Showing posts with label Youtube. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Youtube. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 27, 2019
Wednesday, February 6, 2019
Tuesday, February 5, 2019
Tuesday, January 29, 2019
Breaking News - Apple Inc reported sharp growth in its services business on Tuesday and Chief Executive Tim Cook said trade tensions between the United States and China were easing, helping boost the company’s shares after hours even though iPhone sales dipped in the holiday shopping quarter for the first time.
Apple said sales for the current quarter would most likely be lower than Wall Street expected, a signal that it continues to face weak demand for the iPhone, especially in China, the world’s biggest smartphone market.
But investors focused on the company’s growing services, which include Apple Music and its App Store.
“The services number is good, and that is the growth engine going forward that people will continue to focus on,” said Ivan Feinseth, an analyst with Tigress Financial Partners.
Cook, who is in regular contact with U.S. President Donald Trump, said there were signs of a detente in trade tensions with China, which may have depressed sales of its phones.
“If you were to graph up trade tension it’s clearly less in January than it was in December,” Cook told Reuters in an interview. “I’m optimistic that the two countries will be able to work things out.”
The company’s shares rose 6 percent to $163.50 in after-hours trading. They had fallen more than 30 percent since November on concerns about weak iPhone sales and a general decline in high-tech stocks. Shares of iPhone suppliers including Micron Technology , Broadcom Inc and Skyworks Solutions rose more than 1 percent in extended trade after Apple’s report.
“It appears that the bears pressed way too hard on the negative bets and even this more negative report couldn’t drive the stock lower,” said Hal Eddins, chief economist for Apple shareholder Capital Investment Counsel.
SUBSCRIBERS UP
Apple said revenue from services, which investors are counting on to fuel growth, reached $10.8 billion, in line with Wall Street estimates. Services gross margin hit 63 percent, up from 58.3 percent a year ago. Analysts previously estimated the services gross margin could top 60 percent.
“They get more efficient as they get larger,” Cook told Reuters.
The company said it has 360 million subscribers to both its own and third-party services, and set a goal to expand that to 500 million by the end of 2020. It said it has 1.4 billion active devices, an increase of 100 million from last year, and that 900 million of those are iPhones.
Apple said it would start providing regular updates on the number of iPhones and overall devices in use - what is known in the tech industry as the installed base. The company stopped reporting unit sales of its iPhones the latest quarter.
Apple counts both subscribers to its own services as well as Apple device users who subscribe to outside apps or services using Apple’s payment systems. Apple keeps up to 30 percent of the payments it handles.
Apple’s iPhone revenue declined 15 percent year-over-year to $51.9 billion. Cook said China’s economic weakness hurt iPhone sales there.
He said Apple is rethinking how it prices the iPhone outside the United States after largely setting the price in U.S. dollars, which made the phones more expensive in local currencies as the dollar strengthened.
In markets with currencies that weakened considerably against the dollar over the last year, iPhone price “increases were obviously more,” Cook told Reuters. “And so as we’ve gotten into January and assessed the macroeconomic condition in some of those markets, we’ve decided to go back to more commensurate with what our local prices were a year ago in hopes of helping the sales in those areas.”
OUTLOOK LARGELY BELOW WALL STREET
Apple said it expects revenue between $55 billion and $59 billion for the current quarter ending in March, largely below analysts’ average estimate of $58.83 billion, according to IBES data from Refinitiv.
For the quarter ending in December, the company’s busiest due to the holiday shopping season, Apple reported revenue of $84.3 billion, slightly above analysts’ average estimate of $84 billion. Apple warned in early January that sales would miss the targets it gave in November.
Earnings per share were $4.18, compared with Wall Street’s average estimate of $4.17, according to Refinitiv data.
Investors have been closely tracking the company’s share repurchase activity in hopes that it will help buoy the falling share price, which has knocked Apple off its throne as the world’s largest technology company with a market value of more than $1 trillion.
Apple said it bought back $8.2 billion worth of shares in the quarter ended in December, less than half the $19.4 billion it purchased in the quarter ended in September. Apple said its net cash position - cash minus its debt - was $130 billion, up from $123 billion in the previous quarter. Apple has publicly said it plans to draw its net cash position to zero.
Some investors were disappointed Apple did not take advantage of low prices over the last quarter to buy back more stock. Ross Gerber, chief executive of Santa Monica, California-based Apple shareholder Gerber Kawasaki, said that Cook “is very annoying in this way” and was “just playing the game so safely.”
