TAIPEI (Reuters) - A computer virus outbreak has hit third-quarter results at Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Ltd, the world’s largest contract chipmaker, the company said on Sunday.
A logo of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) is seen at its headquarters in Hsinchu, Taiwan October 5, 2017. REUTERS/Eason Lam
On Saturday, TSMC, a major supplier for Apple Inc, said that a number of its computer systems and fab tools had been infected by a virus, but the problem had been contained.
The company expects full recovery on Aug. 6, the company said in an updated statement on Sunday.
“TSMC expects this incident to cause shipment delays and additional costs. We estimate the impact to third quarter revenue to be about three percent, and impact to gross margin to be about one percentage point,” it said.
“The Company is confident shipments delayed in third quarter will be recovered in the fourth quarter 2018, and maintains its forecast of high single-digit revenue growth for 2018 in U.S. dollars given on July 19, 2018.”
The chipmaker has notified its customers and is working with them on the wafer delivery schedule. Details will be provided to each customer individually over the next few days, it said.
The virus outbreak occurred during the software installation for a new tool, which caused a virus to spread once the tool was connected to the company’s computer network, TSMC said.
“Data integrity and confidential information was not compromised. TSMC has taken actions to close this security gap and further strengthen security measures,” it said.
JAKARTA (Reuters) - Social media giant Facebook has assured the Indonesian government that personal data of about one million of its citizens had not been improperly accessed by political consultancy Cambridge Analytica.
FILE PHOTO: A 3D plastic representation of the Facebook logo is seen in this illustration in Zenica, Bosnia and Herzegovina, May 13, 2015. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/File Photo
Facebook has faced intense scrutiny, including multiple official investigations in the United States, Europe and Australia, over allegations of improper use of data for 87 million Facebook users by Cambridge Analytica.
Indonesia, where more than 115 million people use Facebook, has also been pressing the firm to explain how its citizens’ personal data was harvested by Cambridge Analytica via a personality quiz.
“Facebook has reported to the Communications Ministry that no data from any Indonesian users was collected,” Deputy Communications Minister Semuel Pangerapan said on Friday.
A Facebook official had told members of parliament in April that 1,096,666 people in Indonesia may have had their data shared, or 1.26 percent of the global total.
This led Communications Minister Rudiantara, who goes by one name, to briefly threaten to shut down Facebook in Indonesia if personal data was found to have been breached.
But Facebook told Reuters on Thursday it had only indicated the number of Indonesian users “who could potentially have had their data accessed, not necessarily misused”.
“Both public records and existing evidence strongly indicate Aleksandr Kogan did not provide Cambridge Analytica or (its parent) SCL with data on people who use Facebook in Indonesia,” it added, referring to the researcher linked to the scandal.
Facebook says Kogan harvested data by creating an app on the platform that was downloaded by 270,000 people, providing access not only to their own but also their friends’ personal data.
Pangerapan said he believed Facebook had improved options for users to limit access to data, but did not say whether authorities would continue their inquiry.
The Indonesian communications ministry had sent a letter to the company in April seeking confirmation on technical measures to limit access to data in Facebook and more information on an audit the social media company was doing.
Britain’s information regulator on Wednesday slapped a small but symbolic fine of 500,000 pounds on Facebook for breaches of data protection law, in the first move by a regulator to punish the social media giant for the controversy.
Reporting by Fanny Potkin & Cindy Silviana; Editing by Himani Sarkar
SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea’s LG Electronics Inc on Friday said second-quarter operating profit likely rose 16.1 percent from the same period a year earlier, falling short of market expectations.
FILE PHOTO - LG Electronics" company logo is seen at a shop in central Seoul, July 23, 2013. REUTERS/Lee Jae-Won/File Picture
Analysts said higher marketing expenses for new products weighed on profit.
LG, in a regulatory filing, estimated April-June profit at 771 billion won ($ 691.79 million), compared with an 821 billion won average of 10 analyst estimates in a Thomson Reuters survey.
Revenue likely rose 3.2 percent to 15 trillion won from 14.6 trillion won from a year earlier.
The firm did not elaborate on its performance and will disclose detailed earnings in late July.
Reporting by Heekyong YangEditing by Christopher Cushing
(Reuters) - Micron Technology Inc on Thursday played down the likely impact on its business of a temporary Chinese ban on some chip sales but said it would appeal a decision that has added to U.S.-China trade tensions.
FILE PHOTO: FILE PHOTO: The logo of U.S. memory chip maker MicronTechnology is pictured at their booth at an industrial fair in Frankfurt, Germany, July 14, 2015. REUTERS/Kai Pfaffenbach/File Photo/File Photo
The firm’s estimate that the ban imposed by a Chinese court in a patent infringement lawsuit would weaken quarterly revenue by just 1 percent drove its shares as much as 3.6 percent higher and lifted stocks of other U.S. chipmakers.
Shares in the sector had been shaken on Tuesday by the first reports of the ruling, which added to a growing list of intellectual property disputes between Washington and China in the technology sector.
Micron said the ruling by a Fuzhou Court in a lawsuit filed by rivals United Microelectronics Corporation (UMC) and Fujian Jinhua Integrated Circuit Co temporarily bans it from selling some memory chips and solid state drives in China.
The chipmaker said it would comply with the ruling, but would request the court to reconsider or stay its decision.
“The Fuzhou Court issued this preliminary ruling before allowing Micron an opportunity to present its defense,” said Joel Poppen, Micron’s general counsel.
The lawsuit followed Micron’s complaint in December against Chinese government-backed Fujian and UMC in a California court alleging misappropriation of its trade secrets and other misconduct.
