Ever wondered what your data is worth? The deluge of websites, apps, social media companies, data brokers, and ad tech firms track users online and offline, whose data, according to Apple,makes up for a $227 billion-a-year industry! Apple's growing interest in user privacy is irking Facebook. Apple’s feud with Facebook took a ugly turn this week as the company’s chiefs trade barbs over each other’s strategies. While Tim Cook pushed for privacy on their devices, Zuckerberg blamed Apple for using their dominant platform position to “interfere” with how other apps work. But, Apple doesn’t look like it will be pulling any punches. The Cupertino giant reported a record revenue from last quarter, which puts the company in a dominant position going forward. Know more about it in this week’s top news brought to you by Analytics India Magazine.
Intel Outside!
According to reports, Intel has spared $475 million for its Vietnam division. Intel has long kept most production in-house but has struggled to maintain its technological edge, including with the delay of its 7-nanometer chips. Vietnam is slowly becoming the hot spot for chip makers; Samsung Electronics and Pegatron have ditched China for Vietnam. For Intel, the Vietnamese division makes 10th-generation core processors. "As of the end of 2020, Intel Products Vietnam has shipped more than 2 billion units to customers worldwide," said general manager Kim Huat Ooi. This news comes amidst major strategy changes at Intel, which has recently announced a new CEO along with the outsourcing of its chip manufacturing to TSMC.
Apple Reports Record Growth
On Wednesday, Apple announced that it had posted all-time record revenue of $111.4 billion, up 21 percent year over year, and quarterly earnings per diluted share of $1.68, up 35 percent. International sales accounted for 64 percent of the quarter’s revenue. “This quarter for Apple wouldn’t have been possible without the tireless and innovative work of every Apple team member worldwide,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO.
It’s the first time Apple crossed the symbolic $100 billion mark in a single quarter. iPhone revenue alone was $65.6 billion which is up 17% year over year. iPhone’s record sales can also be attributed to the launch of their 5G phones. Apart from their flagship phones, Apple also saw record revenue from wearables too(~$12.97 billion).
Also Read: Apple’s New Chip Can Do Machine Learning Like Never Before
Wall Street Frets
You short, we squeeze has been the motto of a popular investment community on Reddit, known by the name The WallStreetBets. The members of this Reddit group defied conventional market strategies by raising the share value of a relatively obscure company called GameStop. When it was learnt that the hedge fund company Melvin Capital was betting on GameStop’s demise, the furious Redditors feathered their cap and decided to revive the company. GameStop started the year at $18.84 per share and at one point traded $483, up almost 2,500%.
People made millions overnight while the hedge fund houses ran for cover. The so called elite of Wall Street who have invested decades researching market risks, cried foul and demanded for fairer and more ethical practices. The bull run was halted temporarily when the popular investment app Robinhood--which was the predominantly used platform-- turned its back on its users. Robinhood on Friday cited “extraordinary market conditions” as the reason behind their decision.
Ironically, Robinhood app, which brought investment to the masses, went against its core principle of democratisation, by blocking the retail traders from making their moves with Gamestop. This drew serious criticism from all corners and the company is now potentially looking at lawsuits alleging market manipulation in order to save the hedge funds. However, Robinhood was relieved of this stress as it managed to raise $1 billion in cash to tackle the surge in demands. While few declared to delete the app, others showed their dissent by flooding the Google Play Store with negative reviews. Google has thrown in its helping hand by deleting 100,000 of these reviews. The whole wall street mania last week, poses a tricky challenge to the algorithmic forecasters who investigate market patterns for profits. Even the fintech services might have to revisit their terms and conditions.
DRDO To Offer Machine Learning Courses
Defence Research and Development Organization (DRDO) has recently announced two online courses on AI & ML and a certification course on cybersecurity. These two courses would be organised by the Defence Institute of Advanced Technology (DIAT), a deemed university and an autonomous organisation funded by the Defence PSU. Both of these programmes are 12-weeks long, which would consist of two-hour sessions for five days a week.
Biggest Cyber Threat Thwarted
A major malware attack was foiled thanks to a worldwide collaborative effort. One of most significant botnets of the past decade: EMOTET’s infrastructure was taken control of in an international coordinated action. EMOTET was first discovered as a banking Trojan in 2014, the malware evolved into the go-to solution for cybercriminals over the years. EMOTET’s infrastructure was used to issue unauthorised access to the computers, which was then sold to other top-level criminal groups to deploy further illicit activities such data theft and extortion through ransomware.
According to Europol, the malware comes in contact with victims’ computers via infected email attachments containing word documents. “All these emails contained malicious Word documents, either attached to the email itself or downloadable by clicking on a link within the email itself. Once a user opened one of these documents, they could be prompted to “enable macros” so that the malicious code hidden in the Word file could run and install EMOTET malware on a victim’s computer,” read the statement by Europol.
This collaborative effort to take down EMOTET was undertaken by the authorities in the Netherlands, Germany, the United States, the UK, France, Lithuania, Canada and Ukraine, with international activity coordinated by Europol and Eurojust.
Researchers Introduce “Liquid” Machine-Learning
MIT researchers have developed a type of neural network dubbed “liquid” networks, which are flexible enough to change their underlying equations to continuously adapt to new data inputs. According to the researchers, these networks can assist in decision making based on data streams that change over time, including those involved in medical diagnosis and autonomous driving. The experimental results show that the algorithms edged out other state-of-the-art time series algorithms in accurately predicting future values in datasets, ranging from atmospheric chemistry to traffic patterns. The research will be presented at February’s AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence.
World Economic Forum Calls For Global AI Alliance
At the ongoing virtual summit at Davos, the World Economic Forum launched the Global AI Action Alliance, a new multi-stakeholder collaboration platform and project incubator designed to accelerate the adoption of inclusive, trusted and transparent AI globally and across industry sectors. The alliance’s objective is to bring together more than 100 leading companies, governments, international organizations, non-profits, and academics united in their commitment to maximizing the societal benefits to everyone including groups historically underserved by AI.
“The alliance provides a platform for members to engage in real-time learning, pilot new approaches to ethical AI, scale adoption of best practices, and undertake collective action to ensure that AI’s benefits are shared by all,” said the forum’s AI team. This alliance is overseen by a Steering Committee of top global leaders from industry, government, academia and civil society and co-chaired by Arvind Krishna, Chairman and CEO of IBM, and Vilas Dhar, President of the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation.
- Tech Mahindra Partners With SpaceXSI to Bring AI Into Software Engineering
- Infosys AI Revenue Rises 29% in Q2, FY27 Growth Guidance Cut
- LTM Launches BlueVerse Industrial AI Lab in Chennai
- Chariot Launches Speech Recognition Model for 10 Indian Languages
- Meta Expects Up To $145 Billion In Capex As AI Investments Expand
- Cyient's Technology Order Intake Rises 39.7% as It Expands AI Capabilities