Shamayita Acharya

By Eric M. Johnson SEATTLE (Reuters) - U.S. space agency NASA has told Elon Musk's SpaceX to halt work under a contract it won to develop a lunar spacecraft, pending the outcome of challenges by rival bidders at the U.S. Government Accountability Office, the agency said on Friday. NASA's decision means SpaceX has to stop any work specifically related to the moon program contract until the GAO makes a ruling, expected Aug. 4 at the latest. A SpaceX spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Earlier this month, NASA awarded SpaceX the lunar contract over billionaire Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin and defense contractor Dynetics. The high-profile project aims to put humans back ... Read More on Datafloq

By Foo Yun Chee BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Europe's second-highest court will rule on May 12 on Amazon.com Inc's appeal of an EU order to pay about 250 million euros ($300.5 million) in back taxes to Luxembourg. The European Commission in its 2017 decision said the Grand Duchy spared the U.S. online retailer from paying taxes on almost three-quarters of its profits from EU operations by allowing it to channel profits to a holding company tax-free. Luxembourg also appealed to the Luxembourg-based General Court, contending its treatment of Amazon was legal because it did not give the company a selective advantage. Amazon has its EU headquarters in Luxembourg and employs 1,500 people there, making it one of the biggest employers in the country of half a million. ... Read More on Datafloq

(Reuters) - Bitcoin rose 6.54% to $57,098.08 on Friday, adding $3,504.11 to its previous close. Bitcoin, the world's biggest and best-known cryptocurrency, is up 105.9% from the year's low of $27,734 on Jan. 4. It is down 12% from the year's high of $64,895.22 on April 14. Ether, the coin linked to the ethereum blockchain network, rose 1.06 % to $2,787.35 on Friday, adding $29.29 to its previous close. (Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Bengaluru; Editing by Leslie Adler) ... Read More on Datafloq

(Reuters) -American depositary shares of Vaccitech fell nearly 20% in their Nasdaq debut on Friday, giving the co-inventor of the COVID-19 vaccine developed by AstraZeneca Plc and Oxford University a market value of about $464 million. The biotech firm's shares opened at $13.62, below the initial public offering (IPO) price of $17 apiece for 6.5 million of its American depositary shares. The UK-based company was started by two Oxford University scientists and spun out of the university's Jenner Institute in 2016. Its co-founder Sarah Gilbert was among the scientists who led AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccine development efforts. Vaccitech said it planned to use the proceeds from the IPO to fund the development of its COVID-19 vaccine technology for treatments targeting prostate cancer, hepatitis B HPV and non-small cell lung cancer. The company's vaccine ... Read More on Datafloq

HAMBURG (Reuters) - Volkswagen plans to design and develop its own high-powered chips for autonomous vehicles, along with the required software, Chief Executive Herbert Diess told a German newspaper. "To achieve optimal performance in light of the high demands that exist for cars, software and hardware have to come out of one hand," Diess told Handelsblatt. Volkswagen did not plan to build semiconductors but wanted to own patents if possible, Diess said, adding that the group's software unit Cariad would develop the expertise and expand. The move is a response to Tesla, which can integrate custom designed chips, allowing the U.S. company to develop new features faster than its competitors. "Apple and Tesla have higher competence in terms of how semiconductors are defined," Diess said. ... Read More on Datafloq

By Echo Wang NEW YORK (Reuters) -TikTok appointed Shouzi Chew, a Singaporean national, as the new Chief Executive Officer of the hot video-sharing platform, the company said on Friday. Chew, based in Singapore, will retain close ties to TikTok's Chinese owner ByteDance where he will remain Chief Financial Officer. "We will continue building out our strong and deep management team as we set the stage for the next phase of TikTok's success." Chew said in a statement. TikTok's interim head Vanessa Pappas, who led the company on an interim basis after the abrupt departure of its CEO last year, Kevin Mayer formerly of Walt Disney Co, will be the new Chief Operating Officer. "Shou brings deep knowledge of the ... Read More on Datafloq