China is trying to build its own semiconductor industry as part of its “Made in China 2025” strategy and as it seeks to lower its reliance on foreign companies, many of them U.S.-based.
The dispute follows a ban on U.S. firms supplying parts to China’s telecom equipment maker ZTE as well as the drawn-out wait for Chinese regulators to approve Qualcomm Inc’s $ 44 billion takeover of NXP Semiconductors.
“It certainly appears semiconductors could move to the prime time in negotiations between the Trump administration and China,” Evercore ISI analyst C.J. Muse said. “Near-term this could favor non-US chipmakers vs. US chipmakers.”
Several Chinese government-backed entities have poured billions into research and for buying companies with a trove of chip patents. Micron itself was the target of a failed takeover attempt by China’s Tsinghua Unigroup in 2015.
The Chinese ban on Micron targeted its products sold through retail outlets and represented only a small portion of the chipmaker’s revenue.
Analysts believe the ban is largely symbolic as hurting the U.S. chipmaker would end up creating more pain for local Chinese firms who would have to rely on Korean firms Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, pushing up memory chip prices.
“At the end of the day, the Chinese government is not going to impact its own local companies,” said Kinngai Chan of Summit Insights Group.
Micron said it expects quarterly revenue to be within the previously guided range of $ 8.0 billion to $ 8.4 billion.
Shares of Micron, which fell 5.5 percent on Tuesday after the ban, was up 1.9 percent at $ 52.46 in afternoon trading on Thursday.
Other chipmakers also gained. Qualcomm Inc rose 3.2 percent, Broadcom Inc 2 percent and Intel Corp up 2.6 percent.
Reporting by Sonam Rai and Supantha Mukherjee in Bengaluru; Editing by Arun Koyyur
They"re very polite about the fountains of knowledge pouring into today"s humans.
"Why do so many Americans hold misperceptions?" the researchers ask.
To which I reply: "Why do many Americans now put mis in front of pleasant words, instead of calling them that they really are? Lying has become misspeaking? Oh, I don"t think it has."
Anyway.
Nyhan and Reifler come to a startling, even painful conclusion: "In three experiments, we find that providing information in graphical form reduces misperceptions. A third study shows that this effect is greater than for equivalent textual information."
Yes, if you want to persuade your half-cut, halfwitted neighbor or colleague about the parlous state of the world and the dangers of fascism/socialism/democracy/self-help books, your best bet is to show them a chart.
Worse, it seems that a chart is better than even text. Goodness, is that where I"ve been going wrong all my life?
I can, though, already see Jeff Bezos"s eyes rolling into the back of his head and emerging with a very red hue.
As the Amazon CEO explained in his latest letter to shareowners: "We don"t do PowerPoint (or any other slide-oriented) presentations at Amazon. Instead, we write narratively structured six-page memos. We silently read one at the beginning of each meeting in a kind of "study hall.""
So no slides or charts and graphics for Bezos. All he wants is a short story. Could he, perhaps, misperceive the benefits of charts?
Still, charts surely can"t be so effective, otherwise everyone would have tried them.
Moreover, it"s not as if you can create a chart to describe every false belief. How, for example, do you create a chart for a CEO who simply thinks his touch and feel is always right?
Nyhan and Reifler explain that a considerable reason why people hold on to false information is purely psychological. It confirms their world view.
"On high-profile issues, many of the misinformed are likely to have already encountered and rejected correct information that was discomforting to their self-concept or worldview," they say.
Yes, but it"s not as if that nice man on CNN with his Election Night charts has ever persuaded many people, is it?
Expect, though, the rising stars in many companies now rushing to create charts in order to show that they"re right and their brain-manacled bosses are wrong.
Expect, too, that American politics will now be revolutionized with the presentation of definitive charts of right and wrong.
(Reuters) - AT&T Inc is committed to spend as much as needed on the media business of newly acquired Time Warner Inc, Chief Executive Randall Stephenson told CNBC on Friday, with a plan to invest $ 21 billion to $ 22 billion in the combined company.
FILE PHOTO: Chief Executive Officer of AT&T Randall Stephenson arrives at a U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., U.S. April 19, 2018. REUTERS/Carlos Barria/File Photo
“We’re not going to be penny-wise and pound-foolish here,” Stephenson said in an interview on the financial news channel. “We intend to invest.”
The No. 2 U.S. wireless carrier closed its $ 85 billion acquisition of Time Warner on Thursday and now faces the task of integrating a media company into its operations as it seeks to rival Netflix Inc , Amazon.com Inc and other technology companies providing entertainment directly to customers.
That will be the job of John Stankey, who will lead the company’s combined entertainment business. Stephenson said on Friday AT&T intends to preserve Time Warner’s creative culture.
He acknowledged such differences in an email to AT&T and Time Warner employees late on Thursday, a copy of which was seen by Reuters.
“As different as our businesses are, I think you’ll find we have a lot in common,” wrote Stephenson. “We’re big fans of your talent and creativity. And you have my word that you will continue to have the creative freedom and resources to keep doing what you do best.”
Stephenson told CNBC he expects AT&T’s debt levels to come down quickly in about a year, returning to normal levels within four years at about 2.3 times earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization.
Some analysts have raised concerns about the high level of debt the company took on to acquire Time Warner, about $ 180 billion at the close of the merger, Stephenson said.
AT&T’s spending plans include investing more in HBO, the premium TV channel with the hit show “Game of Thrones,” and expanding HBO’s direct-to-consumer platform, Stephenson said.
