Author: Ben Debski

India eschews coal emissions targets

Posted on by Ben Debski
Indian Power Minister Piyush Goyal has shrugged off criticisms of his country's failure to meet energy targets, suggesting blame lies with western economies
Indian Power Minister Piyush Goyal has shrugged off criticisms of his country’s failure to meet energy targets, suggesting blame lies with western economies

It is looking increasingly unlikely that India will be able to kick its long-standing coal dependence and fulfil its commitments to emissions deadlines. While global markets have seen a broad-based shift away from the heavily polluting energy source, India’s power production remains dominated by coal and it still makes up 63 percent of the country’s electricity generation.

Two years ago, concern over the magnitude of emissions being produced by the country’s power plants prompted the Indian Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change to introduce stricter standards regarding carbon dioxide, sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxide production in coal plants. The deadline for completion of the targets is approaching in December. However, according to Indian Minister for Power Piyush Goyal, the prospect of hitting this deadline is no longer on the cards. “We don’t have enough domestic capacity to meet this requirement in such a short period”, he said in an interview with the Financial Times.  

India’s power production remains dominated by coal and it still makes up 63 percent of the country’s electricity generation

This admission comes just a week after a paper published by journal Earth’s Future concluded that plans currently underway to build 370 new coal-fired in India are on track to substantially undermine the country’s Paris Agreement pledge. India’s climate targets, which have already been criticised for not being sufficiently stringent, include a pledge to reduce the overall emissions intensity by 33 to 35 percent by 2030. However, if the proposed coal-fired plants are built, according to the paper, the resultant emissions will make this target unreachable. The paper predicted that the planned plants would increase coal-generating capacity by 123 percent, an amount that would lead to energy production outstripping demand when taken in conjunction with India’s parallel target to produce at least 40 percent of its power from non-fossil sources. While it is not clear that all of the planned projects will be completed, the analysis presents an alarming verdict of the nation’s commitment to emissions targets.

According to the report: “The current proposals for new coal-fired plants could therefore either ‘strand’ fossil energy assets (i.e. force them to retire early or else operate at very low capacity factors) and/or ensure that the goal is not met by ‘locking-out’ new, low-carbon energy infrastructure.”

As it stands, India is the third-largest emitter of greenhouse gases. The carbon intensity of its coal power production, coupled with its vast population and fast-industrialising economy, makes its adherence to targets a profound concern for global emissions levels. Despite this, Goyal has deflected responsibility: “India is not a polluter. It’s America and the western world that has to first stop polluting…India is doing its bit far more than we are responsible”, he said.

Facebook to tackle organised misinformation campaigns

Posted on by Ben Debski
Fake news is a growing problem, particularly during political campaigns
Fake news is a growing problem, particularly during political campaigns

On April 27, social media giant Facebook released a landmark report on its fight against misinformation, in which it said governments and other organisations were leading well funded and highly organised efforts to influence public opinion and make political gains. Facebook said such “information campaigns” encompassed both the circulation and promotion of “false news, disinformation, or networks of fake accounts aimed at manipulating public opinion”.

In addition to the findings, the company is developing a two-part plan to crack down on the fake accounts used to drive such efforts. The first step involves identifying them using machine learning techniques that, according to Reuters, are as sophisticated as the methods used by government intelligence agencies. Facebook’s security teams then review and delete the errant profiles if necessary.

The problem is most pronounced in areas where there is an unfolding political contest

“While information operations have a long history, social media platforms can serve as a new tool of collection and dissemination for these activities”, Facebook said in the report. “Through the adept use of social media, information operators may attempt to distort public discourse, recruit supporters and financiers, or affect political or military outcomes.”

The scale of the problem is somewhat limited across the service as a whole. In the period between September and December 2016, less than 0.1 percent of interactions on the site were such information operations, Facebook said. However the problem becomes more pronounced in areas where there is an unfolding political contest. For example, in a security note on April 12, Facebook announced it had recently cracked down on 30,000 accounts linked to information campaigns in France.

