Hong Kong leader setting up communication platform to help end protest

Current Affairs
Hong Kong's embattled leader Carrie Lam on Tuesday said she hoped "calm" will prevail after a massive weekend march passed without clashes between police and demonstrators, but again refused to give ground to protester demands.
Hundreds of thousands of people marched through the heart of the city on Sunday in a show of peaceful protest after escalating street battles with police drew stark warnings from Beijing and threatened to undermine public support.
"On Sunday, many Hong Kong residents participated in a rally at Victoria Park that was largely peaceful," Chief Executive Carrie Lam said at a televised press conference."I wholeheartedly hope that this is the beginning of society returning to calm and staying away from violence." The protests began against a proposed extradition law to China but morphed into a pro-democracy movement sparking the city's biggest political crisis in decades.
They have been fuelled by anger over alleged police brutality, with tear gas and rubber bullets deployed against protesters. Lam reported 174 complaints have been made against police since protests began.
She said they would be "robustly" investigated by the Independent Police Complaints Council, whose head is appointed by the chief executive. However, the probe is unlikely to satisfy protesters who have called for an independent inquiry by an external body.In addition to universal suffrage and cancelling the extradition bill, protesters also demand the release of those detained during clashes.

 Lam, pilloried by press and protesters for failing to step down while the city plunges into crisis, said her government would continue a "fact-finding mission" on how to move forward from the demonstrations...Read More

Tesla's Elon Musk promises driverless 'robo taxis' by the end of next year

Company News

Elon Musk, Tesla’s chief executive, has made plenty of bold predictions. They don’t always come true.

On Monday, Musk said the company was on the cusp of making cars that could drive themselves safely on any road. He also promised that the company would begin operating a fleet of driverless “robo taxis” by the end of next year.

“I’m very convinced,” Musk said in a presentation to analysts at the company’s headquarters in Palo Alto, Calif. “In the future, people will want to outlaw people driving their own cars because they’ll be unsafe” compared with autonomous vehicles. Many auto executives and analysts think Musk is being wildly optimistic and say cars that can drive themselves at all times are at least several years away. “The idea that you can have a vehicle that can make complex decisions for full self-driving is just not plausible at this point,” said Mike Ramsey, a Gartner analyst.

If Ramsey is correct, it wouldn’t be the first time Musk has gotten ahead of himself. The chief executive once forecast that Tesla would make 500,000 cars in 2018, but it produced half that many. Last summer, he said Tesla would make 10,000 Model 3 sedans a week — about twice the number currently coming off the assembly line. Musk had also promised a Model 3 for $35,000, which spurred tens of thousands of people to put down $1,000 deposits long before production had started. Tesla recently began making that car, but customers can order it only on the telephone or by visiting a store, not online, the way most customers prefer to buy its cars.


 In the presentation on Monday, Musk and other executives described the technologies that the company is developing to allow cars to drive themselves, building on the Autopilot system that it has offered for several years. He said Tesla had developed “the world’s fastest computer” for use in self-driving cars, able to conduct 144 trillion operations per second.

'Huge fail': Twitter CEO says not done enough to protect victims of abuse

Companies News:

Twitter Inc Chief Executive Jack Dorsey said that Silicon Valley companies, including his own, have not done enough to protect victims of online abuse, calling it a "huge fail."

Interviewed via Twitter by Kara Swisher, co-founder of the tech news site Recode, Dorsey tweeted that he would give himself a 'C' grade for what Swisher termed "tech responsibility."
"We've made progress, but it has been scattered and not felt enough," he tweeted in response to Swisher's questions. "Changing the experience hasn't been meaningful enough. And we've put most of the burden on the victims of abuse (that's a huge fail)."

Twitter, along with online social media network Facebook Inc, has faced criticism for abusive posts, fake users and inaccurate news stories on its service. The company has been investing heavily to improve what Dorsey has described as the "collective health" of Twitter.

Dorsey said he does not like how Twitter tends to incentivise outrage, short-term thinking, echo chambers, and fragmented conversations, and that the lack of diversity in the company has not helped in combating such problems.

He said Twitter's work against "automations and coordinated campaigns," along with its collaboration with various government agencies, has left it in a better position to combat the threat of misinformation for the 2020 U.S. presidential elections.


 U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that Russia used social media during the 2016 U.S. elections to sway voters. Moscow denies that charge.

Apple plans to cut back on hiring after selling fewer iPhones than expected

Companies News:

Apple Inc. will cut back on hiring for some divisions after selling fewer iPhones than expected and missing its revenue forecast for the holiday quarter, according to people familiar with the matter.

Tim Cook, Apple’s chief executive officer, made the disclosure to employees earlier this month in a meeting the day after he penned a letter to investors about the company’s recent struggles, particularly in China. During the meeting, Cook was asked if the company would impose a hiring freeze in response. He said he didn’t believe that was the solution. Instead, Cook said some divisions would reduce hiring, according to the people, who asked not to be identified discussing private matters.

ALSO READ: US Court denies Apple's $440-mn appeal against VirnetX in patent case

Cook said he is yet to fully determine which divisions would cut back on hiring, but said that key groups such as Apple’s artificial intelligence team would continue to add new employees at a strong pace. He also emphasized that a division’s importance to Apple’s future isn’t measured by hiring rates...Read More