Reporting by Sheila Dang; Additional reporting by Diane Bartz in Washington; Editing by Bill Rigby
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Banks are unlikely to use distributed ledgers to process cross-border payments for now because of scalability and privacy issues, according to Ripple, one of the most prominent startups developing the technology.
The logo of blockchain company Ripple is seen at the SIBOS banking and financial conference in Toronto, Ontario, Canada October 19, 2017. Picture taken October 19, 2017. REUTERS/Chris Helgren
“I will concede, we haven’t gotten there yet,” Ripple’s chief cryptographer David Schwartz said in an interview.
Banks have been vocal about taking steps toward deploying the technology originated from cryptocurrencies to make processes like international payments faster and cheaper.
Several banks have tested or deployed a system Ripple developed for international payments that uses a “bi-directional messaging” that can eventually plug them into distributed ledgers, but xCurrent’s technology itself “is not a distributed ledger,” Schwartz said.
XCurrent was used to build Banco Santander SA’s (SAN.MC) international money transfer service One Pay FX, which was launched in April and hailed as one of the first concrete uses of “blockchain-based technology.”
Representation of the Ripple virtual currency is seen in this illustration picture, February 13, 2018. Picture is taken February 13. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration
Santander, which is an investor in Ripple, declined to comment.
While xCurrent uses cryptography, each party using the system does not have access to a shared ledger, as is the case with distributed ledgers like ethereum or Hyperledger Fabric.
“We started out with your classic blockchain, which we love,” Marcus Treacher, senior vice president of customer success at Ripple said in an interview. “The feedback from the banks is you can’t put the whole world on a blockchain.”
Distributed ledgers, an umbrella under which so-called blockchains fall, are immutable databases maintained by a network of computers rather than a centralized authority and secured by advanced cryptography.
The technology’s proponents say shared record keeping boosts efficiency and reduces data discrepancies, but distributed ledgers are not yet scalable or private enough for banks, Schwartz said.
XCurrent uses an immutable “interledger” protocol which Ripple says improves on existing payment networks because it offers instant settlement.
“What we hear from many of our customers is that it’s imperative to keep their transactions private, process thousands every second, and accommodate every type of currency and asset imaginable,” Schwartz said. Ripple’s approach is what has enabled it to move beyond tests with banks, he added.
Founded in 2012, Ripple also offers a system called xRapid that works with the distributed ledger behind XRP, the third-largest cryptocurrency by market cap after bitcoin and ether. Ripple holds a large share of XRP.
The price of XRP and other cryptocurrencies soared last year, in part on expectations that their technology will be applied to processes including transferring value between financial firms.
xRapid and XRP are not being used by banks, but have been recently tested by money transfer companies Viamericas and MercuryFX, according to Ripple.
Reporting by Anna Irrera; Editing by Meredith Mazzilli
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Chinese technology company ZTE Corp will be “shut down” in the United States if it engages in one more bad activity, White House trade adviser Peter Navarro warned on Sunday.
FILE PHOTO - White House trade and manufacturing adviser Peter Navarro (L), a member of the U.S. trade delegation to China, leaves a hotel in Beijing, China May 3, 2018. REUTERS/Jason Lee
ZTE last week agreed to pay a $ 1 billion fine to the United States and to overhaul its leadership in order to end a crippling ban on the Shenzhen-headquartered firm from buying parts from U.S. suppliers and allowing it to get back into business.
The ban, which traces back to a breach of the U.S. embargo on trade with Iran, had prevented China’s second largest telecoms equipment maker by revenue from buying the U.S. components it relies on to make phones and other devices.
“It’s going to be three strikes you’re out on ZTE. If they do one more additional thing, they will be shut down,” Navarro told Fox, adding that everyone within the administration understood this was the policy.
FILE PHOTO - Visitors pass in front of the Chinese telecoms equipment group ZTE Corp booth at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, February 26, 2018. REUTERS/Yves Herman/File Picture
Navarro was speaking as President Donald Trump arrived in Singapore for a historic summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, whose regime is heavily dependent upon neighboring communist ally China.
The United States introduced the ban in April because ZTE broke the terms of an agreement it had entered into with the U.S. government after pleading guilty last year to conspiring to violate U.S. sanctions by shipping U.S. goods to Iran.
FILE PHOTO: A ZTE smart phone is pictured in this illustration taken April 17, 2018. REUTERS/Carlo Allegri/Illustration/File Photo
The ZTE sanctions became a key focus in trade talks between Washington and Beijing, and a deal to lift the ban was struck as Trump sought concessions from China in order to avoid a trade war between the world’s two largest economies.
Prominent U.S. Democratic and Republican lawmakers last week introduced legislation to try to overturn the deal, saying ZTE posed a threat to America’s national security.
On Sunday, Navarro said Trump’s decision to allow ZTE to continue operating in the United States was a gesture to help build goodwill with China.
“The President did this as a personal favor to the president of China as a way of showing some good will for bigger efforts such as the one here in Singapore,” said Navarro, referring to the summit between Trump and Kim.
He added that ZTE was a “bad actor” but that the deal included safeguards, such as requiring the company to retain a compliance team selected by the Commerce Department for 10 years. The company already has a U.S. court-appointed monitor.
Reporting by Michelle Price; Editing by Lisa Shumaker and Chris Reese
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump said in a tweet on Sunday that he has asked the Commerce Department to help Chinese technology company ZTE Corp “get back into business, fast,” a concession to Beijing ahead of high-stakes trade talks that will take place this week.