“Tim just wants to be predictable and it seems to be working for now,” Gerber said.
WASHINGTON - Two units of China’s Huawei Technologies Co Ltd are to be arraigned on Feb. 28 in Seattle on a 10-count indictment on charges they conspired to steal T-Mobile US Inc trade secrets, according to court filings Tuesday.
The Justice Department alleged that Huawei Device Co Ltd and Huawei Device USA Inc committed wire fraud and obstructed justice by stealing robotic technology from T-Mobile to test smartphones’ durability.
A spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Washington said a corporate representative for Huawei would appear at the arraignment. Huawei did not immediately comment.
Separately, federal prosecutors in Brooklyn have also charged Huawei and its affiliates with bank and wire fraud on allegations that they violated sanctions against Iran. That separate 13-count indictment made public Monday. No arraignment date has been set in that case, which has added to Washington’s tensions with Beijing.
T-Mobile had accused Huawei of stealing the technology, called “Tappy,” which mimicked human fingers and was used to test smartphones. Huawei has said the two companies settled their disputes in 2017.
The charges add to pressure from the U.S. government on Huawei, the world’s biggest telecommunications equipment maker. Washington is trying to prevent American companies from buying Huawei routers and switches and pressing allies to do the same.
Court records show the two Huawei units has retained several high-profile lawyers including former Deputy Attorney General Jim Cole, a partner at Sidley Austin LLP; former Justice Department lawyer David Bitkower, a partner at Jenner & Block; former federal prosecutor Robert Westinghouse, a partner at Yarmuth LLP; and two lawyers at Steptoe & Johnson LLP.
Saturday, January 26, 2019
ROTTERDAM - As Daan Hosli’s hybrid BMW glides into downtown Rotterdam, it passes a virtual boundary into the city’s “electric-only zone” and his mobile phone trills out a reminder to switch off his combustion engine and drive on battery power.
Hosli is taking part in Electric City Drive, one in a series of projects planned by the city of Rotterdam and BMW looking to cut greenhouse gas emissions and reduce traffic pollution - without breaking the bank.
“The first results look promising,” said Arno Bonte, the city’s vice mayor, who oversees energy policies. “I hope we can extend this project as soon as possible, also to owners of cars by other brands.”
Participants have a smartphone app, developed by BMW, which monitors their engine usage and reminds them to switch, voluntarily, to electric driving when they hit a geo-fence. Costs to the city, Bonte said, are nil.
Initial results show participants are willing to use battery power exclusively while in the zone about 90 percent of the time.
The Netherlands is an outlier in Europe with relatively more hybrids than electric vehicles, 100,000 versus 40,000 - together still just a small fraction of the 8.1 million vehicles on the country’s roads.
But “if you really want to make a difference now, you have to look at hybrids,” said BMW Netherlands CEO Stefanie Wurst.
That is because, with European cities struggling to meet dual goals of improving air quality and reducing greenhouse gas emissions from cars by 30 percent by 2030, they need practical ways of making progress quickly, rather than holding out for a distant - and costly - entirely electric car future.
And it’s not proving easy. German cities are angering diesel car owners by banning high-polluting vehicles from some of their streets, while French plans for a fossil fuel surcharge set off the “yellow vests” street protests.
Even in wealthy Norway, which leads the world in electric car adoption, Oslo is introducing fees for charging and looking at ways to avoid expensive grid upgrades.
INCENTIVES
“Positive stimulation is always better than negative sanctions,” Wurst said.
She said Rotterdam program participants had responded well to small rewards, such as a discount pass for local attractions, as well as from the simple reminder to switch.
A financial incentive to run hybrids on electricity is theoretically built in, as electricity is cheaper than petrol per kilometer traveled.
Vice Mayor Bonte says Rotterdam views hybrids as a bridge to mass adoption of electric vehicles sometime in the mid 2020s as prices fall and charging infrastructure improves.
The city has granted a charging station concession to Engie, with the French company agreeing to install one public charging pole for each electric or hybrid vehicle owner that requests one - 4,000 so far, in a city of 600,000 people, though there are more in private buildings and parking garages.
But there’s a long way to go. According to EV-Volumes.com, a data provider which culls information from national registries, the number of vehicles capable of driving on electric engines across Europe grew by 33 percent in 2018, split between 181,000 plug in hybrid vehicles and 230,000 electric-only vehicles - together making up about 1.5 percent of total new car sales.
