Showing posts with label Facebook. Show all posts

Tuesday, June 25, 2019

Facebook delves into Cryptocurrency, the Libra coin plan


Cryptocurrency and Facebook logo are seen together in this photo. Photo: IC

https://youtu.be/eAPLA4oy7Ks

Experts raise concerns over privacy and regulation

Facebook unveiled plans Tuesday for a new global cryptocurrency called Libra, pledging to deliver stable virtual money that lives on smartphones and could bring over a billion "unbanked" people into the financial system.

The Libra coin plan, backed by financial and nonprofit partners, represents an ambitious new initiative for the world's biggest social network with the potential to bring crypto-money out of the shadows and into the mainstream.

Facebook and some two dozen partners released a prototype of Libra as an open source code for developers interested in weaving it into apps, services or businesses ahead of a rollout as global digital money next year.

The nonprofit Libra Association based in Geneva will oversee the blockchain-based coin, maintaining a real-world asset reserve to keep its value stable.

The Libra Association's Dante Disparte said it could offer online commerce and financial services at minimal cost to more than a billion "unbanked" people - adults without bank accounts or those who use services outside the banking system such as payday loans to make ends meet.

"We believe if you give people access to money and opportunity at the lowest cost, the way the internet itself did in the past with information, you can create a lot more stability than we have had up until now," Disparte, head of policy and communications, told AFP.

Facebook will be just one voice among many in the association, but is separately building a digital wallet called Calibra.

"We view this as a complement to Facebook's mission to connect people wherever they are; that includes allowing them to exchange value," Calibra vice president of operations Tomer Barel told AFP.

"Many people who use Facebook are in countries where there are barriers to banking or credit."

But the move raised questions about how such a new money would be regulated, with one lawmaker calling for a pause on Libra.

"Given the company's troubled past, I am requesting that Facebook agree to a moratorium on any movement forward on developing a cryptocurrency until Congress and regulators have the opportunity to examine these issues," said Maxine Waters, chair of the financial services committee in the US House of Representatives.

Meanwhile French Finance Minister Bruno le Maire said such digital money could never replace sovereign currencies.

"The aspect of sovereignty must stay in the hands of states and not private companies which respond to private interests," Le Maire told Europe 1 radio.

Bank of England Governor Mark Carney said Facebook's new currency would have to withstand scrutiny of its operational resilience and not allow itself to be used for money laundering or terror financing.

ING economists Teunis Brosens and Carlo Cocuzzo said in a research note it was not clear what Libra was or how it might be overseen while US Senator Sherrod Brown, a Democrat and banking committee member, voiced concerns over Facebook's checkered record on protecting users' privacy.

Backed by real cash

Libra Association debuted with 28 members including Mastercard, Visa, Stripe, Kiva, PayPal, Lyft, Uber and Women's World Banking.

Calibra is being built into Facebook's Messenger and WhatsApp with a goal of letting users send Libra as easily as they might fire off a text message.

Libra learned from the many other cryptocurrencies that have preceded it such as bitcoin and is designed to avoid the roller-coaster valuations that have attracted speculation and caused ruin.

Real-world currency will go into a reserve backing the digital money, the value of which will mirror stable currencies such as the US dollar and the euro, according to its creators.

"It is backed by a reserve of assets that ensures utility and low volatility," Barel said.

The Libra Association will be the only entity able to "mint or burn" the digital currency, maintaining supply in tune with demand and assets in reserve, according to Barel.

"It is not about trusting Facebook, it is effectively trust in the association's founding organizations that this is independent and democratic," Disparte said.

New directions

The launch comes with Facebook seeking to move past a series of lapses on privacy and data protection that have tarnished its image and sparked scrutiny from regulators around the world.

Chief executive Mark Zuckerberg has promised a new direction for Facebook built around smaller groups, private messaging and payments.

The new Calibra digital wallet promises eventually to give Facebook opportunities to build financial services into its offerings, offer to expand its own commerce and let more small businesses buy ads on the social network.

"We certainly see long-term value for Facebook," Barel said.

Facebook said it would not make any money through Libra or Calibra, but rather was seeking to "drive adoption and scale" before exploring ways to monetize the new system.

Financial information at Calibra will be kept strictly separate from social data on Facebook and won't be used to target ads, Calibra vice president of product Kevin Weil told AFP.

Libra will be a regulated currency, subject to local laws in markets regarding fraud, guarding against money laundering and more, Weil said.

