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Alibaba beats revenue estimates on record Singles' Day sales
REUTERS: China's Alibaba Group Holding reported a better-than-expected quarterly revenue on Thursday (Feb 13), boosted by record sales during its annual Singles' Day shopping blitz and growth in its cloud computing business.
The e-commerce giant usually reports its highest revenue in the December quarter due to its mega "Singles' Day" shopping bonanza in November. The company said the 24-hour shopping event hit a record US$38.4 billion in 2019
Alibaba said it was supporting the fight against the coronavirus outbreak by ensuring supply of daily necessities and introducing relief measures for its merchants.
The outbreak, which originated in the city of Wuhan, is expected to pile more pressure on China's economy and comes as the country signed a Phase 1 deal with the United States to ease a protracted trade war that had weighed on its growth.
Sales from the company's core commerce business jumped 38 per cent to 141.48 billion yuan, while revenue at its cloud computing unit surged 62 per cent to 10.72 billion yuan.
Net income attributable to ordinary shareholders rose to 52.31 billion yuan from 33.05 billion yuan.
Revenue rose to 161.46 billion yuan (US$23.12 billion) in the third quarter ended Dec. 31 from 117.28 billion yuan, a year earlier.
Analysts had expected revenue of 159.28 billion yuan, according to IBES data from Refinitiv.
Credit : https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/business/alibaba-beats-revenue-estimates-on-record-singles--day-sales-12432308
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The Government Wants to Use Your Brainwaves to Train Swarms of Military Robots

Researchers at the University at Buffalo are using gamers' brain waves to advance the progress of robot swarms that could be used in the military.
Using groups of simple robots to complete complex tasks, rather than one extremely advanced robot, is referred to as "swarm intelligence" in AI theory.
DARPA hopes this new training method will improve groups of autonomous ground and air robots used on the battlefield.
In what sounds like a Black Mirror-esque approach to military strategy, the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is funding a study that will use gamers' brain waves to teach hives of defense robots how to swarm together to complete missions.
DARPA has given a $316,000 federal grant to the University at Buffalo Artificial Intelligence Institute to study gamers' brain waves and eye movements. The aim is to improve organization and strategy among autonomous air and ground robots.
Why would the U.S. want to invest in robot swarms? Because bevies of bots are already being pursued elsewhere in the world, like Russia. Flock-93, for example, is a vision of 100 kamikaze-like drones, each armed with an explosive charge, swarming targets like vehicle convoys. In theory, these hordes of robots are drastically more difficult to defend against, so the U.S. certainly doesn't want to lag behind.
"The idea is to eventually scale up to 250 aerial and ground robots, working in highly complex situations," said Souma Chowdhury, assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at Buffalo, in a press statement. "For example, there may be a sudden loss of visibility due to smoke during an emergency. The robots need to be able to effectively communicate and adapt to challenges like that."
To put it simply, groups of more primitive robots can complete certain tasks better than one really intelligent robot could on its own. This theory in artificial intelligence is referred to as "swarm intelligence."
It's a trait found throughout nature. Consider the modest ant: By itself, an ant can lift 5,000 times its own body weight, but that still doesn't amount to much. A colony of ants working together, meanwhile, can pull off some pretty unbelievable feats, like creating superhighways of food, waging war, and enslaving other ants.
This biomimicry is a hot topic in computer science, Chowdhury told DigitalTrends.
"It’s becoming known that there are a lot of different applications which could be done by not using a single $1 million robot, but rather a large swarm of simpler, cheaper robots," he said. "These could be ground-based, air-based, or a combination of those two approaches."
In Chowdhury's study, experts will play real-time strategy games similar to StarCraft, Stellaris, and Company of Heroes, which force players to use resources to build units and defeat opponents. The researchers are developing their own unique strategy-based game.
As gamers play, the decisions they make are recorded, and researchers will track their eye movements through high-speed cameras. In tandem, their brain activity will be monitored through electroencephalograms. (Those are the headsets with a bunch of electrodes on the cap that you might wear during a sleep study).
