The Ministry of Finance said yesterday that uniform invoice lottery drawings were fair and transparent after a local magazine reported that TV broadcasts of the drawings were pre-recorded.
The latest issue of the Chinese-language Next Magazine said yesterday that the winning numbers were drawn before it was broadcast on TV and that the manual drawing devices were outdated, using numbered balls in different sizes.
The ministry said the drawings were pre-recorded to ensure the TV program would run “smoothly,” adding that “the process is absolutely open, fair and transparent,” and “cannot be questioned.”
“Each drawing is supervised by representatives from the General Chamber of Commerce (全國商業總會), the National Federation of Industries (全國工業總會), the Chinese National Association of Industry and Commerce (工商協進會) and local tax offices,” the ministry said in a statement.
Uniform invoices are a form of standardized receipts issued by registered businesses in the country. They also serve as lottery tickets with bi-monthly draws run by the government, with a grand prize of up to NT$2 million (US$62,400).
Asked about the credibility of lottery draws in pre-recorded videos, Minister of Finance Lee Sush-der (李述德) said: “The point is not whether the process was a live broadcast, but whether it was fair or not.”
Next Magazine said the manual drawing devices were so outdated that sometimes the numbered balls got stuck or took a long time to drop, and criticized the ministry for failing to update the equipment.
Lain Kuen-yown (連坤耀), deputy head of the ministry’s printing house, told reporters that the drawing machines, which have been in use for more than 20 years, were still in good condition, adding that they are only used six times a year.
Lain said the ministry needed to assess the cost of changing the drawing machines to see if it was worthwhile to replace them.
He said a review report would be released before the next draw on Sept. 25.
“We need to know if there’s still anyone who can make such drawing machines. If it is going to cost millions of dollars, is it worth it? If the machines can’t be counterfeited, do we still need to replace them?” Lain said.
The ministry has commissioned the recording of the lottery draws to a local communications company, with the one-year contract expiring in November.
Asked about rumors that the communications company was a dummy firm, Lain said: “I haven’t heard anything about this until today.”
“We will look into the background of the company,” he said, adding that the ministry only commissions qualified and legitimate companies to do the recording.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to