'Watershed' moment?

According to Facebook and its partners, local currencies and Libra may be swapped at currency exchange houses or other businesses.

And the ubiquity of smartphones means digital wallets for Libra could make banking and credit card services and e-commerce available in places where they don't now exist.

Analyst and cryptocurrency investor Lou Kerner said Facebook's move has the potential to open the door for cryptocurrency to a wider public.

"What Facebook is really good at, is making things really simple to use," Kerner told AFP.

"And that's what is super exciting for the crypto industry, is somebody comes along who understands user experience and has billions of users that they can roll this out to."

Source link

Read more :

Trump critcizes bitcoin, cryptocurrencies; questions Facebook Libra

China cannot be absent from the era of global digital currency competition

Last week, Facebook released an official white paper for its cryptocurrency project Libra, a blockchain-powered stablecoin expected to arrive in 2020.

In dealing with Facebook, FTC should shun pricey settlement in favor of bigger, riskier move

Saturday, May 25, 2019

How this US-China trade war will remake the world


New world order: People visit the bund in front of Shanghai's financial district of Pudong. The US-China trade war looks like the beginning of a profound break in the global order. As China and the United form two opposing economic and geopolitical coalitions, the rest of the world will be forced to choose. - Reuters

President Donald Trump has long said the goal of his trade policy is simply to get better deals for Americans. But as the trade war intensifies, it seems increasingly likely that his policies will lead to something more: a lasting break with China and a new alignment of global power.

First, consider the evidence for the break.

The current impasse in trade talks was sparked by a sudden change in terms on the part of the Chinese negotiators.

This change likely caught the administration off guard, but Trump’s response is notable: He immediately ramped up tariffs, then announced a ban on business with Chinese telecommunications firm and national champion Huawei Technologies Co.

These actions have backed Chinese President Xi Jinping into a corner and turned the trade dispute into a matter of Chinese national pride.

This limits the possibility not only of a quick resolution, but also of the chances that the Chinese people will accept any concessions to the US.

Trump’s handling of this situation stands in sharp contrast to his negotiating strategy on other issues.

Though the president railed against NAFTA throughout his campaign, he’s touted its replacement as a huge success, even though it is only cosmetically different, and has been willing to suspend his tariffs on Canada and Mexico to ease its passage through Congress.

Likewise, Trump has been more than willing to trumpet his successful negotiations with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un even though the evidence for such success is thin.

Meanwhile, the president’s tough talk against Europe and Japan for their trade practices, and against NATO allies for their defence spending, has been mostly bluster.

When it comes to China, however, the president is doubling down.

He has encouraged US supply chains to move out of China and established subsidy programmes to cushion farmers from the effects of a protracted trade war.

Which leads to the long-term implications of this battle. A protracted trade war would almost guarantee a global realignment.

Supply chains that run through both the US and China would constantly be subject to disruptions, so global manufacturers would have to decide whether to pursue an America-centric or China-centric strategy.

That’s already the case in the digital sphere, where Chinese restrictions on the Internet divide the world into two parts: that which is served by US tech giants such as Google and Facebook, and that which relies on Chinese firms such as Baidu and WeChat.

China’s threat to cut off US access to rare-earth minerals points to a potential bifurcation in commodities markets as well.

The trend is clear: As China’s economic and geopolitical power grows, countries within China’s sphere of influence will feel increasing pressure to integrate their economies with Chinese supply chains and multinationals rather than American ones.

At the same time, as my Bloomberg Opinion colleague Tyler Cowen points out, the rise of China is a main driver of populist sentiment in the UK and Australia.

This creates political pressure in those countries for further isolation from China.

In the US, Trump has made it clear that he sees the trade war with China as politically advantageous for him, and he’s probably right.

It’s probably also true that this anti-China sentiment will outlast him.

Break in global order

Add up all these factors, and the US-China trade war looks like the beginning of a profound break in the global order. As China and the US form two opposing economic and geopolitical coalitions, the rest of the world will be forced to choose.

Maybe the European Union can form a third unaligned pole, as France and Germany’s membership in the EU (and the UK’s absence from it) provides them with the negotiating power to avoid falling under the Chinese or American sphere of influence.

Of course, in some ways this type of multipolar alignment would be a return to the past. The dual-superpower world that existed for much of the second half of the 20th century was always an exception, and the era of American supremacy that began after the collapse of the Soviet Union was never going to last.

