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Adtech scores a pandemic pause from UK privacy oversight

The coronavirus is proving to have an unexpected upside for the adtech industry. The U.K.’s data protection agency has paused an investigation into the industry’s processing of internet users’ personal data, saying targeted suspension of privacy oversight is merited because of disruption to businesses as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. The investigation into adtech […]




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How will coronavirus change the world? — Parlia launches to help you find out

“Is Greta Thunberg a hypocrite?” Google that phrase and you will get thousands of results. It just goes to show that, to a large extent, the “Q&A” model is broken on the internet. Where once Yahoo Answers and Quora were considered the bright young things of Web 2.0’s “Read/Write Web,” today there is only the […]




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Google’s Duo video chat app gets a family mode with doodles and masks

Google today launched an update to its Duo video chat app (which you definitely shouldn’t confuse with Hangouts or Google Meet, Google’s other video, audio and text chat apps). There are plenty of jokes to be made about Google’s plethora of chat options, but Duo is trying to be a bit different from Hangouts and […]




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Bangladesh starts to reopen clothing industry after lockdown

Pillar of country’s economy resumes operations despite concerns over workers’ health




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Asian film industry: parasites and viruses

Keeping cinemas open will not stop operators from falling into a sea of red ink




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Run on toilets leaves Japanese lavatory makers flush with orders

Producers overwhelmed as supply chain disruption fuels fears of shortages




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Australian companies head to stock market in biggest rush since ’09

Companies lean heavily on equity in effort to dent blow from coronavirus




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Business feels the fear in Australia-China trade dispute

Canberra’s call for an inquiry into the origins of coronavirus has provoked threats from Beijing




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Hong Kong stocks: weighed down, not locked down

The outlook looks weak for shares exposed to the local economy




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Sony chief: mobility is the next megatrend

Tech Scroll Asia, your guide to the billions made and lost in Asia tech




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Emirates-owned Dnata threatens to pull out of Australia

Catering and ground-handling company excluded from Canberra’s coronavirus support scheme




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HSBC seeks to remove management of ZenRock Trading

Banks try to limit fallout from collapse of Singapore commodities trader Hin Leong




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Oil traders/HSBC: bid adieu

The fallout for Asian banks’ exposed to the oil and trading sector has just begun




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Samsung heir touts end to family dynasty

Vice-chairman Lee Jae-yong’s claim that family will release control over tech giant met with scepticism




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Nintendo: Switch it up

Coronavirus has added months to game console’s lifespan, but not years




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Nintendo collects lockdown power-up as sales shift online

Jump in downloads helps Japanese video game group score 41% rise in profit




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HSBC accuses collapsed oil trader ZenRock of ‘suspicious’ dealings

Bank alleges collapsed Singaporean company raised money through duplicate invoices




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Hong Kong exchange chief to step down after failed LSE bid

Charles Li will not seek reappointment when contract expires in October 2021




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China’s Covid-19 QR code surveillance state

Phone-based system controls entry and exit to neighbourhoods and taxi cabs




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Tencent surveils foreign accounts to aid domestic censorship

Research finds WeChat analyses messages from users registered outside China to train its algorithms




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Saudi Arabia shows Asia focus with renewed oil price discounts

Kingdom offers crude to US at a premium but shows reluctance to lose Asian market share




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Trump’s erratic China policy undermines western unity

Washington’s stance is alarming US allies when a joint approach is needed




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UK says ‘small number’ of Turkish gowns failed PPE checks

Government clarifies report that 400,000 garments were unusable




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Ambani’s Jio extends US deal run as Vista takes $1.5bn stake

Investment in Reliance tech and telecoms division follows Facebook and Silver Lake agreements




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Uber Eats delivers, Reliance Jio, future of fashion

A collapse in global car-booking demand was offset by a surge in food delivery at Uber




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US and China say trade talks on track despite coronavirus tensions

Two sides hold call on ‘phase one’ deal in rare easing of war of words over pandemic




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Chinese stranded abroad accuse Beijing of abandoning them

Government’s travel ban due to coronavirus makes it nearly impossible for citizens to return home




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It’s the end of globalism as we know it (and I feel fine)

For the most part, its unravelling ought to be of deep concern. But we need a new social compact




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Franklin Templeton tussles with India regulator after freezing funds

US asset manager apologises following comments by company’s president over debt rules




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Fear factor threatens stocks’ Covid-19 fightback

China’s example suggests that life will not snap back to normal, strategists say




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Sergio Moro, the Brazilian ‘Judge Dread’ who brings down presidents

The taciturn lawyer’s corruption-busting career has also paved a path to power




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US and China: edging towards a new type of cold war?

