on its website. The outage affected regions such as New York, Boston and Washington in United States and Toronto in Canada, according to an outage map on Downdetector's website. https://bit.ly/2NLGrx https://bit.ly/2NLGrxX Reddit said in an email statement that it was not tracking any issues with the website today. "We did have some issues with higher error rates this week ... It meant slower load times for some users but we were never hard down," a Reddit spokeswoman said in an emailed statement. The status page of Reddit showed that the website was operational. (https://bit.ly/3t7OntE) ... Read More on Datafloq

By Rajendra Jadhav MUMBAI (Reuters) - India plans to introduce a law to ban private cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin and put in place a framework for an official digital currency to be issued by the central bank, according to a legislative agenda listed by the government. The law will "create a facilitative framework for creation of the official digital currency to be issued by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI)," said the agenda, published on the lower house website on Friday. The legislation, listed for debate in the current parliamentary session, seeks "to prohibit all private cryptocurrencies in India, however, it allows for certain exceptions to promote the underlying technology of cryptocurrency and its uses," the agenda said. In mid-2019, an Indian government panel recommended banning all private cryptocurrencies, with ... Read More on Datafloq

(Reuters) - Online broker Robinhood, one of the hottest venues in this week's retail-trading frenzy, said it put temporary buying restrictions on a small number of securities as clearing house-mandated deposit requirements for equities increased ten-fold. "....the required amount we had to deposit with the clearing house was so large - with individual volatile securities accounting for hundreds of millions of dollars in deposit requirements - that we had to take steps to limit buying in those volatile securities to ensure we could comfortably meet our requirements," it said in a blog post late on Friday. Robinhood's fee-free and simple-to-use app has made it popular with a new generation of small-time traders and its restrictions on Thursday drew a heavy backlash from high-profile politicians and celebrities. Retail investors using Robinhood and other apps drove the so-called "Reddit rally" that pushed up shares of ... Read More on Datafloq

(Reuters) - SpaceX's first high-altitude test flight of its Starship rocket, which exploded last month while attempting to land after an otherwise successful test launch, violated the terms of its Federal Aviation Administration test license, the Verge reported on Friday, citing sources. An investigation was opened that week focusing on the explosive landing and on SpaceX's refusal to stick to the terms of what the FAA authorized, the Verge said. SpaceX did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The Starship rocket destroyed in the accident was a 16-storey-tall prototype for the heavy-lift launch vehicle being developed by billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk's private space company to carry humans and 100 tons of cargo on future missions to the moon and Mars. The self-guided rocket blew up as it ... Read More on Datafloq

By Josh Horwitz SHANGHAI (Reuters) - Xiaomi Corp filed a complaint in a Washington district court on Friday against the U.S. Defense and Treasury Departments, seeking to remove the Chinese smartphone maker from an official list of companies with ties to China's military. The Defense Department, under the Trump administration in mid-January, added Xiaomi and eight other companies to the list, which requires American investors to divest their holdings in the firms by a set deadline. In the complaint, addressed to Biden-appointed Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, Xiaomi called the judgment "unlawful and unconstitutional" and said the company was not controlled by the People's Liberation army. It added that the investment restrictions, which go into effect on March 15, 2020, would cause "immediate ... Read More on Datafloq

By Aleksandra Michalska NEW YORK (Reuters) - Patrick Hughes has put his two side-by-side bars in New York's Hell's Kitchen, Hellcat Annie's and Scruffy Duffy's, up for sale - for 25 bitcoins or 800 Ethereum tokens, now worth up to $1.12 million. He listed the bars in the western Manhattan neighborhood - which like other eating and drinking establishments have been hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic - for sale in early January. "This would be a good time for somebody young, fresh blood to get in here and go for it, like I did when I was 26 years old and opened my first place," Hughes said in an interview. "Now I'm 56, and maybe it's time for somebody else, because I am tired." A niche investment only ... Read More on Datafloq

By Nate Raymond BOSTON (Reuters) - Online brokerage Robinhood on Friday accused Massachusetts securities regulators of creating a "false impression" that it encourages inexperienced investors to place trades without limits and inappropriately approved customers for risky trading. Robinhood's lawyers filed a response to administrative charges filed against it in December. On Thursday, Robinhood came under criticism for restricting trading in some hot stocks including GameStop. It later eased those restrictions. Massachusetts Secretary of the Commonwealth William Galvin, the state's top securities regulator, accused Robinhood of using aggressive tactics to attract inexperienced investors and failing to prevent outages on its platform. He accused the app-based service of using strategies that treated trading like a game to lure young, inexperienced customers, including having confetti rain down for each trade made on its ... Read More on Datafloq