Until recently, however, a new kind of bipolar arrangement seemed possible: a kind of competitive partnership between China and the US, with the EU playing a supporting role.

The events of the last few weeks have left that looking increasingly unlikely. — Bloomberg Opinion

By Karl W. Smith , a former assistant professor of economics at the University of North Carolina’s school of government.

Source link

Read more :

The Tech Cold War Has Begun - Bloomberg

China now has no choice but to pursue technological independence, and will burn the cash to achieve it. ... A similar process took place when ZTE Corp. was banned from buying U.S. products after reneging on a deal to settle charges of breaking trade sanctions. ... The U.S. ended up

Another Long March begins

Chinese President Xi Jinping said that "we are on a new Long March now" during his inspection tour of Jiangxi Province this week and encouraged people to gain strength from the spirit of the Long March to overcome difficulties and obstacles, China's state media outlets reported on Thursday.

Related posts:

Why does the West fail to understand China? The West misreads, China is rising, said Cambridge Prof

https://youtu.be/oiGm2E8BaC4 Martin Jacques Martin Jacques (2012) Born 1945 (age 73–74) Coventry , England, Great Britain, U.

China won't accept unequal trade deal

https://youtu.be/nzhZGUfaZhI China-U.S. trade tensions | Mideast tensions take turn for worse https://youtu.be/eQbQbvGBDaM...

The TRUTH about Trump HUAWEI BAN ! What is Huawei really guilty of ? Can't beat them, ban them, tell lies !

https://youtu.be/5zyCapbIFkg https://youtu.be/KzvvVCQJwpE https://youtu.be/KcIPbeFqFBY https://youtu.be/ZAzBTYqtgDs Tru...

华为不惧美国封杀美式霸凌失道寡助！Huawei's goodwill gesture being treated unscrupulously by the US !

https://youtu.be/hRv0QMEwdas https://youtu.be/dtT0rHgJ9-I 《今日关注》是CCTV中文国际频道播出的时事述评栏目。该栏目紧密跟踪国内外重大新闻事件，邀请国内外一流的专家和高级官员梳理新闻来龙去脉，评论新闻事...

Huawei does not need US chips: CEO on Trump export ban

Huawei Technologies CEO Ren Zhengfei says Huawei would be "fine" even if Qualcomm and other American suppliers would not sell .

Friday, March 30, 2018

Silicon Valley faces tech backlash: maybe needs to be taken down to size

Polarising content and Russian manipulation of social media are fuelling calls for greater regulation of firms like Google and FB. — 123rf.com

Demonstrators at a rally in opposition to white supremacists and the postponed right-wing "March on Google" protest of James Damore's firing that was originally planned the same day. — Bay Area News Group/TNS

Once a darling, tech hub Silicon Valley is under attack for its technologies which are damaging our lives.

ONCE upon a time, there was a beautiful land filled with bright minds and gleaming prospects.

People called it Silicon Valley, and out of it flowed knowledge, ideas and innovations that gave us almost-unthinkable powers to learn, to communicate, to transform our lives into exactly what we wanted them to be. The region’s denizens toiled happily at the cutting edge, and day by day, they were making the world a better place.

But today, this beautiful land is under attack from within and without. The products and services it sends out into the world are being called addictive, divisive and even damaging, raising the cry that instead of making the world better, they are making it worse.

As technology plays a deeper and more pervasive role in nearly every aspect of our lives, the industry that has upended everything from shopping and travel to education and human relationships is facing a backlash the likes of which Silicon Valley has never seen.

Polarising online content and Russian manipulation of social media platforms have fuelled calls from the right and the left for greater regulation of firms like Google, Facebook and Twitter. World wide web inventor Tim Berners-Lee, Republican US Senator John McCain, leftist billionaire George Soros, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff and conservative Fox News host Tucker Carlson have all joined the chorus demanding the government take action.

Terrific or terrible?

Critics argue that the big tech firms have become too economically dominant, intruded too far into our lives and have too much control over what gets seen and shared online. At the same time, critics contend, those same companies have failed to take responsibility for the misuse of their services by malevolent actors, for the spread of fake news and for the way their platforms and algorithms can be gamed.

Stanford computer science students are protesting Apple, demanding it make less addictive devices.

The #MeToo movement has amplified a debate over sexual harassment and diversity in Silicon Valley. And conservatives have attacked the whole region as a liberal echo chamber that stifles precisely the open debate it claims to embrace.

Thus the backlash.

