Communications Minister Mitch Fifield has broken out the number of FttN premises ready for service, providing a temporary level of increased transparency into the NBN rollout numbers that usually lump fibre to the node (FttN), fibre to the basement (FttB), and fibre to the premise (FttP) technologies into a single total. With the number of ready for service FttN premises overtaking the number of brownfields FttP premises […]
Petrochemicals companies led Gulf stock markets higher on Thursday in response to OPEC’s first agreement on output cuts to prop up oil prices since 2008 – a deal that could allow governments to ease austerity policies slightly. Expectations for the deal had already boosted oil and Gulf bourses on Wednesday, but the agreement included bigger production cuts than many analysts had expected, lifting oil prices higher on […]
Wells Fargo has changed its boardroom rules to require the roles of chief executive and chairman be kept separate, adding to pressure on other US banks to end the contentious practice of combining the top jobs. The bank, which has been in the spotlight for months over sales malpractice in its branches, had prised apart the two positions when John Stumpf quit suddenly in October. He was […]
Workday reported solid third quarter financial results Thursday after the bell. The Software-as-a-Service provider reported a net loss of $110 million, or 57 cents per share. Non-GAAP earnings were three cents per share on revenue of $409.6 million, up 34.2 percent annually. Wall Street was expecting a loss of four cents per share on a revenue of $400 million. “We had a strong third quarter and saw […]
Tomaso Poggio, a professor of brain and cognitive sciences at MIT and director of the Center for Brains, Minds, and Machines, has long thought that the brain must produce “invariant” representations of faces and other objects, meaning representations that are indifferent to objects’ orientation in space, their distance from the viewer, or their location in the visual field. Credit: Massachusetts Institute of Technology MIT researchers and their […]
Tax compliance gets easier for companies, but new data highlights post-filing challenges across the world JOHANNESBURG, South Africa, December 1, 2016/ Economies around the world continue to make progress in simplifying and reducing the burden of tax compliance on business, according to the latest edition of Paying Taxes 2017, a report by the World Bank Group and PwC (www.PWC.com ). Released today, the report finds that the Total […]
Photo Tiger Woods watched his tee shot on the third hole on Thursday at the Hero World Challenge in the Bahamas. Credit Lynne Sladky/Associated Press NASSAU, the Bahamas — As he made his way to the first tee for his first competitive shot in 466 days, Tiger Woods breezed right by the Golf Channel reporter Notah Begay, his former Stanford teammate and good friend. His focus before […]
NEW YORK A sharp decline in technology stocks pulled both the Nasdaq and the S&P 500 indexes into the red on Thursday, while gains in bank and energy shares helped push the Dow to a record high close. Based on the latest available data, the Dow Jones industrial average .DJI was up 68.49 points, or 0.36 percent, to 19,192.07, the S&P 500 .SPX had lost 7.72 points, […]
In recent years, computers have gotten remarkably good at recognizing speech and images: Think of the dictation software on most cellphones, or the algorithms that automatically identify people in photos posted to Facebook. But recognition of natural sounds has lagged behind. That’s because most automated recognition systems, whether they process audio or visual information, are the result of machine learning, in which computers search for patterns in […]
Apple’s new MacBook Pro lineup adds something unique: a Touch Bar atop the keyboard that I believe is an important evolution of the laptop user experience. The first time I saw and played with the Touch Bar, the macros of yore popped into my mind. MacBook power users all know the value of creating macros to speed up a particular business process we may use […]
President-elect Donald Trump has spoken with more than 40 foreign leaders since he won the Nov. 8 election, but his transition team has provided few details about what is discussed in those conversations. That has left plenty of room for the foreign leaders to offer their interpretations of these phonecalls, ranging from the discreet to the effusive. The latest example came Wednesday, with the Pakistani government issued […]
When it comes to very large numbers, it can be hard to get the right perspective. If you had to count it, a €40bn pile of cash would be somewhat daunting. Place it next to to the Italian national debt, however, and the pile becomes a pimple. The number matters because it was the amount the government proposed using to assist troubled financial institutions earlier this year. […]