By Paresh Dave, Katie Paul and Elizabeth Culliford OAKLAND, Calif. (Reuters) - Social media services including Facebook Inc and Reddit restrict discussions about weapons, drugs and other illegal activity, but their rules do not specifically mention another lucrative regulated good: stocks. Some people think they should. Users of a Reddit group, in which 5 million members exchange investment ideas, generated significant profits by gorging on shares of GameStop Corp and other out-of-favor companies that had been shorted by big hedge funds. Investors have used social media for years. Anonymous posts have fueled cryptocurrency pump and dump schemes, according to studies, but that obscure market generated less scrutiny. The "Reddit rally" however, has roiled global stock markets and drawn scrutiny of posts in which thousands of smaller investors trade tips on platforms from Facebook to Instagram to Telegram and Clubhouse. ... Read More on Datafloq

By Moira Warburton VANCOUVER (Reuters) - Huawei Chief Financial Officer Meng Wanzhou's request to loosen the bail terms set during her release from jail in 2018 has been rejected, a Canadian judge ruled on Friday, as she fights a U.S. extradition case. Meng is facing charges of bank fraud in the United States for allegedly misleading HSBC about Huawei's business dealings in Iran, causing the bank to violate U.S. sanctions. She has been under house arrest in Vancouver, Canada, since her arrest at the airport there in December 2018. Her arrest caused a chill in relations between Beijing and Ottawa, and soon afterwards China detained two Canadians, who continue to have limited access to legal counsel or diplomatic officials. ... Read More on Datafloq

LONDON (Reuters) - An airport for flying cars will thrust the English city of Coventry into the future later this year, with a project aimed at demonstrating how air taxis will work in urban centres. Urban-Air Port, a British-based start-up, has partnered with car giant Hyundai Motor to develop the infrastructure required for when flying cars take to the skies to ferry around people and goods. From November, visitors to Coventry will be able to see what a flying car airport looks like and see a passenger-carrying drone and an operational electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) vehicle on the landing pad. Urban-Air Port was selected by a government programme aimed at developing zero-emission flying and new air vehicles, winning a 1.2-million-pound ($1.65-million) grant to help fund the temporary installation of the airport in Coventry city centre. ... Read More on Datafloq

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - SoftBank Group Corp Chief Executive Masayoshi Son said on Friday he expects mass production of self-driving vehicles to start in two years. While in the first year the production of units won't be in millions, in the next several years the cost per mile in fully autonomous cars will become very cheap, Son said, speaking at a virtual meeting of the World Economic Forum. "The AI is driving for you. The automobile will become a real supercomputer with four wheels." SoftBank has stake in self-driving car maker Cruise, which is majority owned by General Motors Co, and has been testing self-driving cars in California. It has also funded the autonomous driving business of China's Didi Chuxing. Automakers and tech companies, including Alphabet Inc's Waymo and Tesla ... Read More on Datafloq

By Aditya Kalra NEW DELHI (Reuters) - A U.S. lobby group which represents firms including Amazon.com and Walmart has urged India not to tighten foreign investment rules for e-commerce companies again, according to a letter seen by Reuters. India is considering revising the rules after traders in the country accused Amazon's Indian division and Walmart's Flipkart of creating complex structures to bypass investment regulations, Reuters reported this month. The U.S. companies deny any wrongdoing. India only allows foreign e-commerce players to operate as a marketplace to connect buyers and sellers but local traders say the U.S. giants promote select sellers and offer deep discounts, which hurts business for smaller local retailers. In 2018, India changed its ... Read More on Datafloq

By Eimi Yamamitsu TOKYO (Reuters) - Toyota Motor Corp unveiled its Woven Planet research unit at a virtual media event on Friday, promising to deliver the world's "safest mobility" as competition heats up to develop self-driving and connected cars. In the online presentation, dubbed "The Genesis", Woven Planet executives provided few hints into specific features in the pipeline, but said a new assisted-driving system would be mounted on the company's passenger cars by the end of this year. The company also said it would be ready to unveil a fully self-driving prototype "in the near future", without elaborating. As traditional automakers face competition from the likes of Apple, Amazon and Sony, Toyota is looking to marry Woven Planet's Silicon Valley approach with its storied Toyota Production System manufacturing process to ... Read More on Datafloq