The new report is important for Facebook in terms of retaining user confidence, which has been a particular headache since the 2016 US presidential election. The site’s algorithms and moderators act as a filter between all the information posted to the site and the information that appears on users’ news feeds. Many people began to see this as a problem last year when they claimed it caused an ‘echo chamber’ effect, which saw users only encountering news and opinions that aligned with their own views. Consequently, many called for Facebook to redefine itself as a ‘media service’, rather than just an internet company. The new report is a major step in the company’s efforts to avoid doing this.

“Societies will only be able to resist external information operations if all citizens have the necessary media literacy to distinguish true news from misinformation”, the report said, suggesting the company remains unwilling to shoulder the entire responsibility of moderating content. It has already announced plans to flag-up news stories it deems legitimate, and has plans to invest in education initiatives such as the News Integrity Coalition to teach people to be more discerning online in future.

US regulators plan to loosen net neutrality

Posted on by Ben Debski

April 26 saw Ajit Pai, the new Chairman of the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC), announce plans to scrap Title II net neutrality laws that were introduced in 2015 under President Obama. Pai called the existing rules “heavy handed”, and promised to implement looser, “light-touch regulation”. The FCC will vote on the proposals on May 18; Pai hopes to have them implemented by the end of the year.

Since 2015, ISPs such as AT&T, Comcast and Verizon have been classified as ‘common carriers’ by the US Government. This means that they fall under Title II of the Telecommunications Act, and are subject to tight regulations. Pai’s proposals would have the FCC reclassify ISPs as ‘information providers’, meaning that they would fall under Title I of the act. He also wants to prevent the FCC from adapting net neutrality rules to encompass services that ISPs have not yet introduced.

Pai’s proposals will make it much easier for ISPs to influence what users see online

“Nothing about the internet was broken in 2015”, said Pai. “Throughout the discussion that is to come, you will hear from the other side that Title II regulation is the only way to preserve a free and open internet. This is a lie.”

Pai’s proposals will make it much easier for ISPs to influence what users see online. They hope to overturn existing rules, which dictate that ISPs cannot block or throttle access to websites or offer ‘fast-lanes’ that see websites pay a fee for their sites to run quicker.

The new proposals will reopen the debate around net neutrality that swept the US just two years ago. In 2015, opinions were polarised between ISPs, which liked the idea of fewer regulations, and other interest groups, including websites such as Google, which did not.

Comcast welcomed Pai’s move, saying that a lighter approach could spur innovation and make broadband investment decisions much easier. Between 2014 and 2016, the US’ 12 biggest ISPs cut their spending on network construction by 5.6 percent, which cost between 75,000 and 100,000 jobs, Pai said.

In response to the announcement, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the internet, said that Pai’s plan would see the FCC “step back and allow concentrated market players to pick winners and losers online”. He added: “Their talk is all about getting more people connected, but what is the point if your ISP only lets you watch the movies they choose, just like the old days of cable?”

Each band of the Telecoms Act incorporates a wide spectrum of different regulations. For example, under the current rules, the FCC does not apply conventional utility restrictions like pricing regulations to ISPs, despite applying them to other Title II services. As such, even if Pai does manage to reclassify ISPs under Title I, he will still have to fight hard to minimise the government’s presence in the market. Therefore, the degree to which ISPs will ultimately have to be ‘neutral’ will be determined by the strength of the FCC’s opponents over the coming months.

EU votes to extend geoblocking ban to Spotify and iTunes

Posted on by Ben Debski

On April 25, the EU’s Internal Market Committee voted to ban a practice called geoblocking, which sees online retailers offer different services to people in different regions. In a departure from prior proposals, the new ban extends to copyright-protected services, including music streaming and e-book sites such as Spotify and iTunes. The Committee’s vote allows the European Parliament to commence final negotiations with member states before the practice can be outlawed.

Geoblocking currently sees many online companies either charge customers different prices depending on where they live, or block services to customers who live in certain geographical areas. It tends to be undertaken by providers of copyright-protected content such as music, software, games and e-books. This is because different countries’ copyright laws cause the business costs of providing such services to vary geographically.

“What we want is simple: to end discrimination in the single market based on people’s nationality, residence or temporary location”, said Roza Thun, the MEP leading the charge on the new legislation. Thun subsequently described the Committee’s vote as “a small step forward but a step in the right direction”.