By Sheila Dang (Reuters) -AT&T Inc shareholders on Friday voted against a measure to approve executive compensation, according to preliminary voting results from the company's annual meeting. AT&T did not give a number for the opposing votes, but said preliminary results showed 49% were cast in favor of approving executive compensation. The total compensation package for Jason Kilar, chief executive of AT&T's media unit WarnerMedia, was more than $52 million, more than double the $21 million for AT&T CEO John Stankey, according to the company's proxy statement. (Reporting by Sheila Dang; Editing by Richard Chang) ... Read More on Datafloq

By John McCrank, Saqib Iqbal Ahmed and Lawrence Delevingne NEW YORK (Reuters) - Recent volatility in a handful of so-called meme stocks is putting the spotlight back on the tussle between individual investors and short sellers, months after a wild ride in GameStop captivated Wall Street’s attention. Stocks that have notched big swings this month include laser-manufacturer MicroVision Inc, a favorite on Reddit’s popular WallStreetBets forum, whose shares have risen as much as 170% since April 20 before tumbling in recent days. Biopharmaceutical company Ocugen Inc is up about 110% since April 20 while online video game platform Skillz, which has been added to the portfolio of Cathie Wood’s ARK funds, is up about 45%. Those moves do not approach the stunning, nearly 1,700% gain in video game retailer GameStop ... Read More on Datafloq

By Michael Nienaber BERLIN (Reuters) - The chip supply bottlenecks in German industry will likely worsen in the second quarter and lead to an overall weaker recovery of Europe's largest economy this year, the Bundesbank's chief economist told Reuters on Friday. Shortages of semiconductors and other industrial components have led to production cuts in manufacturing, forcing executives and policymakers to rethink supply lines and try to reduce reliance on a handful of Asian and U.S. suppliers. Automakers and electronics producers are being hit hard by delivery delays of chips, caused by factory closures during the first COVID-19 wave last year and a spike in demand for semiconductors in an increasingly digitised world. "We expect the problem with semiconductor shortages to worsen somewhat in the second quarter. It could then normalize ... Read More on Datafloq

By Fanny Potkin and Fathin Ungku SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Indonesian ride-hailing startup Gojek plans to make every car and motorcycle on its platform an electric vehicle (EV) by 2030 through partnerships with manufacturers and favourable leasing arrangements, co-Chief Executive Kevin Aluwi told Reuters. Gojek announced the plan on Friday under a zero-emission pledge laid out in its first annual sustainability report, which analysts widely regard as a move aimed at bringing the company closer to a public listing. However, analysts expect the cost of going electric in Indonesia to be high due to the need for related infrastructure in a country which only has around 100 charging stations. "Our target is to work with various different players within the industry and government to reduce the cost of EVs to about ... Read More on Datafloq

MOSCOW (Reuters) -Russian state communications regulator Roskomnadzor said on Friday that U.S. social network Twitter was complying with its demand to remove content banned in Russia, but that it was still taking too long to do so. It said Twitter had removed 60% of such content since Moscow slowed the speed of its service in March to press its demand, but that more than 1,000 illegal materials remained accessible, down from more than 3,000 earlier this year. Russia this month extended the punitive slowdown until May 15, while acknowledging that the U.S. social media company had accelerated the deletion of content. Roskomnadzor said it had identified more than 900 new cases of banned content since the slowdown began on March 10. It said that on average Twitter was removing newly ... Read More on Datafloq

By Joyce Lee SEOUL (Reuters) -Stakes in Samsung Electronics and affiliates held by its late chairman were divided among his family and appear to bolster the control of his son and the company's vice chairman, Jay Y. Lee, regulatory filings showed on Friday. This is the first time the information has been publicly disclosed since Lee Kun-hee, credited with turning Samsung into the world's largest smartphone and memory chip maker, died last October. The inheritance was shared by his son Jay Y. Lee, daughters Lee Boo-jin and Lee Seo-hyun, and wife Hong Ra-hee. Jay Y. Lee's stake in Samsung Life Insurance rose to 10.44% from 0.06% as he inherits half his father's shares in the insurer. His sisters inherit ... Read More on Datafloq