In Rotterdam, Hosli says he enjoys the challenge of trying to find charging stations and using up his electric battery as often as he can. Statistics on his app show he uses about 4 liters of petrol per 100 kilometers of travel.
“I have to drive for work, I can’t avoid that, for me this is just a fun way to do it,” said the real estate developer.
“It’s like a sport for me, to fill up with gas as little as possible.”
Breaking News - Facebook Inc Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg is planning to unify the underlying messaging infrastructure of the WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook Messenger services and incorporate end-to-end encryption into these apps, the New York Times reported on Friday.
The three services will, however, continue as stand-alone apps, the report said, citing four people involved in the effort.
Facebook said it is working on adding end-to-end encryption, which protects messages from being viewed by anyone except the participants in a conversation, to more of its messaging products, and considering ways to make it easier for users to connect across networks.
“There is a lot of discussion and debate as we begin the long process of figuring out all the details of how this will work,” a spokesperson said.
After the changes, a Facebook user, for instance, will be able send an encrypted message to someone who has only a WhatsApp account, according to the New York Times report.
Integrating the messaging services could make it harder for antitrust regulators to break up Facebook by undoing its acquisitions of WhatsApp and Instagram, said Sam Weinstein, a professor at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law.
“If Facebook is worried about that then one way it can defend itself is to integrate those services,” Weinstein said.
But Weinstein said breaking up Facebook is viewed as an “extreme remedy” by regulators, particularly in the United States, so concerns over antitrust scrutiny may not have been a factor behind the integration.
MAJOR TRADEOFFS
Some former Facebook security engineers and an outside encryption expert said the plan could be good news for user privacy, in particular by extending end-to-end encryption.
“I’m cautiously optimistic it’s a good thing,” said former Facebook Chief Security Officer Alex Stamos, who now teaches at Stanford University. “My fear was that they were going to drop end-to-end encryption.”
However, the technology does not always conceal metadata - information about who is talking to whom - sparking concern among some researchers that the data might be shared.
Any metadata integration likely will let Facebook learn more about users, linking identifiers such as phone numbers and email addresses for those using the services independently of each other.
Facebook could use that data to charge more for advertising and targeted services, although it also would have to forgo ads based on message content in Messenger and Instagram.
Other major tradeoffs will have to be made too, Stamos and others said.
Messenger allows strangers to contact people without knowing their phone numbers, for example, increasing the risk of stalking and approaches to children.
Systems based on phone numbers have additional privacy concerns, because governments and other entities can easily extract location information from them.
Stamos said he hoped Facebook would get public input from terrorism experts, child safety officers, privacy advocates and others and be transparent in its reasoning when it makes decisions on the details.
“It should be an open process, because you can’t have it all,” Stamos said.
Wednesday, January 23, 2019
LUND, Sweden - Might tree roots, twigs and branches one day be used to power cars? That’s what a Swedish researcher is hoping after developing a pulp byproduct that - on a modest scale - does just that.
Chemical engineering scientist Christian Hulteberg, from Lund University, has used the black liquor residue from pulp and paper manufacturing to create a polymer called lignin.
After purification and filtration, that is then turned into a gasoline mixture.
“We’re actually using the stuff of the wood that they don’t use when they make paper and pulp... It adds value to low-value components of the tree,” he told Reuters.
In environmental terms, he says that gives it an advantage over other biofuels such as ethanol. “A lot of the controversy with ethanol production has been the use of feedstock that you can actually eat,” he said.
Hulteberg has a pilot plant in operation and hopes the forest fuel will be available in service stations by 2021.
Though it will only serve a fraction of the demands of Swedish motorists, he is hopeful that, along with other renewable products under development, it could help wean us off our addiction to fossil fuels.
HANGZHOU, China - Gliding silently through Alibaba Group Holding Ltd’s (BABA.N) futuristic “FlyZoo” hotel, black disc-shaped robots about a meter in height deliver food and drop off fresh towels.
The robots are part of a suite of high-tech tools that Alibaba says drastically cuts the hotel’s cost of human labor and eliminates the need for guests to interact with other people.
Formally opened to the public last month, the 290-room FlyZoo is an incubator for technology Alibaba wants to sell to the hotel industry in the future and an opportunity to showcase its prowess in artificial intelligence.