Firms with worries about profitability were opposed to the vote because it makes it easier for customers to get around the present pricing system

The new measures have caused controversy, partly because they overturn prior EU proposals on geoblocking. In May 2016, the European Commission blocked a proposal by Andrus Ansip, Vice-President of EU Digital Policy, who wanted to extend geoblocking bans to music services. The new vote seems like a U-turn in this regard, and makes the old ruling seem like a false promise.

Firms with worries about profitability were also opposed to the vote because it makes it easier for customers to get around the present pricing system. For example, under the new law, an iTunes customer living in a country with higher subscription fees would be allowed to buy a cheap subscription from another country with lower subscription fees. Last year’s decision to overrule Ansip was taken largely because industry lobbyists managed to persuade EU lawmakers that geoblocking is necessary to keep digital music providers profitable.

“To make it compulsory for all booksellers to sell e-books cross-border is a complete disaster”, said Fran Dubruille, Director of the European and International Booksellers Federation. “They will just withdraw from the market because they don’t want to go bankrupt.”

For such retailers, one alternative to withdrawing from the EU marketplace is the introduction of sprawling price hikes in countries where services are currently cheap. Although this would prevent customers in countries with higher prices from buying subscriptions in cheaper member states, it would also cause firms to lose customers in the cheaper countries.

The proposed law might still falter in negotiations between the EU Parliament and member states. Generally, member states are opposed to banning geoblocking among providers of copyright-protected services. Moreover, industry lobbyists are likely to increase their pressure on EU Parliament members and member states alike, in the hope of repeating last year’s turnaround.

That said, there also remains strong resistance in Brussels to the idea of a staggered, multi-tiered EU that would see different rules for different countries. The latest vote is a step away from this and towards a single online marketplace. In the present context, many EU legislators may be unwilling to give this up easily.

World’s first vaccine for malaria to be introduced in 2018

Posted on by Ben Debski

The world’s first vaccine against malaria will enter large-scale public trials in 2018, marking a significant milestone in efforts to protect people from the mosquito-borne parasite. While the vaccine, called RTS,S, has proven reasonably effective in previous trials, it still has to prove its effectiveness in a real-world environment.

As reported by the BBC, the World Health Organisation (WHO) will implement trails in Kenya, Ghana and Malawi of 750,000 children aged between five and 17 months. WHO Regional Director for Africa Dr Matshidiso Moeti said the trail is great news for the region: “Information gathered in the pilot programme will help us make decisions on the wider use of this vaccine. Combined with existing malaria interventions, such a vaccine would have the potential to save tens of thousands of lives in Africa.”

Earlier trials have shown the vaccine prevents four in ten cases of malaria, which is a lower rate than vaccines for other conditions

Despite the plan to go ahead with the trial, questions still surround the vaccine’s effectiveness. Earlier trials have shown the vaccine prevents approximately four in 10 cases of malaria, which is a much lower rate than vaccines for other conditions have achieved before reaching trials of this size. As reported by the Financial Times, an earlier trail of RTS,S saw close to a doubling in the death rate of baby girls. WHO researchers cautioned that initial trials were not designed to answer this question, but next years’ will provide more clarity.

Another challenge is the practicalities that surround administering RTS,S on a large scale. The vaccine requires four doses before it is effective; once every month for three months, and then another dose 18 months later. While feasible in small and well-funded trials, deploying it in locations with limited access to healthcare will be a challenge.

Despite this, the vaccine still has the potential to save a significant number of lives. Every year there are 212 million new cases of malaria diagnosed and approximately 429,000 deaths, with children in Africa being the worst affected.

Toshiba to be split into four entities

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April 24 saw embattled Japanese tech giant Toshiba announce plans to split its four in-house companies into wholly-owned subsidiaries. The major reshuffle will take place from July, and will see the company’s nuclear power unit be combined with its energy business. The news follows the collapse of Toshiba’s Westinghouse nuclear arm in March, after which the company said that its future is in “substantial doubt”. Toshiba’s shares rose slightly following the news, yet remained 26.5 percent lower than they were at the start of the year.

The breakup will occur in two stages. First, in July, Toshiba will split into three subsidiaries, with its infrastructure business being spun-off and absorbed by Toshiba Electric Service Corporation. Meanwhile, its electronic devices business will be transferred into a newly established company, and its IT business will be merged into Toshiba Solutions Corporation. The second stage will then commence in October, with Toshiba’s nuclear unit being split off and absorbed by Toshiba Energy Systems & Solutions to create a new joint entity.