Saudi Arabia’s aviation agency was attacked last month by an aggressive computer virus intended to disrupt high-profile government targets, officials and experts said on Thursday. The attack, which experts say emanated from outside the country, used a version of Shamoon, malware used to target the Saudi energy sector four years ago. Similar kinds of data-clearing software were used in 2014 against the Las Vegas Sands and Sony. […]
Probability matrices in MMSBM. Credit: Antonia Godoy-Lorite et al. PNAS doi:10.1073/pnas.1606316113 The internet is rife with recommendation systems, suggesting movies you should watch or people you should date. These systems are tuned to match people with items, based on the assumption that similar people buy similar things and have similar preferences. In other words, an algorithm predicts which items you will like based only on your, and […]
Image: Getty Images/iStockphoto Neural networks, machine-learning systems, predictive analytics, speech recognition, natural-language understanding and other components of what’s broadly defined as ‘artificial intelligence’ (AI) are currently undergoing a boom: research is progressing apace, media attention is at an all-time high, and organisations are increasingly implementing AI solutions in pursuit of automation-driven efficiencies. The first thing to establish is what we’re not talking about, which is human-level AI […]
Kuwait’s Emir reappointed Prime Minister Sheikh Jaber al-Mubarak al-Sabah on Wednesday, state news agency KUNA said, days after a parliamentary election seen as a rejection of austerity measures brought on by low oil prices. Opposition candidates are estimated to have won around 20 seats out of 50 in the Kuwaiti elections on Saturday that saw most parliament members replaced. The results of Saturday’s vote are likely to […]
Now the hard work begins. The supply agreement agreed by Opec on Wednesday sent oil prices soaring above $50 a barrel but there are many reasons for caution, not least in making sure no one cheats and producers from outside the cartel also contribute. While the deal looks straightforward, it is anything but and the devil is in the detail. The conference documents released on Wednesday evening […]
The Congress party’s official Twitter account was apparently hacked Thursday morning, a day after its vice president Rahul Gandhi’s feed erupted with abusive tweets following a similar breach. “Congress can kiss our ass” one tweet from @INCIndia read. Another promised a “full dump” of Congress emails in what it described would be a “Christmas special.” On Wednesday night, a series of tweets from @OfficeofRG ridiculed Mr. Gandhi and […]
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A computer model has been developed to predict the onset, duration, and magnitude of influenza outbreaks for New York City boroughs and neighborhoods. They found the model effective in a test using data from 2008-2013. (via WSJ)
The month that stunned investors with Donald Trump’s US election victory was a record-breaker in markets. The prospect of big tax cuts and fiscal spending from the incoming administration has stirred the market’s animal spirits, driving Wall Street into record territory, while bond prices have been hit hard by expectations of higher inflation. Here is how November played out in numbers: 13 — The dollar index — […]
In a wide-ranging interview, Steve Ballmer this week was asked to explain what went wrong with Microsoft’s smartphone business. He pointed to skepticism over iPhone carrier subsidies, but I have another idea. As someone who was burned by the iPhone, I know why Microsoft screwed up. Since I was unable to secure any hands-on time with the iPhone prior to its release, I based the […]
That correspondent had never stepped foot in the camp. I hadn’t expected to either, until I was invited on an extensive tour of the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and was asked to choose a subject to write about, for a book to be published next year. With no previous experience in the region, and little knowledge, I gravitated instinctually to Shuafat camp. From my own […]
The Indian Parliament’s canteen–where Prime Minister Narendra Modi was photographed digging into a vegetarian lunch last year–now boasts a card machine to help lawmakers pay for their meals in the midst of a cash crunch. The move comes after parliamentarians said they faced problems settling their bills in the canteen following the government’s action last month to replace large currency bills to curb corruption. The canteen serves […]