“What makes it categorically different now is that this is the first time I have seen that people are saying, ‘Hmmm, maybe Silicon Valley needs to be taken down to size,’ said Leslie Berlin, project historian for Stanford University’s Silicon Valley Archives. “This notion that what Silicon Valley represents actually threatens rather than embodies what makes the country great, that is new.”

Berners-Lee in an open letter recently called the tech giants “a new set of gatekeepers” whose platforms can be “weaponised” to widen social rifts and interfere in elections. Benioff told CNBC in January that social media was “addictive” and should be regulated like cigarettes.

Carlson wants Google treated like a public utility because it “shuts down free speech for political reasons”.

Former president Barack Obama, at a February conference at MIT, said social media was Balkanizing public discourse, creating “entirely different realities” that contribute to “gridlock and venom and polarisation in politics”.

Even Facebook has jumped in with an unusual mea culpa, issuing a news release in February admitting it was “far too slow to recognise how bad actors were abusing our platform”.

Raking in the money

Despite its critics, Silicon Valley remains hugely successful and influential, with 21% of employed people working in tech, according to a 2017 Federal Reserve Bank report. Though the region’s economy has shown some signs of slowing, job growth in Silicon Valley has been more than double the national rate since the beginning of the economic recovery in 2010.

And the region remains home to the two most valuable public companies in the world, Apple and Google’s parent firm Alphabet, as well as world-class universities. Every day, people around the world benefit from Silicon Valley-built tools that have transformed communication, opened access to information, and made life easier.

The notion that Silicon Valley’s best days are over is far from new – people have been predicting its demise ever since the advent of the microprocessor, said Berlin.

“It was going to be the oil shocks of the 1970s that were going to take it down, and then competition from Japan, India and China, the Dot Com bust, Y2K – it’s just been one thing after another, the 2008 crash,” Berlin said. “Time and again, Silicon Valley has bounced back from these perceived threats. Silicon Valley has always been sort of the golden child of the Golden State.”

But this time, Berlin and others see something shifting.

“It is unprecedented,” UC Berkeley Haas School of Business professor Abhishek Nagaraj, said of the backlash. “I think this is because of how deeply penetrated tech is in people’s lives.”

Nagaraj, who studies the tech industry, compared the demonisation of Silicon Valley to the outcry against Wall Street after deceptive investment banking practices knocked the United States into the Great Recession.

“It appears as if, basically, tech is the new finance,” Nagaraj said.

Overwhelming force

Increasingly, the public views the tech industry as a force against which they are powerless, said San Jose State University anthropology professor Jan English-Lueck, who researches Silicon Valley’s culture.

“It’s now on people’s radar screen to be a place of the elite, where they’re changing the world in a way that ordinary people don’t have an influence on that change,” EnglishLueck said.

While the devices and social media platforms created by hugely successful Silicon Valley tech firms have given us new ways to connect, they’ve also thrown the worst of human nature into our faces, said English-Lueck.

“You don’t have to look in somebody’s eyes when you’re telling someone something ugly,” English-Lueck said. “That’s really exaggerated people’s ability to hate.”

She believes the optimistic view of technology as the great liberator and connector helped keep major tech firms from building more safeguards into their platforms to prevent vicious online attacks, dissemination of fake news and nation-state intrusions.

“Do we want free speech and free action that’s amplified by the Internet?” she said. “Sometimes we don’t want that.”

Stephen Milligan, CEO of pioneering San Jose data-storage firm Western Digital, doesn’t think technology can solve everything.

But Milligan doesn’t buy the notion that Silicon Valley has lost its bloom. The region’s companies are still trying to solve “real problems” in the world and having a positive impact on people’s lives.

“It’s still cool,” Milligan said. “I actually think it’s more cool.”

Silicon Valley boosters such as Peggy Burke, CEO of Palo Alto branding agency 1185, will tell you the technology industry can fix the problems it creates.

“You have to weigh the good and the bad, and if the bad gets so bad that it outweighs the good, someone will solve for that,” Burke said. “If there’s a problem – traffic, transportation, housing, stopping Russians, fake news – someone in the Valley right now is working on solving for that problem. I’ve been in the Valley for 30 years and I’ve seen it happen over and over.”

A reckoning for the region is likely, but it won’t be a fatal one, Berkeley’s Nagaraj said. The problems arising from technology will exacerbate the ongoing decentralisation of innovation, as boot camps bring entrepreneurial skills to new regions, and clusters of expertise – in “deep learning” artificial intelligence in Toronto, for example – lead to cooperative projects linking the Valley to other areas, he said.