“After the company splits, Toshiba Group will further enhance collaboration between the split-off companies, and, at the same time, aim to maximise the value of each business”, the company said. “In addition, it will establish an optimised structure for ensuring business continuity in respect of maintaining special construction business licenses required to do business in Japan.”

With the important parts of the company being extracted from the parent, the 144-year-old Toshiba will become far less grandiose

It is crucial for Toshiba to be able to continue doing business on home turf, where it is currently pushing several big construction projects that hinge on capital and shareholder equity requirements. Prominent examples include a $177m solar plant in Fukushima prefecture that Toshiba is building with Sumitomo Corporation. Such projects could form part of a broader stabilisation process rooted in Japan, where Toshiba already helps to maintain and supply dozens of nuclear reactors.

“After executing the splits, Toshiba Corporate will also concentrate on maximising the group’s value and strengthening its governance system”, the company said.

Boosting governance will be a useful means to consolidate the recovery process, and remains particularly important in light of the 2015 accounting scandal that still clouds the company’s reputation. That said, with the Westinghouse debacle casting renewed doubt on Toshiba’s governance structures, it may be harder to win back trust with promises of reform this time around.

With the important parts of the company being extracted from the parent, the 144-year-old Toshiba will become far less grandiose. The spin-offs are a necessary price to pay in maintaining the company as a going concern, yet are still difficult to swallow for Toshiba’s owners, admirers and the 20,000 workers that the measures will affect.

UK achieves first coal-free day since the Industrial Revolution

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For the first time in over 130 years, the UK has gone a full day without using coal power. From around 11pm on April 20 to midnight on April 21, the nation’s electricity demand was met through other sources, including wind, solar, nuclear and gas.

“To have the first working day without coal since the start of the Industrial Revolution is a watershed moment in how our energy system is changing”, said Cordi O’Hara, Director of the UK System Operator at the National Grid.

While coal has been a cornerstone of the UK’s energy production since the early 1880s, its usage has fallen in recent years. In 2015, the polluting fuel accounted for 23 percent of the nation’s energy creation, but this figure had fallen to just nine percent by 2016.

A combination of a low demand for electricity and a large amount of wind helped to create the nation’s landmark coal-free day

In an effort to cut carbon emissions in line with the Paris Agreement on climate change, the UK Government has pledged to phase out coal from its energy system over the next decade. At present, the UK has nine coal-burning plants, and the last of these is due to close in 2025. Many of the nation’s coal plants have already been closed or have been switched to biomass burning plants in a bid to reduce carbon emissions.

According to National Grid officials, a combination of a low demand for electricity and a large amount of wind helped to create the nation’s landmark coal-free day. Such zero-coal periods are becoming increasingly common in the UK, with the National Grid previously recording an impressive 19-hour coal-free spell in May 2016.

Green energy campaigners welcomed the achievement as a watershed moment in energy transition, anticipating more coal-free days to come as solar and wind power become further ingrained into the UK’s energy system.

“A decade ago, a day without coal would have been unimaginable, and in 10 years’ time our energy system will have radially transformed again”, said Hannah Martin, the Head of Energy and Climate at Greenpeace UK.

The zero-coal day may well be a sign of things to come as the UK shifts away from fossil fuels and increasingly integrates renewable alternatives into its energy mix. Indeed, in 2016, the UK generated more electricity from its wind farms than from its coal power plants, suggesting that renewable energies are on track to overtake fossil fuels in the not-too-distant future.

Amazon actualises Australian ambitions

Posted on by Ben Debski

Amazon has announced that it is on its way down under, with the US e-commerce giant continuing its march into international markets with the launch of an Australian retail site.

Amazon has held a limited presence in Australia since 2012, when it began selling cloud internet services. In 2013 it opened its Kindle e-book store, and at the end of 2016 the company made its Prime Video service available. Despite these offerings, until now the company has not made its full retail marketplace available in the country.

“We are excited to bring thousands of new jobs to Australia, millions of dollars in additional investment, and to empower small Australian businesses through Amazon Marketplace”, Amazon said in a statement.