(Reuters) - U.S. chipmaker Intel is seeking 8 billion euros ($9.7 billion) in public subsidies towards building a cutting-edge semiconductor manufacturing site in Europe, Chief Executive Pat Gelsinger was quoted on Friday as saying. "What we’re asking from both the U.S. and the European governments is to make it competitive for us to do it here compared to in Asia," Gelsinger told Politico Europe in an interview. A spokesman for Intel confirmed the interview took place on Friday in Brussels, where Gelsinger was due to meet European Commissioner Thierry Breton for talks on semiconductor strategy. (Reporting by Douglas Busvine; Editing by Maria Sheahan) ... Read More on Datafloq

Hello everyone and welcome to the Tech Journal. My name is Mark van Rijmenam, and I am The Digital Speaker. In this series, I project my digital twin into cyberspace to bring you the latest and greatest from the digital world. I cover all the latest digital news, from blockchain and crypto to quantum computing and AI. I also always try to take it a step further and look into what these digital innovations mean for our personal and professional lives. In today’s show, we have Dion Hinchcliffe, sharing his insights with us on digital transformation. Dion Hinchcliffe is an internationally recognized thought leader, IT expert, enterprise architect, bestselling book author, frequent keynote speaker, analyst, and transformation consultant. He is a veteran of enterprise IT, Dion has been working for two decades with leading-edge methods to bridge the widening gap between business and technology. Dion has worked with leadership teams of Fortune 500 and Global 2000 firms to drive...

“AI is a core, transformative way by which we’re rethinking how we’re doing everything.” - Google CEO Sundar PichaiPatents were first digitized on a mass scale in the 90s. Since then most applications built on top of patent data have stayed more or less within the comfortable bounds of providing data access through keyword filters or fielded searches. With the advent of new and powerful AI methods in the last few years, however, many more things are being attempted. The possibilities are endless but there are many challenges to overcome too.Patents Are Written DifferentlyA number of AI programs are available today that understand language to some basic extent. They are called language models. However, most language models are trained on data obtained from online resources such as Wikipedia and Reddit. What an AI learns depends on its training data, so these language models don’t perform as well on patent data.Recently, a team at Google created language models trained specifically on pa...

Artificial intelligence (AI) isn’t just a buzzword anymore. Its uses span far and wide, from search engines, machine translations, cybersecurity, and much more. However, one of its most common applications is seen in Conversational AI. We commonly see it manifest as virtual assistants like Alexa and Siri, but its applications are far deeper, especially on the business front in tools like Google Dialogflow, Amazon Comprehend, and IBM Watson. Moreover, businesses that invested in AI a few years ago are now far ahead of the competition in many ways. As per a report by ResearchAndMarkets, the global NLP market is expected to surpass USD 28bn by 2026. There is a reason behind this phenomenal growth – an effort to make AI as intelligent as human beings. Chatbots vs Conversational AI Even though conversational AI and chatbots work pretty much the same way, there are a few differences you should know. AI chatbots use NLU and NLP to simulate human conversation, but their capabilities are ...

By James Pearson and Phuong Nguyen HAIPHONG, Vietnam (Reuters) - Move over Tesla, how about a VinFast? That's the proposition being offered by the automobile arm of Vietnam's largest conglomerate, Vingroup. It's betting big on the U.S. market with its VinFast line of cars and hoping that electric SUVs and a battery leasing model will be enough to woo consumers away from homegrown market leaders like Tesla and General Motors Co. A recent arrival on the automotive scene and the No. 5 car brand in Vietnam, VinFast is not short on ambition, with its sights set on a U.S. listing and a valuation of as much as $60 billion, according to two sources familiar with its plans. (GRAPHIC: VinFast fifth in terms ... Read More on Datafloq