Then, based on the data they've gathered, the scientists will build new algorithms that will guide autonomous drones and ground robots used in military applications.
"We don’t want the AI system just to mimic human behavior; we want it to form a deeper understanding of what motivates human actions," Chowdhury said. "That’s what will lead to more advanced AI."
Credit : popularmechanics.com
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Blockchain: The revolution that hasn't quite happened
Imagine you are out shopping and get to the till but your card doesn't work. It turns out that your bank has had a computer meltdown and none of its customers, including you, can pay for anything.
But what if the till had access to a record, or ledger, of the balance on your credit and debit cards that was updated anytime you bought something?
Even with the bank's systems down your card would still work at the supermarket, because the till itself would know your balance.
That is just one possibility offered by a distributed ledger, also referred to as a blockchain. The technology has been around for more than a decade and has been heavily hyped.
It sounds pretty handy, but in practice, it is hardly used. So what happened?
Blockchain has struggled to find a purpose, beyond powering cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin.
In that scenario, the blockchain acts as a universal record of every Bitcoin transaction ever made. The blockchain is a ledger, or log, of those transactions and users on the network collaborate to verify new transactions when they occur. They're rewarded financially for this effort - an enterprise known as "Bitcoin mining".
But the basic idea, of a ledger of information distributed around lots of different users instead of held centrally, has provoked a lot of interest.
Proponents have long argued it could be a better alternative to traditional databases.
But how transformative would blockchain-style alternatives really be? The shop tills example was suggested by Dave Birch, an author and advisor on digital financial services, who has been critical of some proposed blockchain schemes in the past.
"I'm prepared to buy that," he says, of the tills idea. "I think there's some value to it."
There are other ideas out there. Prof Gilbert Fridgen, a financial services expert at Luxembourg University suggests a distributed ledger system that keeps track of certificates and degrees issued by universities.
No one organisation would be responsible for it. Rather, copies of the ledger would be held by multiple parties and individuals would be able to check that records of their own qualifications were accurate.
It would certainly by useful. In 2018, a BBC investigation showed that there were thousands of fake degrees in circulation, so a decentralised system that tracks qualifications might appeal to employers.
That said, Prof Fridgen notes that nothing about a blockchain itself can stop some corrupt individuals trying to add fraudulent information to it. Additional checks are needed.
If those trust issues can be solved, then blockchains could have real benefits.
News surfaced recently of members of the Windrush generation of migrants from the Commonwealth who have had their legal status questioned because records were not kept of their being granted leave to remain in the 1970s. In the future, such errors might be avoided by keeping information like this on a distributed ledger instead of relying on the government to look after it.
Some big businesses have been incorporating the technology into their operations.
Take shipping giant Maersk. It uses blockchain technology in TradeLens, a new system for tracking customs documentation on goods that are shipped internationally. The idea is that any stakeholder in the process, from a port to a customs authority, can quickly look up details pertaining to a shipment.
Maersk says that 10 million shipping events are now registered in the system every week.
Unlike Bitcoin, TradeLens uses a permissioned blockchain, this is a non-public ledger to which access is controlled.
But a similar system could be achieved with other technologies such as cloud-based ledger databases that encrypt data and control who can access what information.
Another project of interest is the real estate system trialled by the Swedish land registry, Lantmäteriet. A blockchain was designed to track documents during the sale of a property. The buyer and seller, brokers and banks involved could all take part in and keep track of the sale digitally.
While the trial proved such a scheme was possible, a change in legislation would be needed before the system could be scaled up in the future, explains Mats Snäll, chief innovation officer at the Swedish land registry.
"It was never integrated into the production system of the land registry," he tells the BBC.
In Thailand, cryptocurrency firm Zcoin developed a blockchain-based system so that members of the Thai Democrat Party could cast digital votes for their new leader in late 2018. Instead of having to trust a central authority to count the votes, they were instead collected on the Zcoin blockchain.