Following Amazon’s announcement, the share prices of a number of Australia’s largest retailers fell

Speculation on Amazon’s retail launch in Australia has been running rampant for months after the company advertised openings for over 100 jobs at the beginning of the year. According to Business Insider, Amazon is still deciding between Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne as the location of its first fulfilment centre in the country. Following Amazon’s announcement, the share prices of a number of Australia’s largest retailers fell.

Australia will be Amazon’s fourth marketplace in the Asia-Pacific region, after China, Japan and India, and its twelfth globally. As reported by Reuters, Australia’s retail market is ripe for Amazon’s picking. Only seven percent of purchases in Australia were made online, as opposed to figures of over 10 percent in the US, UK and Germany. According to a recent Nielsen poll, 56 percent of Australians aged over 18 said they would buy products from the service.

Amazon has a stunning record of successfully breaking into new markets and toppling established local businesses. In India, where Amazon has been aggressively expanding since its launch in 2013, local leader Flipkart has been swiftly losing market share.

According to Quartz India, over the last year Amazon has posted a 46 percent increase in app engagement, while Flipkart has posted an 11.5 percent decline. In terms of time spent in-app, Flipkart has seen numbers decrease by 42.6 percent and only maintains a narrow lead in terms of the mobile app market.

Mastercard unveils biometric payment card

Posted on by Ben Debski

On April 20, Mastercard launched a new type of payment card, which has an in-built fingerprint scanner. The announcement follows two successful trials in South Africa with employees of supermarket chain Pick n Pay and Absa Bank, a subsidiary of Barclays Africa. A full nationwide roll-out is expected by the end of the year, with Europe and Asia-Pacific trials scheduled for the coming months as well.

The new cards, which are the same shape and size as their predecessors, combine chip-and-pin technology with a fingerprint reader to remember the holder’s identity. The cards’ EMV chip can store up to two fingerprints in an encrypted digital template, both of which have to be taken from the same person. The cards are compatible with existing chip-and-pin terminals worldwide, meaning vendors do not have to buy new hardware.

“Biometric capability will mean added convenience and enhanced security for our customers,” said Richard van Rensburg, deputy CEO of Pick n Pay. “The technology creates a platform on which we can further our strategy of personalising the shopping experience in a meaningful way.  We have been extremely impressed with the robust and secure nature of the technology.”

The new cards combine chip-and-pin technology with a fingerprint reader to remember the holder’s identity

Such biometric safeguards are generally more secure than keyed passwords like PINs, which can easily be stolen, spied on or phished. That said, fingerprint readers can also be fooled with the right techniques. For example, a German security firm recently got around the locking features of Samsung Galaxy S8 and iPhone devices by lifting a fingerprint from an impression on glass and recreating it in a glue mould.

The introduction of biometric controls to a time-honoured, offline device is a breath of fresh air in the payment technology sector, which is increasingly turning towards mobile phones and online platforms as a means of innovation. Since Apple launched its Pay service in December 2015, many others have followed suit.

Mastercard itself has been rolling out biometric security measures for some time. In October 2016 it launched a mobile application that allows online payments to be made with selfies and fingerprint scans, taking advantage of the latest facial recognition software and touch-based hardware on smartphones.

While biometric security will probably be the future of payment technology, classic measures like security codes and signatures are likely to endure for some time. For example, PINs will still be necessary at cashpoints that swallow cards whole and are therefore incompatible with a card that needs constant physical contact with the user. Consequently, the introduction of biometric security to payment cards is likely to unfold in a similar way to contactless payment systems, which have generally been welcomed warmly by users whose security-related qualms died down relatively quickly.

India’s march to mobile is about to get dumb

Posted on by Ben Debski

In recent years, India’s mobile phone market has been phenomenally successful. Since 2001, the number of cellular subscriptions in the country has ballooned to about 160 times its original size. Infrastructure development has been a major reason for this upsurge. In 1990, only half the population had access to electricity, yet today it is available (in some form) to almost everyone. Contracts have also become more accessible thanks to private sector competition between such companies as Vodafone and BSNL. In fact, there are four times more operators in India than in most other countries. “Jio’s recent market entry has driven prices down further, after already being some of the cheapest worldwide”, said Gabriel Solomon of the UK Telecommunications Academy.