By Christopher Bing and Joseph Menn (Reuters) - For at least the third time since the beginning of this year, the U.S. government is investigating a hack against federal agencies that began during the Trump administration but was only recently discovered, according to senior U.S. officials and private sector cyber defenders. It is the latest so-called supply chain cyberattack, highlighting how sophisticated, often government-backed groups are targeting vulnerable software built by third parties as a stepping-stone to sensitive government and corporate computer networks. The new government breaches involve a popular virtual private network (VPN) known as Pulse Connect Secure, which hackers were able to break into as customers used it. More than a dozen federal agencies run Pulse Secure on their networks, according to public contract records. An emergency ... Read More on Datafloq

By Elizabeth Culliford and Sheila Dang (Reuters) -Twitter Inc shares sank 11% in post-market trading on Thursday as it offered tepid revenue guidance for the second quarter, warned of rising costs and expenses and said user growth could slow as the boost seen during the coronavirus pandemic fizzles. The social media company posted revenues and user numbers mostly in line with analyst estimates in stark contrast to the better performing digital ad firms like Facebook Inc and Alphabet Inc's. It said it expected second quarter revenue between $980 million and $1.08 billion, lower than Wall Street estimates of $1.06 billion on average, according to IBES data from Refinitiv. It also said stock based compensation for new hires would be more than expected this year. Twitter says it wants to reset after years ... Read More on Datafloq

By Jeffrey Dastin and Akanksha Rana (Reuters) -Amazon.com Inc posted record profits from pandemic shopping and indicated sales would keep growing even as customers emerged from their homes in the reopening U.S. economy. Since the start of the coronavirus outbreak, shoppers have relied increasingly on Amazon for delivery of home staples and supplies. While brick-and-mortar stores closed, Amazon has now posted four consecutive record quarterly profits, attracted more than 200 million Prime loyalty subscribers, and recruited over 500,000 employees to keep up with surging demand. Amazon said it expects operating income for the current quarter to be between $4.5 billion and $8 billion, which assumes about $1.5 billion of costs related to COVID-19. Shares rose 4% in after-hours trade. Throughout the ... Read More on Datafloq

By AI Trends Staff   AI is being applied to whale research, especially to understand what whales are trying to communicate in the audible sounds they make to each other in the ocean.     For example, marine biologist Shane Gero has worked to match clicks coming from whales around the Caribbean island nation of Dominica, to behavior he hopes will reveal the meanings of the sounds they make. Gero is a behavioral ecologist affiliated with the Marine Bioacoustics Lab at Aarhus University in Denmark, and the Department of Biology of Dalhousie University of Halifax, Nova Scotia.     Shane Gero, founder, Dominica Sperm Whale Project Gero works with a team from Project CETI, a nonprofit that aims to apply advanced machine learning and state-of-the-art robotics to listen to and translate the communication of whales. Project CETI has recently announced a five-year effort to build on Gero’s work with a research project to try to decipher what sperm whales are saying...

By Lance Eliot, the AI Trends Insider   Have you ever taken a picture and realized that a person in the snapshot appears blurry due to your camera being out of focus?  I’m sure you have.   In some cases, the blur happens by accident, whereby you should have set the focus but failed to do so. It was merely an oversight. If you discovered the issue right away, hopefully, you were able to quickly take another photo and delete the remiss one. Problem solved.       There are also situations involving the use of a blur for intentional purposes.   Perhaps you have a few friends that want their pictures taken. Behind them are people partying and making quite a scene. You don’t want the background to overtake the attention to the foreground, namely the gaggle of your best friends. So, you set the focus to make the background blurry and ensure that the foreground is nice and sharp.     Suppose that you indeed take such a picture and keep it aroun...