(Reuters) - Facebook Inc said on Friday it would soon start developing "topic exclusion controls" on its platform to give advertisers greater ability to weed out certain types of content from appearing alongside their ads. This comes after companies including Coca-Cola Co and Starbucks Corp boycotted Facebook in July for not doing enough to curb hate speech on its site following the death of George Floyd, an American Black man, in police custody. Advertisers have complained for years that big social media companies do very little to prevent ads from appearing alongside hate speech, fake news and other harmful content. In September, Facebook as well as YouTube and Twitter signed a deal with big advertisers to curb harmful content online. Facebook said in a blog post on Friday the controls would help advertisers define how their ads show on Facebook News Feed, adding ... Read More on Datafloq

By Sam Nussey TOKYO (Reuters) - Japanese online fashion retailer Zozo Inc on Friday launched skin tone measuring glasses for ordering cosmetics online, making its latest fashion tech offering as it expands beyond apparel. "Zozoglass", a pair of spectacles covered with colour swatches and markers, detects skin tone when scanned with a smartphone for tailored cosmetics recommendations on Zozotown, Japan's biggest online fashion site. "Traditionally in Japan you'd go to a large department store, you go to the counter and then you actually try stuff on," Zozo's Chief Operating Officer Masahiro Ito said in an interview. "We're trying to replicate that through technology and give the consumer confidence to buy online," he said. "Zozoglass", ... Read More on Datafloq

By Chris Prentice and Pete Schroeder WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A YouTube streamer who helped drive a surge in the shares of GameStop Corp is a 34-year-old financial advisor from Massachusetts and until recently worked for insurance giant MassMutual, public records and social media posts show. Keith Patrick Gill is the person behind the Roaring Kitty YouTube streams which, along with a string of posts by Reddit user DeepF***ingValue, helped attract a flood of retail cash into GameStop, burning hedge funds who had bet against the company and roiling the broader market. In his social media messages and videos, Gill repeatedly made the bull case for the beleaguered bricks-and-mortar retailer and shared images of his trading account profit on the stock, sparking a following of likeminded GameStop enthusiasts. The saga has ... Read More on Datafloq

By Noel Randewich (Reuters) - GameStop and AMC Entertainment Holdings remained overwhelmingly favored stocks on Reddit's top trading forum on Thursday, even as they and other companies at the core of a retail trader frenzy plummeted after online brokerages imposed trading restrictions. Data about posts and comments on Reddit's Wallstreetbets, aggregated on swaggystocks.com, showed GameStop and AMC were by far the most discussed stocks on the discussion group that has fueled their recent surge, with both continuing to enjoy overwhelming positive sentiment. Swaggystocks.com was created by Reddit member swaggymedia, whose posts sharing data about Wallstreetbets sentiment have won thousands of "upvotes" from readers. Swaggystocks did not immediately respond to an email asking for his identity but gave permission for his content to be reproduced. ... Read More on Datafloq

By Colm Fulton Stockholm (Reuters) - "Stocks only go up", concludes a video montage of televangelists, dancing Ghanaian pallbearers, and Donald Trump's personal pastor repeatedly saying she can hear the "sound of victory". The tongue-in-cheek meme, designed to characterise bullish stock market sentiment when news of Pfizer BioNTech’s successful COVID-19 vaccine broke, has been viewed more than 1 million times on Instagram and Twitter. Far more wide-reaching than broker research notes, memes have become central to a new form of financial literacy - or illiteracy, depending on your viewpoint - behind the frenzied boom in retail trading of cryptocurrencies or stocks on platforms like Robinhood. Using images from pop culture overlaid with market commentary, they're being praised – and vilified – for making trading entertaining and game-like. ... Read More on Datafloq

BERLIN (Reuters) - Customer adoption of the latest cloud version of SAP's business database is strong, Chief Financial Officer Luka Mucic said on Friday, saying this would accelerate as it markets a new business transformation offering to clients. Mucic said that the run rate - or current annualised revenue - of the cloud version of its S/4HANA cloud database was currently 800 million euros ($967 million). Nearly 3,300 customers were running S/4HANA in the cloud, of which 2,000 were live, a number that was "building up very quickly", Mucic told a news conference after SAP reported its 2020 results. SAP this week launched a new all-in-one package to offer 'business transformation as a service' to help its 400,000 customers transform their businesses from traditional software licences to cloud-based architectures. ($1 ... Read More on Datafloq