FILE PHOTO: A ZTE smart phone is pictured in this illustration taken April 17, 2018. REUTERS/Carlo Allegri/Illustration/File Photo
ZTE, one of the world’s largest telecom equipment makers, suspended its main operations after the U.S. Commerce Department banned American supplies to its business.
Trump’s offer to help comes as Chinese and U.S. officials prepare for talks in Washington with China’s top trade official Liu He to resolve an escalating trade dispute between the world’s two largest economies.
Trump’s reversal will likely have a significant impact on ZTE’s U.S. suppliers such as Qualcomm Inc and Intel Corp. U.S. companies are banned from exporting goods to ZTE, making it difficult for the phonemaker to manufacture new products or update older ones.
“Too many jobs in China lost. Commerce Department has been instructed to get it done!” Trump wrote on Twitter, saying he is working with Chinese President Xi Jinping on a solution.
The ban is the result of ZTE’s failure to comply with an agreement with the U.S. government after it pleaded guilty last year to conspiring to violate U.S. sanctions by illegally shipping U.S. goods and technology to Iran, the Commerce Department said.
American companies are estimated to provide 25 percent to 30 percent of the components used in ZTE’s equipment, which includes smartphones and gear to build telecommunications networks.
The Commerce Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Sunday.
Reporting by Valerie Volcovici and Chris Sanders, additional reporting by Karen Freifield; Editing by Lisa Shumaker
(Reuters) - Qualcomm Inc has broadened its use of a lower-cost licensing model for the next generation of mobile data networks, a move that could help in contentious talks with two customers including iPhone maker Apple Inc, the wireless tech company’s patent licensing chief said on Monday.
FILE PHOTO: A sign on the Qualcomm campus is seen in San Diego, California, U.S. November 6, 2017. REUTERS/Mike Blake/File Photo
The patent business traditionally has supplied much of Qualcomm’s profit but has also spurred conflict with Apple, Samsung Electronics Ltd and Huawei Technologies Co Ltd as well as regulators in China, South Korea and the United States.
New deals could lower the licensing rate that Qualcomm receives while making the business more dependable if regulators view the terms favourably and two major customers - Apple and a company widely believed to be Huawei - resolve their disputes and resume paying Qualcomm.
“It’s a good context for dealing with the two licensee issues we have now,” Alex Rogers, the head of Qualcomm’s licensing division, told Reuters in an interview, naming Apple but leaving Huawei unnamed as is the company’s policy when a dispute hasn’t become public through a court proceeding.
Rogers did not comment directly on the likelihood of resolving either customer dispute. Apple and Huawei did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Qualcomm sells chips for mobile phones but has a second, much older business licensing technology for wireless networks. The licensing business has generated global controversy and resulted in billions of dollars in regulatory fines, some of which remain on appeal.
Handset makers can licence one of two sets of Qualcomm patents: The full suite that costs makers about 5 percent of the cost of a handset or a smaller set of so-called “standard essential patents” for 3.25 percent, which includes only the patents needed for gear to work on mobile data networks.
In the past, most of Qualcomm’s customers licensed both sets of patents to avoid lawsuits. But Qualcomm has been defusing tensions by making it easier for customers to licence just the smaller, lower-cost set of standard patents and by adding patents for the next generation 5G wireless network to the suite at no additional cost.
That essentially extends a 2015 settlement with China’s chief antitrust regulator. Qualcomm began to licence only its standard patents for 3G and 4G networks to Chinese handset makers for a rate of 3.25 percent. More than 100 device makers have signed on for such deals.
“We have not lowered the rate. What we’re doing is including more technology, more (intellectual property) in the offering without increasing the price,” Rogers added.
Qualcomm also announced last week that it would assess its patent fees against only the first $ 400 (£291) of a phone’s net selling price. Rogers said the previous price cap was $ 500, a figure that was well known among industry insiders but that Qualcomm did not make public.
“What we’re doing here is creating a foundation for stability going forward,” Rogers said, describing Qualcomm’s 5G licensing moves as “regulator friendly”.
The question now is whether more handset makers will opt for Qualcomm’s lower-cost standard patents rather than its pricier full portfolio.
“What we perceive here is there will be more of a mix than there was in the past of companies opting for (standard essential patents) only,” Rogers said. “How much more, depends on each individual company.”
While Qualcomm has made no public disclosures about the status of talks with the two major customers in licence disputes, the company’s approach to licensing patents for upcoming 5G networks will look different than its initial approaches for 3G and 4G networks of years past.
“Both of those issues (disputes) are essentially now being handled within the framework of the current programme we’re offering,” Rogers said.
Reporting by Stephen Nellis; Editing by Peter Henderson and Cynthia Osterman
Entrepreneurs who feel lucky report higher levels of motivation and wellbeing, both essential for sustaining performance during tough times. So how do you cultivate your own daily luck? Here are three things to do every day,
1. Choose A Lucky Attitude.
Luck is about flexibility of mind and a willingness to experiment and trust your gut. Take advantage of chance occurrences, break the weekly routine, and once in a while have the courage to let go. The world is full of opportunity if you"re prepared to embrace it. Steve Jobs emphasized the importance of trusting your gut when he delivered his now infamous commencement address at Stanford University: "If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later. Again, you can"t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something--your gut, destiny, life, and karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life."