Trust between the countries has deteriorated during the pandemic and is close to its lowest point since 1979




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It may be too soon to make a big move toward ‘value’ stocks

Cheaper parts of the market can lag a lot more before the current global downturn ends




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India’s lockdown puts squeeze on mango harvest

Prices fall as farmers struggle to sell fruit seen as national delicacy




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Argentina misses deadline for debt restructuring deal

Bondholders await government’s next move as fears of default intensify




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Annoushka looks to resume China growth as lockdown lifts

Founders plan for further expansion in Wuhan and beyond




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Saudi sitcom breaks taboos on homosexuality and Israel

Popular programme is sparking debate about social change during holy month of Ramadan




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Belarus holds military parade despite coronavirus risk

President Lukashenko under fire from neighbouring countries for lax approach to pandemic




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Orca Security raises $20M Series A for its multi-cloud security platform

Orca Security, an Israeli cloud security firm that focuses on giving enterprises better visibility into their multi-cloud deployments on AWS, Azure and GCP, today announced that it has raised a $20 million Series A round led by GGV Capital. YL Ventures and Silicon Valley CISO Investments also participated in this round. Together with its seed […]




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Cockroach Labs scores $86.6M Series D as scalable database resonates

Cockroach Labs, the NYC enterprise database company, announced an $86.6 million Series D funding round today. The company was in no mood to talk valuations, but was happy to have a big chunk of money to help build on its recent success and ride out the current economic malaise. Altimeter Capital and Bond co-led the […]




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Sinch acquires SAP’s Digital Interconnect messaging business for $250M

M&A activity has generally slowed down in the weeks since the novel coronavirus took a grip on the world, but there have been some pockets of activity in the tech industry when the price is right or when the divestment/acquisition just makes sense. The world of messaging brings us the latest development in that theme: SAP, […]




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Sleuth raises $3M Seed to bring order to continuous deployment

Sleuth, an early stage startup from three former Atlassian employees, wants to bring some much-needed order to the continuous delivery process. Today, the company announced it has raised a $3 million seed round. ​CRV led the round with participation from angel investors from New Relic, Atlassian and LaunchDarkly. “Sleuth is a deployment tracker built to […]




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Run:AI brings virtualization to GPUs running Kubernetes workloads

In the early 2000s, VMware introduced the world to virtual servers that allowed IT to make more efficient use of idle server capacity. Today, Run:AI is introducing that same concept to GPUs running containerized machine learning projects on Kubernetes. This should enable data science teams to have access to more resources than they would normally […]




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GitHub gets a built-in IDE with Codespaces, discussion forums and more

Under different circumstances, GitHub would be hosting its Satellite conference in Paris this week. Like so many other events, GitHub decided to switch Satellite to a virtual event, but that isn’t stopping the Microsoft-owned company from announcing quite a bit of news this week. The highlight of GitHub’s announcement is surely the launch of GitHub […]




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Microsoft to open first data center in New Zealand as cloud usage grows

In spite of being in the midst of a pandemic sowing economic uncertainty, one area that continues to thrive is cloud computing. Perhaps that explains why Microsoft, which saw Azure grow 59% in its most recent earnings report, announced plans to open a new data center in New Zealand once it receives approval from the […]




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Confluent introduces scale on demand for Apache Kafka cloud customers

We find ourselves in a time when certain businesses are being asked to scale to levels they never imagined. Sometimes that increased usage comes in bursts, which means you don’t want to pay for permanent extra capacity you might not always need. Today, Confluent introduced a new scale-on-demand feature for its Apache Kafka cloud service […]




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Equinix just recorded its 69th straight positive quarter

There’s something to be said for consistency through good times and bad, and one company that has had a staggeringly consistent track record is international data center vendor, Equinix. It just recorded its 69th straight positive quarter, according to the company. That’s an astonishing record, and covers over 17 years of positive returns. That means […]




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Enterprise companies find MLOps critical for reliability and performance

Machine learning ops focuses on the ML model and datasets, as opposed to code. Data engineers run MLOps, but it’s likely that the specialized role of MLOps engineer will come about soon.




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Dtex, a specialist in insider threat cybersecurity, raises $17.5M

A lot of enterprise cybersecurity efforts focus on malicious hackers that work on behalf of larger organizations, be they criminal groups or state actors — and for good reason, since the majority of incidents these days come from phishing and other malicious techniques that originate outside the enterprise itself. But there has also been a […]




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Box makes quick decision to add new collaboration capabilities in face of pandemic

When the shutdown began six weeks ago, the powers that be at Box sat down for a meeting to discuss the situation. They weren’t in the same room of course. They were like everyone else, separated by the virus, but they saw this as a key moment for Box as a company. They had been […]