It is also an experiment that tests consumer comfort levels with unmanned commerce in China - a country where intrusive data-sharing technology is readily tolerated and often met with enthusiasm.
“It’s all about the efficiency of the service and the consistency of service, because the robots are not disturbed by human moods. Sometimes, we say we are not in the mood, but the system and the robot will always be in the mood,” said Andy Wang, CEO of Alibaba Future Hotel Management, the unit that oversees the hotel project.
Inside the hotel, softly-lit white paneled walls bring to mind the interiors of Hollywood spaceships. Guests check in at podiums that scan their faces, as well as passports or other ID. Visitors with a Chinese national ID can scan their faces using their smartphones to check in ahead of time.
Elevators scan guests’ faces again to verify which floor they can access and hotel room doors are opened with another face scan.
“It’s very quick and safe. I haven’t used it for a long time yet, but basically, I can be in my room in one minute,” said guest Tracy Li. Li added that safety was one of her priorities and she was pleased her room could only be entered with a scan of her face.
In the rooms, Alibaba’s voice command technology is used to change the temperature, close the curtains, adjust the lighting and order room service.
At the hotel’s restaurant, taller capsule-shaped robots deliver food that guests have ordered via the FlyZoo app while at a separate bar, a large robotic arm can mix more than 20 different types of cocktails. Facial recognition cameras add charges to the room rate automatically.
To check out, guests press a button on the app after which the room locks and they are automatically charged through Alibaba’s online wallet. Once this is done, the guests’ facial scan data is immediately erased from Alibaba’s systems, said Wang.
CELEBRATING ‘THE EMPTY’
FlyZoo - whose name derives from a pun in Chinese for ‘it’s a must to stay here’ - is located in the city of Hangzhou, 170 km southwest of Shanghai, and is within walking distance of Alibaba’s headquarters. Room fees start from 1,390 yuan ($205) a night.
It does employ humans, though Alibaba declined to specify how many. This includes chefs and cleaners as well as reception staff, who will assist with conventional check-in procedures for guests unwilling to have their faces scanned and want to use electronic key cards.
But advanced technology involving personal data - including facial recognition - has become increasingly common in China, where regulation is minimal and the government has rolled out public surveillance projects that use biometric data.
“For Chinese consumers, there’s this real glee in having exposure to things that seem like futuristic technology developments, and then beyond that, I think there’s a much greater comfort level with data sharing,” said Mark Natkin, managing director at Beijing-based technology consulting firm, Marbridge Consulting.
Alibaba has launched other highly automated projects for book stores and grocery stores.
Though most projects are not necessarily intended to be springboards to big forays in those industries, its grocery stores called Hema have been well received and now number about 100 nationwide.
The aim of such projects is twofold - develop AI and other high-tech expertise which will propel Alibaba’s e-commerce offerings forward, as well as develop new areas of business at a time when e-commerce revenue growth rates are slowing, in part due to the U.S.-China trade war.
Alibaba intends to build some other hotels but they will primarily be used by company staff on business trips to head offices in Beijing and Shanghai.
Wang also acknowledged that FlyZoo still had plenty of issues that needed upgrading. Some of its services, for example, only worked for guests with a Chinese national ID.
But he said the initial reception from guests was encouraging.
“When they experience the robot and the voice butlers, they say ‘Wow!’. When they enter into the lobby they say ‘Wow!’,” said Wang. “It’s such a different lobby. It’s empty - but maybe it’s the kind of empty of the future.”
Tuesday, January 22, 2019
JAKARTA - Facebook Inc’s (FB.O) WhatsApp is limiting worldwide the number of times a user can forward a message to five, starting on Monday, as the popular messaging service looks to fight “misinformation and rumors”, company executives said on Monday.
Previously, a WhatsApp user could forward a message to 20 individuals or groups. The limit of five is in expansion of a measure WhatsApp put in place in India in July after the spread of rumors on social media led to killings and lynching attempts.
“We’re imposing a limit of five messages all over the world as of today,” Victoria Grand, vice president for policy and communications at WhatsApp, said at an event in the Indonesian capital.
WhatsApp, which has around 1.5 billion users, has been trying to find ways to stop misuse of the app, following global concern that the platform was being used to spread fake news, manipulated photos, videos without context, and audio hoaxes, with no way to monitor their origin or full reach.
The messaging service became part of the political battleground in Brazil’s presidential election last October, with far-right candidate Jair Bolsonaro facing claims of using the app to spread falsehoods related to his main opponent. Bolsonaro, who ended up coasting to victory, has denied the charges.