2. Be Ready.
Luck is as much about what you expect as what you do. Do you wait for success to happen, or do you get out there and make it happen? In his book The Luck Factor, Professor Richard Wiseman of the University of Hertfordshire, England, describes why lucky people tend to share traits that make them luckier than others. This includes the impact of chance opportunities, lucky breaks, and being in the right place at the right time. He says: "My research revealed that lucky people generate good fortune via four basic principles. They are skilled at creating and noticing chance opportunities, make lucky decisions by listening to their intuition, create self-fulfilling prophesies via positive expectations, and adopt a resilient attitude that transforms bad luck into good." On the flipside he says: "Those who think they"re unlucky should change their outlook and discover how to generate good fortune."
3. Own Your Success.
At times, you might privately think you can"t go on. You must persist. Arianna Huffington, co-founder of the Huffington Post, says it best: "I failed, many times in my life. One failure that I always remember was when 36 publishers rejected my second book. Many years later, I watched Huff Post come alive to mixed reviews, including some very negative ones, like the reviewer who called the site "the equivalent of Gigli, Ishtar, and Heaven"s Gate rolled into one. But my mother used to tell me, failure is not the opposite of success, it"s a stepping stone to success."
Dear Future, I"m Ready.
Luck isn"t just chance but an alchemy of courage, focus and a willingness to experiment. It"s about declaring to the world "dear future, I"m ready".
The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis has provided some high-profile validation for a core premise of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency. A blog post this week based on an earlier Fed research paper said that “bitcoin units have no intrinsic value” – but added that currencies “such as the U.S. dollar, the euro, and the Swiss france . . . have no intrinsic value either.”
The post, titled “Three Ways Bitcoin is Like Regular Currency,” doesn’t precisely endorse Bitcoin or cryptocurrency. In another recent report, the St. Louis Fed was critical of Bitcoin’s inefficiency. Cryptocurrency has also become rife with scams since its surge in value last year, and may constitute a global risk because it enables clandestine money laundering, capital flight, and tax evasion.
But the St. Louis Fed has provided a credible rebuttal to one of the most widespread and misguided criticisms of cryptocurrency: That, because it isn’t tied to a particular real-world commodity, it should have a monetary value of zero. As Fed researchers point out, since decoupling from the gold standard in the early 1970s, almost all global reserve currencies rely on nothing but trust to function as a media of value exchange.
In the case of the dollar, that’s mostly trust in the U.S. government and economy. For Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, it’s trust in computer code and, at least to some extent, developers.
Surprisingly, the Fed’s new statement also echoes one of the predominant arguments that cryptocurrency fans use to disparage government-backed currency – though in a rather roundabout way. The post argues in part that “there’s a limited supply” of both cash and Bitcoin. The libertarian boosters at the heart of the crytpocurrency movement have often argued that Bitcoin is better than government currency because central banks can devalue national currencies through inflation, while Bitcoin has a strictly fixed supply. Though the Fed’s post points out that it doesn’t actually print cash – in the sense of physical notes – it acknowledges its ability to expand the money supply.
LONDON (Reuters) - A researcher at the center of a scandal over the alleged misuse of the data of nearly 100 million Facebook users said on Tuesday the work he did was useless for the sort of targeted adverts that would be needed to sway an election.
Aleksandr Kogan, who worked for the University of Cambridge, is at the center of a controversy over Cambridge Analytica’s use of millions of users’ data without their permission after it was hired by Donald Trump for his 2016 election campaign.
Kogan said it was unlikely Cambridge Analytica had used the data in the Trump campaign, although he also said that its suspended CEO Alexander Nix had lied to a committee of British lawmakers about how the two worked together.
Kogan said that even if the dataset he compiled was used in a political campaign, it would be little use for targeted advertising.
“Quite frankly, if the goal is micro-targeting using Facebook ads, (the project) makes no sense. It’s not what you would do,” he told a parliamentary committee, adding that Facebook itself had better tools for such adverts and that the work was worth “literally nothing”.
“If the use case you have is Facebook ads, it’s just incompetent to do it this way.”
Facebook has said that the personal information of about 87 million users may have been improperly shared with political consultancy Cambridge Analytica, after Kogan created a personality quiz app to collect the data.
Facebook and Cambridge Analytica have blamed Kogan for alleged data misuse, but he has said that he was being made a scapegoat by the companies for the scandal.
Kogan said that former Cambridge Analytica CEO Alexander Nix, who was also a director of the consultancy’s parent firm SCL Group, had previously lied to lawmakers when he said he had not received data from Kogan.
“We certainly gave them data, that’s indisputable,” Kogan told lawmakers. Asked if Nix had lied, Kogan answered: “Absolutely.” A spokesman for Cambridge Analytica declined to comment on Nix’s testimony, noting that he was suspended pending an investigation.
Kogan said Facebook provided him data in an email, and he had not needed to sign an agreement to use it. However, he said that he did not sell the data provided to him by Facebook.
Instead, Kogan said he collected new data through an app for work with SCL, Cambridge Analytica’s parent company.
He hired a market research firm called Qualtrics to recruit 200,000 to 300,000 people to take the quiz to collect the data, resulting in expenses of $ 600,000-$ 800,000. Kogan’s company was paid 230,000 pounds ($ 320,643.00) by SCL for its predictive analysis based on the findings, Kogan said.
In written evidence to parliament, Kogan said that all of his academic work was reviewed and approved by the University’s ethics committees.
However, a letter from 2015, published by the Guardian, shows that the ethics committee rejected one of Kogan’s projects in 2015 and said that Facebook’s privacy project was “not sufficient protection” to address concerns.
Kogan said that the data he collected had now all been deleted, to the best of his knowledge, but he would double check that none remained. Cambridge Analytica also said that it had deleted the data when asked to by Facebook.