As India’s march to mobile continues, smartphones will no longer lead the way. Instead, the country is about to be hit by a wave of ‘dumbphones’. Otherwise known as ‘feature phones’, these mobiles can make calls, send texts and offer basic web access, yet generally lack touchscreens, gyroscopes and other fancy attachments. For example, the Micromax Bharat 1 comes with a 2.4in screen, two-megapixel camera, 4G connectivity and old-school buttons. According to telecoms research group Counterpoint, global sales of 4G dumb phones are set to explode by 5,300 percent this year, with half of that growth being driven by India. These new models will bring decent internet services to more people than ever before.

Get dumb, dummy
There are four reasons dumbphones are set to grow more than smartphones in the coming years. The most important is price. The Micromax retails at about $31, while another popular dumbphone, the Lava Connect M1, costs $51. These are rock-bottom prices compared to Apple’s cheapest offering in India, which starts at about $450.

For people to move from dumbphones to smartphones, the Indian middle class will have to grow and infrastructure will have to improve dramatically

“There are around 650 million unique mobile subscribers in India, and almost half have smartphones. If we assume that the more affluent strata of Indian society already have smartphones, then the less affluent may not be able to afford them”, explained Solomon.

Physical environments are also important. Dumbphones are generally more durable than smartphones, which is a plus-point in India, where 70 percent of the population lives in rural areas with heightened risks of splashing and smashing. Moreover, even if dumb phones do break, repairs are both easy and unlikely to be penalised by manufacturers. By contrast, Apple disabled many iPhones last year because they had been repaired by unofficial technicians.

Batteries are the third key factor putting dumbphones ahead. Given the choice between a power-hungry smartphone and a dumbphone with 30 days’ battery life, the latter is the obvious option for most people in rural areas. This is because electricity services in India are still lacking. While widespread electrification has occurred since the 90s, coverage remains thinly spread. For example, a whole village counts as ‘electrified’ even if it only has basic hardware and the majority of electrified households miss out on at least six hours’ power per day. Consequently, while electrical devices are now available to most of the rural population, they realistically need much longer battery lives than juice-guzzling smartphones.

“Another factor in India is the availability of locally relevant content”, explained Sameer Gupta of telecoms research group Analysys Mason. “Regional preferences play an important role in determining the consumption of online content in various parts of the country. Online content, including both video and non-video, for example news, is mainly available in English. But English is only spoken by about 15 to 20 percent of the population. Local languages need to be spoken by websites, but generally this is not available.” Such barriers also apply to apps, which effectively means that one of the key selling points of smartphones is rendered useless.

“In rural areas, digital literacy is likely to be less than in urban areas, which would dampen the individual business case for buying a smartphone and constrain the potential interest of feature phone users to migrate to smartphones”, Solomon added. Consequently, the iPhone is likely to remain an aspirational premium product that few people in the countryside will own until the above obstacles have been overcome.

Peaceful coexistence
This will not be as bad for smartphones as it sounds. Dumbphones are not necessarily their rivals, but are instead serving a market that smartphones cannot access. Better yet, they can be a stepping-stone for people that are making a long-term transition toward smartphones. The only problem is that this process will take a long time. For people to move from dumbphones to smartphones, the middle class will have to grow and infrastructure will have to improve dramatically. This will all hinge on the success or failure of the Indian economy, which is beyond the influence of any smartphone company. As such, the likes of Apple may now be inclined to simply consolidate their existing base of affluent customers by launching new and improved products every year.

In the meantime, dumbphones remain the embodiment of real innovation and will continue to do a lot of social good for those who cannot afford more sophisticated devices. While it is a shame that smartphones are out of reach for many Indians, it is encouraging to see that realistic alternatives are being offered. Dumbphones bring the power of the internet to more back pockets than ever before. This means more opportunities for small businesses to tap into local networks, as well as more avenues for children to get an education, more ways for people to organise themselves through social media, and more chances to access a world of information that might previously have been out of reach. Dumbphones are not perfect but they are a step in the right direction, giving people a fighting chance to achieve social mobility.