“It’s going to be a much more collaborative process than one of replacement,” he said. “We are moving to a world where not all the big hits come from Silicon Valley.”

Source: By Ethan Baron – The San Jose Mercury News/Tribune News Service

Related News

Related posts:

Goodbye, Silicon Valley

Fintech - disruptive technology

Startup's components of a support system, govt incentives, market access - part 5, 6, 7

How components of a support system nurture nascent companies - part 5

The Malaysian world's top performing IFCA Software stock surges 1,300% in Kuala Lumpur!

BLOCKCHAIN beyond Bitcoin

Blockchain is beginning to enter the spotlight as organisations see uses for it over and above the cryptocurrency Bitcoin. From combating...

What is Blockchain Technology, its uses and applications?

Thursday, April 14, 2016

Facebook Brings 'Chat bots' to Messenger

SAN FRANCISCO: Facebook on Tuesday extended its reach beyond online socializing by building artificial-intelligence powered “bots” into its Messenger application to allow businesses to have software engage in lifelike text exchanges.

The move announced at the leading online social network’s annual developers conference in San Francisco came as the number of monthly users of Messenger topped 900 million and the Silicon Valley company works to stay in tune with mobile Internet lifestyles.

“We think you should be able to text message a business like you would a friend, and get a quick response,” Facebook co-founder and chief Mark Zuckerberg said as he announced that developers can build bots that could even be better than real people at natural language text conversations.

Bots are software infused with the ability to “learn” from conversations, getting better at figuring out what people are telling them and how best to respond.

The bots could help Facebook over time monetize its messaging applications and get a start on what some see as a new way of interacting with the digital world, potentially shortcutting mobile applications and sidestepping search.

“Our goal with artificial intelligence is to build systems that are better than people at perception -- seeing, hearing, language and so on,” Zuckerberg said while laying out a long-term vision for Facebook. A look at the number and types of services that titans such as Facebook, Google and Apple have rolled out in the last couple of years, it appears the companies are “trying to dominate the customers’ mobile moments,” Forrester analyst Julie Ask told AFP.

Getting smarter

Artificial intelligence is already used in Messenger to recognize faces in pictures, suggesting recipients for messages and for filtering out spam texts. “Soon, we are going to be able to do even more,” Zuckerberg said.

He promised a future in which Facebook AI would be able to understand what is in pictures, video or news articles and use insights to recommend content members of the social network might like.

Bot-building capabilities will be in a test mode with Facebook approving creations before they are released, according to vice president of messaging products David Marcus.

Some of the latest tools include one for the creation of “high-end, self-learning bots,” along with ways for them to be brought to people’s attention at Messenger, Marcus said.

“If you want to build more complex bots, you can now use our bot engine,“ Marcus told a packed audience of developers.

“You feed it samples of conversation, and it’s better over time. You can build your bot today.”

The list of partners launching Messenger bots included Business Insider, which said it will use the technology to deliver news stories to people in real-time.

“We are excited about this new offering because we know that messaging apps are exploding in popularity,” Business Insider said in a story at its website announcing the move.

Cloud computing star Salesforce planned to use the platform to help businesses have “deeper, more personalized and one-to-one customer journeys within the chat experience,” said Salesforce president and chief product officer Alex Dayon.

Bridges, not walls

Zuckerberg laid out a future for Facebook that, aside from Messenger, included ramping up live video streaming and diving into virtual reality.

“We think we are at the edge of the golden age of video,” Zuckerberg said.

Facebook opened its Live platform to allow developers to stream video content from their applications to audiences at the social network.

Zuckerberg demonstrated with a drone that flew over those seated, streaming live video to Facebook while he spoke.

Messenger and Live will be built out further in coming years, along with virtual reality technology at Facebook-owned Oculus, according to Zuckerberg.

When his daughter takes her first steps, Zuckerberg said he planned to record it in 360-degree video so family and friends can experience it in virtual reality as if they were there for the moment.

At one point, Zuckerberg’s comments took on a political tone, with the Facebook chief maintaining that the mission to connect the world is more important than ever given rhetoric about building walls and fearing those who are different.

“If the world starts to turn inward, then our community will have to work even harder to bring people together,” Zuckerberg said.

“Instead of building walls, we can build bridges,” he added, in an apparent reference to the fiery rhetoric of Donald Trump. - AFP

Pages

Share This