Votes were made at polling stations or via a mobile app, where voters needed to submit a photo of themselves when casting their ballot.
These digital votes were also audited by the election committee, a Zcoin spokesman tells the BBC. Zcoin says it is planning to announce a bigger scheme, involving "millions" of voters, in the near future.
These are thought-provoking ventures, though a debate remains as to whether blockchain is absolutely necessary for any of them.
Some say that eventually blockchain-style systems will prove to be the most efficient option for organising data at scale. Entrepreneur Helen Disney is one of them.
"In many cases there is a cost saving to be made once you've got past the initial hurdle - obviously bringing in any new system is expensive," she says.
While blockchain bluster will surely continue, even sceptics like Mr Birch think there are some focused applications that could prove worthwhile. So far, blockchain might not have changed the world - but it has got a lot of people thinking.
Credit : bbc.com
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Bill and Melinda Gates talk health and education in annual letter
Bill and Melinda Gates on Monday released their 12th annual letter, titled "Why we swing for the fences," having been inspired by billionaire Warren Buffett. It reflects on how the Gates Foundation has spent $53.8 billion since its formation in 2000.
The largest part (45%) of the foundation's philanthropy has gone to global development, and nearly a third (29%) has gone to global health, one of the main topics of the letter. The Gateses highlight the progress in making vaccinations more widely available globally and the challenges of fighting HIV (particularly among young women in southern and eastern Africa).
The letter notes that 16% of the money it spent went to US programs, and education was another major topic. It looks at the number of high school students who don't enroll in any form of postsecondary education, and the amount who don't graduate from a college program within six years -- an issue that's more prevalent among Latinx and black students.
The final 10% of the foundation's investment went to other charitable programs. The last two topics for the 2020 letter were climate change -- an issue that Bill Gates in particular is passionate about -- and gender equality, an area Melinda Gates discussed with CNET editor-in-chief Connie Guglielmo last year.
Credit : https://www.cnet.com/news/bill-and-melinda-gates-talk-health-and-education-in-gates-foundation-2020-annual-letter/
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Silicon Valley continues losing people as costs rise, report says
Silicon Valley is seeing employment growth and a record number of megadeals, but they're coming alongside rising costs -- especially when it comes to housing and income inequality, according to a Wednesday report by the Joint Venture Silicon Valley. For the third year in a row, more people are leaving the area than are coming in, the 2020 Silicon Valley Index says.
"The granularity of migration data in this year's Index is eye opening -- we're essentially turning over our population by nearly 5% every year, with the influx of foreign immigrants increasing our region's diversity and tech talent base," Rachel Massaro, Joint Venture vice president and director of research for the nonprofit institute, said in a release.
There have been 821,000 new jobs created in the Bay Area since the recession, but only 173,000 new housing units, said Russell Hancock, Joint Venture CEO and president of the institute Russell Hancock. This lends itself to skyrocketing home prices and "creaking infrastructure," he said in the release.
The median home price is more than $1 million, making it the highest in the nation. More than 11,000 people in San Mateo and Santa Clara counties are homeless, according to the report, which the organization releases every February. Additionally, 30% of residents aren't meeting self-sufficiency standards as the cost of goods and services has gone up by 2.7% in the last year.
Income and wealth inequality are growing as costs rise, with wealth inequality hitting "a historic high as 13% of households hold more than 75% of the region's wealth," according to the report. While 13% of households have more than $1 million in net assets, 37% have less than $25,000 in savings.
Still, the unemployment rate hit a 19-year low at 2.1%, and Silicon Valley added around 30,000 new jobs, outpacing state and national numbers. In 2019, regional gross domestic product went up by $17 billion.
Venture capital also saw positive numbers, with $42 billion being invested in Silicon Valley and San Francisco companies, Joint Venture says. There were also a record 92 megadeals, and 22 local companies debuted on Wall Street.
Credit : https://www.cnet.com/news/silicon-valley-continues-losing-people-as-costs-rise-report-says/
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