The messaging app was also used to mobilize support for a massive truckers strike in Brazil during May 2018 that blocked the country’s main roadways for about 10 days and hampered everything from fuel deliveries to gas stations to shipments of commodities at ports.
The app’s end-to-end encryption allows groups of hundreds of users to exchange texts, photos and video beyond the oversight of independent fact checkers or even the platform itself.
WhatsApp will roll out an update to activate the new forward limit, starting on Monday, WhatsApp’s head of communications Carl Woog told Reuters.
Users of devices running Google’s Android system will receive the update first, followed by users of Apple Inc’s (AAPL.O) iOS.
Monday, January 21, 2019
TLAHUELILPAN, Mexico, Jan 20 - A blast at a gasoline pipeline in Mexico that killed at least 73 people has put renewed attention on the government’s strategy to stop fuel theft, with some relatives saying fuel shortages stemming from the plan led people to risk their lives.
Fuel thieves punctured the Tula-Tuxpan pipeline a few miles from one of Mexico’s main refineries on Friday. Up to 800 people flocked to fill plastic containers from the 7-meter (23-ft) gasoline geyser that ensued, officials say. A couple of hours later, it exploded.
Half a dozen people interviewed by Reuters on Saturday said their relatives went to the leaking duct in Tlahuelilpan district in Hidalgo state because they struggled to find fuel elsewhere and were desperate to fill up cars to get to work or run their farms.
“A lot of innocent people came here, perhaps their car didn’t have enough gasoline for tomorrow, and they said I’m just going to go for a few liters,” said farmer Isidoro Velasco, 51, who was waiting for news of his nephew Mario Hidalgo, who he believed likely dead. Hidalgo turned 34 on Saturday.
Late last month, President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador launched a programme to shut down an illegal fuel distribution network that siphons off about $3 billion worth of fuel annually from state oil firm Pemex.
The plan, which involves shutting off pipelines compromised by gangs who fit valves to drain fuel, led to widespread gasoline shortages in central Mexico in January, including in Hidalgo, to the north of Mexico City.
On Saturday, most gas stations in Tlahuelilpan were closed.
SCRUTINY
Polls show the measures have until now enjoyed fairly broad public support, despite the difficulties and long lines at gas stations.
The disaster in Tlahuelilpan, however, has brought renewed scrutiny of the strategy. Lopez Obrador has faced repeated questions about the disaster, demanding he explain why soldiers deployed to guard the duct did not chase people away from the leak and how quickly supplies to the duct were cut after Pemex detected the leak.
Pemex CEO Octavio Romero on Saturday said a valve had been closed at the pipeline once a drop in pressure from the leak had been noted, but he did not say at what time that happened. Fuel spurted from the pipeline for around two hours before it exploded, with no visible loss of pressure.
Romero said about 10,000 barrels of high octane gasoline were in the section of the pipeline between the Tula refinery and the village when it blew up on Friday.
The defense ministry and Lopez Obrador said there were only 25 soldiers present and the army did not want to repress the crowd. Critics say authorities should have been firmer in controlling the crowd and sealing the area, and should have called for reinforcements.
“Part of the blame goes to the people (at the ruptured pipeline) but the bigger blame lies with authorities who let them go there knowing it was dangerous,” said Velasco.
The Tula-Tuxpan pipeline delivers fuel to other central states, raising the possibility that its closure for repairs after the explosion could worsen fuel supply problems, including in car hub Guanajuato.
Romero said the pipeline had been out of service since late December as the government tried to secure it from gangs who had hit it 10 times in Tlahuelilpan municipality. Since they began reopening it on Jan. 16 it had been hit four times he said.
In response to a question about whether cartels present in Hidalgo, which include Los Zetas and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, might have caused the disaster in revenge for the clampdown, the president said all possibilities were being investigated.
However, one federal police source in Hidalgo said he believed the hole in the duct was made by local criminals not major cartels.
Lopez Obrador said the disaster had hardened his resolve to fight fuel theft and the government was looking at ways to strengthen ageing pipelines to make it harder to illegally suck fuel from them. Meanwhile, he said, Mexico was buying more tanker trucks for road distribution.
“Even though it hurts a lot, we have to carry on with the plan, to end fuel theft,” he said. (Additional reporting and writing by Frank Jack Daniel; Editing by Janet Lawrence)