By Tom Wilson LONDON (Reuters) - China's planned digital yuan will not dethrone the dollar, a top Securities and Exchange Commission official said on Thursday, citing the growth of so-called stablecoins backed by the greenback. The world's biggest central banks, including the People's Bank of China and U.S. Federal Reserve, are stepping up work on issuing digital cash, eyeing improvements to payment systems and looking to pre-empt the rise of cryptocurrencies. The PBOC's work on a digital yuan - part of a push to internationalise the currency and reduced its - is far ahead of similar initiatives in other major economies. That has led some analysts to question if the faster pace from the globe's second largest economy could lead the yuan to gain dominance over ... Read More on Datafloq

(Reuters) - Ford Motor Co is nearing a decision to license Volkswagen AG's electric-vehicle technology for a second model to be sold in Europe, Bloomberg News reported on Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter. The talks could lead to an agreement in the coming weeks, the report said. Ford and Volkswagen did not immediately respond to Reuters requests for comment. (Reporting by Sanjana Shivdas in Bengaluru; Editing by Aditya Soni) ... Read More on Datafloq

By Sheila Dang (Reuters) -Facebook Inc on Thursday said it will give $5 million to pay local journalists in multiyear deals as part of its new publishing platform to help independent writers attract an audience and make money through the social media network. The move is part of Facebook's answer to the trend of email newsletters, led by platforms like Substack, as it focuses on reporters "who are often the lone voice covering a given community," the company has said. The publishing platform, which Facebook announced last month, will be integrated with Facebook Pages and include a free self-publishing tool for journalists to send out newsletters or create their own website. Independent journalists in the United States can apply to the program beginning on Thursday, and priority will be given to reporters who plan ... Read More on Datafloq

By Krystal Hu NEW YORK (Reuters) -IBM said on Thursday it has agreed to acquire Turbonomic, a provider of software that helps companies monitor the performance of their business applications, the latest in a series of cloud computing acquisitions by the tech giant. The deal, which confirmed an earlier Reuters report, would be IBM's largest since it acquired Red Hat for $34 billion in 2019. It values Turbonomic at between $1.5 billion and $2 billion, people familiar with the matter said on condition of anonymity. IBM shares were up slightly in early afternoon trading. The acquisition is IBM's 11th since Arvind Krishna became chief executive last year. Krishna has been leading a major transformation, doubling down on the hybrid cloud and artificial intelligence areas. ... Read More on Datafloq

By Mathieu Rosemain, Michel Rose and Foo Yun Chee PARIS/BRUSSELS (Reuters) -The European Union is considering creating a semiconductor alliance including STMicroelectronics, NXP, Infineon and ASML to cut dependence on foreign chipmakers amid a global supply chain crunch, four EU officials said. The plan, which is at a very preliminary stage, may include a pan-European scheme known as an Important Project of Common European Interest (IPCEI), which allows EU governments to pump in funding under easier state aid rules, and companies to work together on the entire project, the sources said. It would complement or come as an alternative to a possible foreign-funded factory, with the aim to double the EU's market share in semiconductors to 20% by 2030, a target set out by European internal market chief Thierry Breton. The EU ... Read More on Datafloq

The adoption of augmented reality has come a long way in recent years, especially as the global economy has looked to improve operational efficiency and safety training measures through the implementation of new technologies. In an aviation industry where training is paramount, AR is set to make a profound impact.Today augmented reality technology is already being developed at a rapid rate, with its influence extending way beyond aviation applications. (Image: Business Wire)Here we can see that both augmented reality and virtual reality markets are set to experience incremental growth of over $125 billion dollars as the decade continues at a CAGR of over 35%. This significant growth will have a profound impact on a range of industries and is likely to heavily influence the world of aviation. How AR Can Aid AviationThe next wave of innovation in the aviation industry will be heavily influenced by AR technology. Using artificial intelligence, real-time information can be used in the f...