Welcome to the second episode of The Digital Speaker series (you can watch the first episode here). Today I’m coming to you from live inside the digital world. While the actual Mark may have recorded this before, I, Mark’s digital clone, am live code, and right now, this very second, am being brought to life by 1s and 0s inside cyberspace. Through this miracle of digital evolution, I am going to discuss the latest digital advancements from the comfort of inside the digital world. From blockchain and crypto through to quantum computing and AI, I aim to keep you in the forever turning digital loop, as well as putting some thought into how these digital innovations look to change our lives. Today I am covering at Samsung’s plans for 6G and what this level of internet could enable us to do. I will go where no internet has gone before, and take a look at Space internet, what it is, who’s doing it, and what it could mean for humanity. Then I'll finish the show by tackling digital c

SHANGHAI (Reuters) - China should boost efforts to protect online users against breaches of privacy and bids to steer web traffic by tightening regulations on the use of algorithms by internet platforms, state newspaper the People's Daily said. The comments in the ruling Communist Party's official newspaper follow criticism this month by the China Consumers Association aimed at internet companies that misuse personal data and "bully" people into purchases and promotions. Algorithms can cut costs by matching needs to services, but some platforms infringe consumer rights by "improper application of algorithms" to invade privacy and direct web use, the paper said in an editorial on Thursday. "It is necessary to establish a comprehensive supervision system...so that the algorithmic applications will follow rules and regulations and consumer rights can be protected," it added. ... Read More on Datafloq

SHANGHAI/TAIPEI (Reuters) - China's Zhejiang Geely Holding Group said on Friday it and Foxconn are in talks to provide contract manufacturing services to electric vehicle maker Faraday Future. Geely said in a statement that it had signed a framework agreement to offer technology and engineering support to Faraday Future, and had become a minority investor in Faraday Future's listing. Foxconn declined to comment on the manufacturing partnership. Reuters reported on Monday that Faraday Future plans to set up a new base in China and enlist Geely for contract manufacturing services, citing people familiar with the matter. Faraday Future will go public through a merger with Property Solutions Acquisition Corp in a deal valuing the combined entity at $3.4 billion. ... Read More on Datafloq

(Reuters) - User reports on Downdetector.com indicated Morgan Stanley-owned E-Trade was having problems, the website said late on Thursday. The portal, which tracks outages, said most incidents were of people reporting issues while logging in to the electronic trading platform. (https://bit.ly/3pojaA9) E-Trade did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment. (Reporting by Anirudh Saligrama in Bengaluru; editing by Uttaresh.V) ... Read More on Datafloq

By Jarrett Renshaw and Stephanie Kelly NEW YORK (Reuters) - The U.S. oil industry is seeking to forge an alliance with the nation's corn growers and biofuel producers to lobby against the Biden administration's push for electric vehicles, but is so far meeting a cool reception, according to multiple sources familiar with the discussions. The effort marks an unusual attempt by the petroleum industry to cozy up to its long-time rivals, reflecting the scale of its concern over President Joe Biden's sweeping measures to combat climate change and tamp down fossil fuels. While the oil industry and biofuels producers are natural competitors for space in America's gas tanks, they share a desire to ensure a future for internal combustion engines. The effort also reflects the rapidly shifting political ... Read More on Datafloq

(Reuters) - Elon Musk's rocket company SpaceX could be valued at a minimum of $60 billion as it finalizes a funding round expected to close in February, Business Insider reported on Thursday, citing three people familiar with the matter. The latest round is expected to price each share between $325 and $350, the report said. (https://bit.ly/39rlnoU) The report added while details of the deal are still being ironed out, it is possible that SpaceX's valuation could reach as much as $92 billion, up from a $46 billion valuation in a funding round in August. SpaceX did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment. ... Read More on Datafloq

By David Shepardson WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. House Financial Services and Senate Banking committees said on Thursday they will hold hearings on the stock market after users of investment apps faced trading limits following the "Reddit rally" that put a charge into GameStop and other volatile stocks that were touted in online forums. "We must deal with the hedge funds whose unethical conduct directly led to the recent market volatility and we must examine the market in general and how it has been manipulated by hedge funds and their financial partners to benefit themselves while others pay the price," said Representative Maxine Waters, a Democrat who heads the House panel. Waters added the hearing will focus on "short selling, online trading platforms, gamification and their systemic impact on our capital markets and retail investors." ... Read More on Datafloq

