AUTOMOTIVE
Ford, VW call off appearance
Ford Motor Co and Volkswagen AG (VW) on Monday called off a joint appearance at the Detroit auto show set for yesterday during which they were widely expected to announce an alliance. The two car giants have been in discussions over a partnership to develop self-driving and electric technologies. However, a source close to the talks said that they had so far only produced a deal over commercial vehicles. “We don’t have enough details yet to go out in front of more than 500 journalists, so we decided to call it off,” Ford spokesman Mark Truby told reporters on a conference call.
AUTOMOTIVE
Tesla dares hackers
Tesla Inc is offering cybersecurity researchers the chance to walk away with an electric Model 3 sedan if they can hack into the car and find vulnerabilities. Trend Micro Inc’s spring competition, Pwn2Own Vancouver, invites security researchers to expose flaws in Web browsers and corporate software. For the first time this year, the competition has added an automotive category, featuring Tesla’s latest car. Tesla, which can ship updates to customers via over-the-air software upgrades, launched a “bug bounty” program in 2014 to reward researchers who uncover and report flaws.
CRYPTOCURRENCIES
Tool signals ‘sell’ for ether
While cryptocurrencies began the week swinging between gains and losses, the outlook might not be too optimistic for some of the biggest digital assets. A tool used by technical analysts called the GTI VERA Convergence Divergence Indicator, which detects trend reversals, is flashing a “sell” signal for ether, with the longest buying trend since October ending for the third-biggest digital currency. The shift could foreshadow a negative turn for bitcoin, which is close to a trend reversal as well. Ether slipped as much as 9.5 percent to US$113.49 in New York, the fifth decline in six trading days, before moving higher.
TECHNOLOGY
Bytedance to take on WeChat
Bytedance Ltd (北京字節跳動科技), the world’s most valuable start-up, unveiled a new video-based messaging service designed to take on Tencent Holdings Ltd’s (騰訊) dominant WeChat. Bytedance launched the new service, named Duoshan (多閃), during a live-streamed event in Beijing yesterday. Similar to Snapchat, the app lets users send short-lived videos, GIFs and images to each other. Bytedance is putting pressure on WeChat, which has more than 1 billion users and is considered a must-have in China. Tencent has used the popularity of WeChat to underpin its other businesses, including its gaming operations. In a move that will likely boost its popularity in time for Lunar New Year next month, Duoshan would facilitate the exchange of red packets — digital payments that have become a new-age tradition among Chinese.
UNITED STATES
Web gambling illegal: DOJ
The Department of Justice (DOJ) has said federal law bars all Internet gambling, reversing its position from 2011 that only sports betting is prohibited under a law passed 50 years earlier. The reversal was prompted by the department’s criminal division, which prosecutes illegal gambling. The opinion issued about seven years ago that the 1961 Wire Act only banned sports gambling was a misinterpretation of the statute, according to a 23-page opinion by the department’s Office of Legal Counsel dated on Nov. 2 and made public on Monday.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
The consumer price index (CPI) last month eased to 1.95 percent, below the central bank’s 2 percent target, as food and entertainment cost increases decelerated, helped by stable egg prices, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. The slowdown bucked predictions by policymakers and academics that inflationary pressures would build up following double-digit electricity rate hikes on April 1. “The latest CPI data came after the cost of eating out and rent grew moderately amid mixed international raw material prices,” DGBAS official Tsao Chih-hung (曹志弘) told a news conference in Taipei. The central bank in March raised interest rates by