“We’re extremely sorry that we ended up in possession of data that clearly had breached Facebook’s terms of service,” spokesman Clarence Mitchell told reporters.
“That’s something that we wouldn’t have wanted to happen. But we have put in place the procedures to begin to rectify it.”
Mitchell also said that the data was not used in the Trump campaign after it had been demonstrated to be ineffective.
“Any suggestion that the GSR Kogan data was used in that campaign is utterly incorrect. Its effective uselessness had already been identified by then,” he said.
Kogan said that he never drew a salary from GSR, the company that he founded to do the research that was wound up last year. Most of the money received from SCL was spent on coding work, acquiring data and legal fees. He was allowed to keep the data he gathered on the project.
Kogan said that GSR had a close relationship with Facebook, and one of his partners at the firm, Joseph Chancellor, now worked for the social media giant.
“This has been a very painful experience, because when I entered into all of this, Facebook was a close ally,” Kogan said.
“I was thinking this would be helpful to my academic career and my relationship with Facebook. It has very clearly done the complete opposite”
($ 1 = 0.7173 pounds)
Aleksandr Kogan, a researcher at Cambridge University who created a personality quiz to collect users data on Facebook, gives evidence to Parliament"s Digital, Culture, Media and Sport committe in Westminster, London, Britain, April 24, 2018. Parliament TV handout via REUTERS
Reporting by Alistair Smout and Douglas Busvine; Editing by Guy Faulconbridge and Matthew Mpoke Bigg
MENLO PARK, Calif. (Reuters) - Facebook Inc (FB.O) said on Tuesday it would continue requiring people to accept targeted ads as a condition of using its service, a stance that may help keep its business model largely intact despite a new European Union privacy law.
FILE PHOTO: Silhouettes of mobile users are seen next to a screen projection of Facebook logo in this picture illustration taken March 28, 2018. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
The EU law, which takes effect next month, promises the biggest shakeup in online privacy since the birth of the internet. Companies face fines if they collect or use personal information without permission.
Facebook Deputy Chief Privacy Officer Rob Sherman said the social network would begin seeking Europeans’ permission this week for a variety of ways Facebook uses their data, but he said that opting out of targeted marketing altogether would not be possible.
“Facebook is an advertising-supported service,” Sherman said in a briefing with reporters at Facebook’s headquarters.
FILE PHOTO: Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testifies before a House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing regarding the company’s use and protection of user data on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, U.S., April 11, 2018. REUTERS/Aaron P. Bernstein/File Photo
Facebook users will be able to limit the kinds of data that advertisers use to target their pitches, he added, but “all ads on Facebook are targeted to some extent, and that’s true for offline advertising, as well.”
Facebook, the world’s largest social media network, will use what are known as “permission screens” - pages filled with text that require pressing a button to advance - to notify and obtain approval.
The screens will show up on the Facebook website and smartphone app in Europe this week and globally in the coming months, Sherman said.
The screens will not give Facebook users the option to hit “decline.” Instead, they will guide users to either “accept and continue” or “manage data setting,” according to copies the company showed reporters on Tuesday.
“People can choose to not be on Facebook if they want,” Sherman said.
Regulators, investors and privacy advocates are closely watching how Facebook plans to comply with the EU law, not only because Facebook has been embroiled in a privacy scandal but also because other companies may follow its lead in trying to limit the impact of opt-outs.
Last month, Facebook disclosed that the personal information of millions of users, mostly in the United States, had wrongly ended up in the hands of political consultancy Cambridge Analytica, leading to U.S. congressional hearings and worldwide scrutiny of Facebook’s commitment to privacy.
Facebook Chief Financial Officer David Wehner warned in February the company could see a drop-off in usage due to the EU law, known as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
Reporting by David Ingram; Editing by Greg Mitchell and Lisa Shumaker
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Uber Chief Executive Dara Khosrowshahi said on Wednesday that the ride-sharing company still believes in the prospects for autonomous transport after one of its self-driving vehicles was involved in a fatal crash in Arizona last month.
FILE PHOTO - Dara Khosrowshahi, Chief Executive Officer of Uber Technologies, attends the World Economic Forum (WEF) annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, January 23, 2018. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse/File Picture
A 49-year-old woman was killed after being hit by an Uber self-driving sports utility vehicle while walking across a street in Phoenix, leading the company to suspend testing of autonomous vehicles.
Khosrowshahi declined to say when the company might resume testing or what might have gone wrong. He said the company was cooperating with federal investigators and dealing with the incident “very seriously.”
The accident has raised questions about the lack of clear safety standards for such vehicles.
But, speaking at a transport forum, Khosrowshahi said Uber was still betting on the technology in the long-term.
“We believe in it,” he said, adding that Uber considered autonomous vehicles “part of the solution” and in the long-term key to eliminating individual car ownership.
“Autonomous (vehicles) at maturity will be safer,” he said.
The company’s interest in investing in bike sharing and public transit should not be interpreted as a move away from self-driving cars, he added.
The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) are investigating the incident.
“They are a neutral party,” said Khosrowshahi. “They understand this.”
“We’ll figure out what we do afterwards.”
Arizona’s governor suspended Uber’s ability to test self-driving cars on public roads in the state following the crash. Arizona had been a key hub for Uber’s autonomous project, with about half of the company’s 200 self-driving cars and a staff of hundreds.
Governor Doug Ducey last month called a video of the incident “disturbing and alarming” and the crash “an unquestionable failure.”
NTSB chairman Robert Sumwalt on Tuesday told Reuters he had no update on the investigation.
Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Susan Thomas and Rosalba O"Brien
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Facebook Inc Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg told Congress on Monday that the social media network should have done more to prevent itself and its members’ data being misused and offered a broad apology to lawmakers.
His conciliatory tone precedes two days of Congressional hearings where Zuckerberg is set to answer questions about Facebook user data being improperly appropriated by a political consultancy and the role the network played in the U.S. 2016 election.
“We didn’t take a broad enough view of our responsibility, and that was a big mistake,” he said in remarks released by the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee on Monday. “It was my mistake, and I’m sorry. I started Facebook, I run it, and I’m responsible for what happens here.”
Zuckerberg, surrounded by tight security and wearing a dark suit and a purple tie rather than his trademark hoodie, was meeting with lawmakers on Capitol Hill on Monday ahead of his scheduled appearance before two Congressional committees on Tuesday and Wednesday.
Zuckerberg did not respond to questions as he entered and left a meeting with Senator Bill Nelson, the top Democrat on the Senate Commerce Committee. He is expected to meet Senator John Thune, the Commerce Committee’s Republican chairman, later in the day, among others.
Top of the agenda in the forthcoming hearings will be Facebook’s admission that the personal information of up to 87 million users, mostly in the United States, may have been improperly shared with political consultancy Cambridge Analytica.
But lawmakers are also expected to press him on a range of issues, including the 2016 election.
“It’s clear now that we didn’t do enough to prevent these tools from being used for harm...” his testimony continued. “That goes for fake news, foreign interference in elections, and hate speech, as well as developers and data privacy.”
Facebook, which has 2.1 billion monthly active users worldwide, said on Sunday it plans to begin on Monday telling users whose data may have been shared with Cambridge Analytica. The company’s data practices are under investigation by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission.
London-based Cambridge Analytica, which counts U.S. President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign among its past clients, has disputed Facebook’s estimate of the number of affected users.
Zuckerberg also said that Facebook’s major investments in security “will significantly impact our profitability going forward.” Facebook shares were up 2 percent in midday trading.
Facebook has about 15,000 people working on security and content review, rising to more than 20,000 by the end of 2018, Zuckerberg’s testimony said. “Protecting our community is more important than maximizing our profits,” he said.
As with other Silicon Valley companies, Facebook has been resistant to new laws governing its business, but on Friday it backed proposed legislation requiring social media sites to disclose the identities of buyers of online political campaign ads and introduced a new verification process for people buying “issue” ads, which do not endorse any candidate but have been used to exploit divisive subjects such as gun laws or police shootings.
The steps are designed to deter online information warfare and election meddling that U.S. authorities have accused Russia of pursuing, Zuckerberg said on Friday. Moscow has denied the allegations.
Zuckerberg’s testimony said the company was “too slow to spot and respond to Russian interference, and we’re working hard to get better.”
He vowed to make improvements, adding it would take time, but said he was “committed to getting it right.”
A Facebook official confirmed that the company had hired a team from the law firm WilmerHale and outside consultants to help prepare Zuckerberg for his testimony and how lawmakers may question him.
FILE PHOTO: Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg speaks on stage during the Facebook F8 conference in San Francisco, California, U.S., April 12, 2016. REUTERS/Stephen Lam/File Photo
Reporting by David Shepardson and Dustin Volz; Editing by Bill Rigby
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A Republican U.S. senator warned on Sunday that Facebook Inc may need to be regulated to address concerns about the company’s privacy and foreign propaganda scandals, saying they may be “too big” for the social media company to solve alone.
FILE PHOTO - Senator John Kennedy (R-LA) speaks to reporters after a vote to end a government shutdown on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., February 9, 2018. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts
“My biggest worry with all this is that the privacy issue and what I call the propagandist issue are both too big for Facebook to fix, and that’s the frightening part,” Senator John Kennedy said on CBS’s Face the Nation.
Asked if lawmakers need to seek regulations on Facebook, Kennedy replied: “It may be the case.”
Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg will appear before the U.S. Senate Commerce and Judiciary Committees Tuesday to address questions about how his company handles its users’ data.
While some Democrats have suggested laws may be required to police Facebook’s data privacy practices or limit foreign interference on its platform, Kennedy’s openness is significant because Republicans generally support free-market principles and are loath to regulate U.S. companies.
Kennedy, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said he wanted to ask Zuckerberg on Tuesday if Facebook had the ability to know the identities of the hundreds of thousands of entities that purchase ads on its site.
“I don’t want to hurt Facebook. I don’t want to regulate them half to death,” Kennedy said. “But we have a problem. Our promised digital utopia has minefields in it.”
Facebook on Friday endorsed legislation known as the Honest Ads Act, which is aimed at countering concerns about foreign nationals using social media to influence American politics.
The legislation would expand existing election law covering television and radio outlets to apply to paid internet and digital advertisements.
The legislation, introduced last October but not yet passed, is aimed at countering concerns about foreign nationals using social media to influence American politics, which is part of the investigation into possible Russian meddling during the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign. Russia denies involvement.
Under the act, digital platforms with at least 50 million monthly views would need to maintain a public file of all electioneering communications purchased by anyone spending more than $ 500.
Reporting by Dustin Volz; Editing by James Dalgleish
In an interview with NBC’s Today show, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg said that users who wished to entirely stop the social media platform from making money from their personal data would have to pay for the privilege, if the option were to be made available.
“Could you come up with a tool that said, ‘I do not want Facebook to use my personal profile data to target me for advertising.’?” Sandberg was asked by Today’s Savannah Guthrie. “Could you have an opt-out button – ‘Please don’t use my profile data for advertising’?”