Baidu launches Apollo self-driving platform

Posted on by Ben Debski

On April 18, Chinese search engine Baidu launched a new project called Apollo, an open platform that will be used to develop self-driving technology in collaboration with other companies. Apollo includes a vehicle platform, software platform and cloud data services.

The project will make Baidu’s existing technologies, such as source code for obstacle perception, trajectory planning and vehicle control, available to other firms. The company hopes to introduce self-driving cars to some urban streets in July, before a more extensive roll-out on motorways and open city roads in 2020.

“Baidu aims to build a collaborative ecosystem, utilising its strengths in artificial intelligence technology to promote the development and popularisation of autonomous driving technology”, the company said.

“AI has great potential to drive social development, and one of AI’s biggest opportunities is intelligent vehicles”, added COO Qi Lu.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Baidu is in talks to collaborate with several US, German and Chinese automakers, yet declined to name them. On April 19, German engineering company Bosch announced a partnership with Baidu, NavInfo and AutoNavi, with a view to developing self-driving technologies in China. It would seem that the collaboration is part of the Apollo project, yet neither Bosch nor Baidu has explicitly confirmed that they would be working together on the platform.

Collaboration will make it easier to navigate heavy Chinese regulations

There are many incentives for both Baidu and others to come together on a centralised platform like Apollo. First, it will help smaller firms to overcome the many obstacles that exist in the research and development process for self-driving cars. For example, on Apollo, complex infrastructure like artificial intelligence has already been partly developed, meaning each firm can specialise in the areas it is best at. As such, Apollo will speed up the innovation process, which will help Baidu to achieve its ambitious goals of a quick roll-out.

Collaboration will also make it easier to navigate heavy Chinese regulations. Self-driving cars require accurate maps, yet the Chinese Government is particularly sensitive about releasing this kind of information. Consequently, the partnership between Bosch and Baidu will focus on using Bosch’s radar and video sensors to update existing maps and create new ones.

Finally, by working together, industry competitors will be able to mount a viable challenge to the likes of Google and Tesla, which already have sophisticated self-driving technologies. The Chinese market is particularly appealing to companies developing self-driving technologies, since Chinese consumers also tend to be more interested than others in adopting self-driving cars.

Facebook uses F8 conference to unveil its augmented future

Posted on by Ben Debski

Augmented reality will be the next big thing for Facebook, CEO Mark Zuckerberg declared at the Facebook F8 developer conference this week. The company plans to introduce a number of 3D effects into cameras within the company’s suite of apps as part of its initial push towards making augmented reality mainstream, with even bigger plans for the future.

Speaking at the conference, Zuckerberg said augmented reality would be the next platform for computing, and Facebook is in an optimum position to bring it to the public. The first of Facebook’s projects will be the inclusion of 3D text and image overlays within the Facebook in-app camera. Demos showed at the conference included 3D words emerging from a breakfast table, and a 2D image of an office appearing to fill with water. As well as engaging users, the effects also offer potential to advertisers who could develop branded versions. The platform will also be open to developers outside of Facebook.

You want to watch TV? You don’t need a physical hardware TV, you buy a one-dollar app ‘TV’ and put it on the wall

The feature is similar to filters, which were pioneered by Snapchat, the current leader in augmented reality camera apps. Zuckerberg admitted Facebook has been slow to develop its own solutions, but said the company is now in the best position to push the technology forward.

The company’s plans for the future are even more ambitious. In an interview with Recode, Zuckerberg confirmed Facebook is working on augmented reality hardware, and it is looking to gradually replace physical goods with digital ones. “You want to watch TV? You don’t need a physical hardware TV, you buy a one-dollar app ‘TV’ and put it on the wall”, he explained.

Facebook has also released its social virtual reality app Facebook Spaces on the Oculus Rift, allowing users to meet and interact in a digital space. In 2014, Facebook paid $2bn for virtual reality start-up Oculus VR to accelerate its virtual reality ambitions.

However, Facebook has also been forced to answer questions surrounding its technology after a murder was planned and shared by a user on the service. The incident prompted a manhunt in the US, and many questioned Facebook’s moderation of the videos it hosts. As reported by The Verge, Zuckerberg apologised at F8 to the families involved, and said the company will work to prevent tragedies like this from happening again.