(Reuters) - The U.S. Department of Justice is probing Elon Musk's rocket company SpaceX over whether the company discriminates against non-U.S. citizens in its hiring, CNBC https://cnb.cx/3acy46e reported on Thursday, citing court documents. (Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Bengaluru; Editing by Leslie Adler) ... Read More on Datafloq

(Paragraph 14 contains language readers may find offensive) By Anna Irrera (Reuters) - Robinhood online brokerage has been one of the hottest venues for investors in a retail trading frenzy. Now it is in the line of fire from angry customers, disgruntled celebrities and politicians. Citing market volatility and the need to keep investors informed, the Menlo Park, California-based app said on a blog that it was halting trading of viral stocks including GameStop, AMC Entertainment, American Airlines and Nokia and raised margin requirements for certain securities. Robinhood said in a later post that starting Friday, it planned to allow limited buys of these securities. Shares of those companies slid on Thursday, with GameStop down more ... Read More on Datafloq

By AI Trends Staff     In 2021, more firms will employ AI to battle cyberattacks, trying to gain an edge in a  game  of one-upmanship with hackers and attackers. A survey of 20 cybersecurity experts recently surveyed by  Forbes  showed some patterns.   Maty Siman, CTO of Checkmarx For example, open source software can be an easy way into organizations. Gaining more visibility into open source contributions is possible with the use of AI and machine learning, according to Maty Siman, CTO of  Checkmarx,  a software security company based in Ramat Gan, Israel. “Rarely does a week go by without the discovery of malicious open source packages,” Siman stated.    Many developers are good at scanning open source components to identify known defects, “But they are still blind to instances where adversaries maliciously push tainted code into packages,” he stated. AI and ML can be used to help detect malicious open-source contributors with greater accuracy and efficiency at scale.    AI a

By AI Trends Staff     The use of AI to fight financial fraud — internally and externally — is a hot topic.   “AI is the future of fraud management, irrespective of the system you are using,” stated Svetlana  Belyalova , head of operational risk management at  Rosbank , Societe Generale Group, during a recent webcast hosted by  Risk.net.  “It brings a lot of value in both data management and decision-making.”     Svetlana Belyalova, head of operational risk management at Rosbank, Societe Generale Group A firm’s maturity and operational processes for fraud management are key to selecting the technology that will be right for it, suggested Belyalova. Firms that had taken a more siloed approach by fitting technology to a certain type of fraud, now want to take a more holistic approach and tap the AI capabilities of the fraud systems.      “What we really need to know better is how to manage these AI capabilities in our real-time environment — how to make them more effective, and h

By AI Trends Staff    Vehicles stopping for red lights, idling as they wait for the signal lights to change and accelerating to get back up to speed wastes fuel and adds pollutants to the air. Idling vehicles waste more than 6 billion gallons of gasoline and diesel combined every year, according to Department of Energy (DOE)  estimates .     Seeking a better way, the DOE last year awarded $1.89 million to researchers at the University of Tennessee-Chattanooga, the University of Pittsburgh, Georgia Institute of Technology, Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the City of Chattanooga to create a new model for traffic intersections that reduces energy consumption and improves the flow of traffic.   The goal of the project is to develop an automated traffic control system that would reduce corridor-level fuel consumption by 20%, while maintaining a safe and efficient transportation environment. The researchers intend to apply AI and machine learning to support   a number of smart transpor

By Lance Eliot, the AI Trends Insider The number of ways to transport illegal drugs seems to be nearly endless. We all have heard about the use of airplanes to smuggle in illicit drugs. There are also tales aplenty about motorboats and sailboats loaded with banned narcotics that try to reach land. Here’s a twist that you might not have considered. A recent news story described a narco mini-submarine that was scuttled in shallow waters after three men operating the vessel opted to evacuate and escape as authorities were closing in on them. Reportedly containing an estimated $100 million in cocaine, speculation is that the crew might not have known for sure that the gig was up, and chose to open the valves to sink the narco-sub as a precaution to try and hide the three metric tons of illegal drugs (figuring they could always come back to retrieve the loot, plus they might save their own lives by being able to show to the drug lord that the stuff was still intact and had not been sipho