“We have different forms of opt-out,” Sandberg replied. “We don’t have an opt-out at the highest level. That would be a paid product.”
There’s no indication that Facebook actually plans to introduce such an option, but Sandberg’s admission makes explicit that Facebook’s revenue depends almost entirely on monitoring its users’ taste and behavior. Taking that option away would require replacing ad sales with subscription revenue.
In the same interview, Sandberg pushed back against the often-repeated but suddenly fast-spreading notion that user data is Facebook’s primary product – though on largely semantic grounds.
“That’s not true . . . we don’t sell data, ever. We do not give personal data to advertisers. People come on to Facebook, they want to do targeted ads, and that’s really important for small business . . . We take those ads, we show them, and we don’t pass any individual information back to the advertiser.”
That kind of protection, of course, benefits Facebook’s bottom line by maintaining its control over ad targeting. Facebook has taken action to change various features and policies that enabled outside actors, including partners of the election firm Cambridge Analytica, to collect large amounts of personal profile data. For now, researchers and developers can still use a variety of methods to automatically harvest large amounts of public data from Facebook.
In the same interview, Sandberg acknowledged that Facebook should have notified as many as 87 million users impacted by the improper access of data by Cambridge Analytica and its partners, and that the company may discover other, similar breaches.
TOKYO (Reuters) - A Hong Kong-based activist investment fund opposed to Toshiba Corp’s (6502.T) sale of its chip unit to a Bain Capital-led group said the deal should be renegotiated at a valuation of 3.3 trillion yen to 4.4 trillion yen ($ 30 billion-$ 41 billion).
FILE PHOTO - The logo of Toshiba Corp. is seen at the company"s facility in Kawasaki, Japan February 13, 2017. REUTERS/Issei Kato/File Photo
Argyle Street Management said on Friday that the current deal, which values the unit at 2 trillion yen, was agreed upon when Toshiba was desperate for cash. Toshiba is no longer insolvent, and was free to terminate the deal without incurring any penalty because the sale had not closed by a March 31 deadline, it said.
Toshiba should aim to list the unit if the Bain group will not agree to a higher price, it added.
Reporting by Makiko Yamazaki; Writing by Ritsuko Ando; Editing by Edwina Gibbs
(Reuters) - Tesla Inc sought to squash any speculation it might need to raise more capital this year on Tuesday, driving the company’s battered shares higher as it announced it built 2,020 of its cheaper Model 3 sedans in the last seven days.
The company’s reassurance that it does not need extra cash sent a wave of relief through investors who sold shares of the electric carmaker through a week of bad news about its credit rating and semi-autonomous driving technology.
In early trade on Tuesday, Tesla shares jumped as much as 6.9 percent, recouping a third of the past week’s losses. They were up 3.2 percent at $ 260 in midday trade.
Musk’s $ 50-billion dollar venture said it would also churn out 2,000 of the Model 3 cars next week and promised output would climb rapidly through the second quarter.
“Tesla continues to target a production rate of approximately 5,000 units per week in about three months, laying the groundwork for Q3 to have the long-sought ideal combination of high volume, good gross margin and strong positive operating cash flow,” the company said in a filing.
“As a result, Tesla does not require an equity or debt raise this year, apart from standard credit lines.”
Jefferies analysts had estimated that Tesla needed $ 2.5 billion to $ 3 billion of fresh equity to fund the Model 3 rampup and several other Wall Street brokerages have predicted the company would need more funds this year.
Some analysts said there were signs that the company might have prioritized the cheaper car, seen as crucial to its profitability, over its Model X SUV and more-established and expensive Model S sedan.
Tesla said first-quarter deliveries totaled 29,980 vehicles, out of which 11,730 were Model S and 10,070 were Model X.
Both were lower from the previous quarter and the first quarter a year ago.
“Maybe Elon Musk switched staff from Model S and X to Model 3 to get better production numbers for Model 3,” said analyst Frank Schwope from NORD/LB.
Musk himself has taken direct control of Model 3 production and the company says it already has about 500,000 advance reservations from customers for the car.
FILE PHOTO: A Tesla Model 3 sedan, its first car aimed at the mass market, is displayed during its launch in Hawthorne, California, U.S. March 31, 2016. REUTERS/Joe White/File Photo
The Model 3 is the most affordable of Tesla’s cars to date and is the only one capable of transforming the niche automaker into a mass producer amid a sea of rivals entering the nascent electric vehicle market.
Tesla’s consistent failure to meet its production targets - it had promised 2,500 Model 3s would roll off its assembly lines per week by the end of March - has made Wall Street broadly more skeptical about Musk’s promises.
Several criticized as “tone deaf” an April Fool’s tweet from the billionaire that joked his company, which has $ 10 billion in debt, was “totally bankrupt”.
Tesla shares peaked at $ 389 last September and have been declining steadily since.
Analysts, however, are giving the company the benefit of the doubt as a big bet on the future of high-tech electric and self-driving vehicles.
The production numbers, while short of Tesla’s own target, are far above the 793 Model 3s built in the final week of last year.
“The company appears to be near the point of turning the corner on meeting guidance and production performance,” said William Selesky from Argus Research.
FILE PHOTO: A Tesla dealership is seen in West Drayton, just outside London, Britain, February 7, 2018. REUTERS/Hannah McKay/File Photo
(Corrects to show production was for last seven days, not last seven days of March, in paragraph one)
Reporting By Alexandria Sage and Sonam Rai; Additional reporting by Munsif Vengattil; Editing by Patrick Graham, Bernard Orr