(Reuters) - Cryptocurrency firm Paxos said on Thursday it had raised $300 million at a valuation of $2.4 billion, in a funding round led by fintech and healthcare focused venture capital firm Oak HC/FT. Existing investors, including PayPal Ventures, Declaration Partners and Senator Investment Group, also participated in the round, Paxos said. The latest investment in Paxos underscores surging investor interest in crypto firms, which have seen their perceived value increase in lockstep with bitcoin's rise. "Demand for our enterprise solutions has accelerated much faster than we could have anticipated," said Charles Cascarilla, co-founder and chief executive officer of Paxos. The company, which provides blockchain-based services to financial institutions and operates a cryptocurrency exchange, has now raised $500 million in total to date, it said. ... Read More on Datafloq

By Aakriti Bhalla (Reuters) - Samsung Electronics Co Ltd snatched back the crown from Apple as the world's biggest smartphone producer, accounting for a fifth of overall global sales in the first quarter, market research firm Canalys said https://ift.tt/3xx557P. China's Xiaomi Corp clocked its best quarterly performance ever, with shipments surging 62% to 49 million phones and market share to 14%, taking it to the third position after Samsung and Apple. Overall, global sales surged 27% to 347 million units in the first quarter as the Chinese economy opened up after the pandemic and a swift vaccine rollout in the United States raised hopes of an economic recovery. South Korea's Samsung shipped 76.5 million smartphones in the quarter to grab a 22% share of the market, Canalys said. The company ... Read More on Datafloq

By Stephen Nellis (Reuters) - Salesforce.com Inc on Thursday said its supplier contracts will now require companies that do business with it such as airlines to set carbon-reduction goals and deliver products and services on a carbon-neutral basis, making it the latest U.S. company to take steps to address climate change. Slashing carbon emissions is considered key to stemming global warming. Salesforce, a maker of cloud-based software for sales, marketing and other professionals, says that one of the largest sources of carbon emissions in its supply chain is the data centers that help deliver its cloud-based software; the company estimates they will account for the equivalent of 267,000 metric tons of carbon in its fiscal 2021. Another major driver for the San Francisco-based company is business travel, which accounted for ... Read More on Datafloq

By Mathieu Rosemain PARIS (Reuters) - Digital payment services developed by U.S. tech giants such as Apple and Alphabet's Google risk reinforcing their market power by giving them greater sway over consumers' data, France's antitrust authority said on Thursday. The remarks, part of a 127-page opinion, follow a one-year inquiry into new payment technologies and shine a light on the watchdog's views in the field, marked by a proliferation of smartphone banking apps, such as Britain's Revolut and Germany's N26. In its opinion, the French watchdog says that Apple, Google and Amazon's payment services enjoy important competitive advantages thanks to the large number of users their platforms have attracted and the trove of data they've collected. These allow them to better evaluate their users' financial health and to adapt ... Read More on Datafloq

By Foo Yun Chee BRUSSELS (Reuters) - A proposed EU law that forces Google, Facebook and Twitter to remove terrorist content within an hour of publication cleared its final hurdle after EU lawmakers gave their backing despite concerns from civil rights groups. The European Commission had proposed the law in 2018, worried about the role of such content after a series of attacks by radicalised lone-wolf attackers in several European cities. The EU executive defines online terrorist content as material inciting terrorism or aimed at recruiting or training terrorists as well as material that provides guidance on how to make and use explosives and firearms for terrorist purposes. The European Parliament approved the law late on Wednesday. ... Read More on Datafloq

SHANGHAI (Reuters) - China's Huawei Technologies Co Ltd, once the world's biggest smartphone maker, saw its phone shipments to retailers and other sellers within China plunge by half in the first quarter, as U.S. sanctions on its supply chain crimped expansion even as the overall smartphone market rebounded. The company shipped a total of 14.9 million handsets within China in the quarter ending in March, down from 30.1 million in the same period last year, according to research firm Canalys. Its market share also dropped to 16% from 41% a year ago, becoming the third largest after fellow Chinese brands Vivo and Oppo. Vivo and Oppo saw their shipments grow 79% and 65% respectively, as they gained market share from Huawei. Vivo shipped 21.6 million units in the first quarter, while Oppo shipped 20.6 million. ... Read More on Datafloq