The HCM City People’s Court has dismissed a suit by the Dutch-based ride-hailing company Uber International Services Holding B.V against the city tax department seeking remedy against a claim for back taxes.

VNExpress electronic newspaper reported the court said Uber Vietnam, a subsidiary of Uber International, “does not have the required legal status for such a case”.

In September, the department ordered Uber to pay VND66.68 billion (US$2.94 million) in tax arrears and penalties for tax evasion by December 23. But the company only paid up VNĐ13.3 billion ($586,000).

The department then asked five local banks to appropriate more than VND53.38 billion ($2.35 million) from Uber’s accounts by January 10.

Uber then filed the lawsuit against the department.

On December 29, the department received a notice from the court to put on hold its appropriation from Uber.

Now that the case has been dismissed, the tax authorities will proceed to collect the amount.

Minister of Transport Nguyen Van The said Vietnam should learn from the European Union (EU) to manage the operation of companies such as Uber and Grab to ensure fair competition for traditional taxi firms.

At a conference of the General Directorate for Road of Vietnam on Tuesday, The said the management of Uber and Grab remained controversial worldwide.

However, in December, the EU’s top court ruled that Uber should be classified as a transport service and regulated like other taxi operators despite Uber’s argument that it was simply a digital app acting as an intermediary between drivers and passengers.

“We should learn from the EU to manage this service,” The said, urging relevant management authorities to raise proposals to manage Uber and Grab following the established regulations and ensure a healthy competition environment.

HCM City Taxi Association recently proposed that the transport ministry regulate Uber and Grab as taxi operators.

The association also suggested that Uber and Grab be banned from using foreign capital sources to offer promotions aimed in getting a share of the taxi industry, and then reporting losses to avoid paying taxes.

In a related move, taxi firm Anh Duong Việt Nam Company (Vinasun) sent a document to the Ministry of Transport proposing that Grab and Uber should also be regulated as taxi operators.

Reuters reported that Uber has transformed the taxi industry since its launch in 2011 and currently operates in more than 600 cities globally.

The boom in Uber and Grab cars in major cities, including Hanoi and HCM City, during the past three years has pushed many taxi firms into difficulties.

 The insurance company is currently conducting demonstrations and aims to put the system into use in fiscal 2018.

Nonlife insurance companies already use drones to assess damage from earthquakes, but it is thought that globally, satellites and AI have rarely been used to survey flood damage.

Currently, insurance inspectors visit all policyholders in flood-hit areas. Policyholders sometimes wait more than a month for payments if a large number of homes are subject to assessment.

Tokio Marine expects to save a significant amount of time on assessments by using a satellite. The firm has been conducting demonstrations aimed at practical implementation since July 2017. The tests are being done in cooperation with U.S. startup Orbital Insight, which analyzes satellite images via AI, and other organizations.

The research team is using data from various disasters, including the heavy rains that hit the Kanto and Tohoku regions in 2015, to examine the accuracy of the AI in terms of it deeming policyholders who were actually paid as eligible for payment. The team is still compiling the final results of the study, but the AI is thought to have an accuracy rate of 90 percent.

Assessments in large areas hit by massive flooding require substantial amounts of time and manpower. Tokio Marine aims to use its satellite to quickly and smoothly pay insurance claims to policyholders affected by such disasters.

The Internet Association — a group which includes Google, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft, among others — announced it would support legal efforts to block the rollback voted last month by the Federal Communications Commission.

The association gave no specifics but suggested it would seek to intervene in lawsuits expected by several attorneys general, including from Washington and New York states.

Internet Association president Michael Beckerman said the FCC action voted December 14 “defies the will of a bipartisan majority of Americans and fails to preserve a free and open internet.”

He said the association “intends to act as an intervenor in judicial action against this order and, along with our member companies, will continue our push to restore strong, enforceable net neutrality protections through a legislative solution.”

Last month’s vote capped a heated partisan debate and is just the latest twist in a battle over more than a decade on rules governing internet service providers.

FCC chairman Ajit Pai, who pushed the latest effort, has argued that the neutrality rule enacted in 2015 served to stifle investment and innovation in a fast-evolving sector.

But net neutrality backers have argued that clear rules are needed to prevent internet service providers from blocking or throttling services or websites for competitive reasons, and that the rollback would increase the power of a few dominant providers to control what users see online.

Lawsuits could not be filed until the FCC’s order was published, which occurred this week. Some lawmakers have also begun efforts to invalidate the FCC’s action.

The battle over net neutrality has raged for over a decade in the FCC and the courts, with both sides contending they represent “internet freedom.”

The 2015 net neutrality rules were backed by then-president Barack Obama and endorsed by a 3-2 Democratic majority at the time. But the election of President Donald Trump reversed the FCC party majority and it quickly reversed course.

Scalp cooling for reducing chemotherapy hair loss

Newly diagnosed cancer patients have a lot to process. For women, the inevitable loss of hair is often one of the hardest. There is a new technology making its way to the US that is looking to eliminate this problem from some patients’ lists of worries.

The practice of “scalp cooling” – which works by reducing the temperature of the scalp a few degrees immediately before, during and after chemotherapy  –  has been shown to be highly effective for preserving hair in women receiving chemotherapy for early-stage breast cancer. United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the system in May last year.

JAMA, the medical journal of the American Medical Association, in February last year published two studies — one from the University of California, San Francisco, and one from Baylor College of Medicine in Houston — confirmed that women with early-stage breast cancer who underwent scalp-cooling treatments were significantly more likely to keep at least some of their hair throughout chemotherapy.

Dr Hope S Rugo, the director of breast oncology and clinical trials education at the UCSF Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center and lead investigator of one of the studies, told the New York Times, “We have this huge growing population of breast cancer survivors, and many of them are very traumatized by their treatment. We’re working on all sorts of areas to try to limit that impact, and one is scalp cooling”.

Speech-to-Speech translation (S2S)

Speech Translation is the process by which conversational spoken phrases are instantly translated and spoken aloud in a second language. This will allow natural language processing features to be built into apps. Imagine discussing important matters across the globe with just a tap, in multiple languages without the aid of a translator or a mediator.

Researchers at Microsoft in 2012 have made software that can learn the sound of human voice, and then use it to speak a language that you don’t. The system could be used to make language tutoring software more personal, or to make tools for travelers.

Microsoft research scientist Frank Soong in a demonstration at Microsoft’s Redmond, Washington campus in 2012 showed how his software could read out text in Spanish using the voice of his boss, Rick Rashid, who leads Microsoft’s research efforts. In a second demonstration, Soong used his software to grant Craig Mundie, Microsoft’s chief research and strategy officer, the ability to speak Mandarin.

According to Chris Wendt of Microsoft/Skype, SR, MT, and Text-to-Speech (TTS) by themselves are not enough to make a translated conversation work. Because clean input is necessary for translation, elements of spontaneous language — hesitations, repetitions, corrections, etc — must be cleaned between automatic SR and MT.

For this purpose, Microsoft has built a function called TrueText to turn what you said into what you wanted to say. Because it’s trained on real-world data, it works best on the most common mistakes, Wendt says.

In a report published earlier in 2017, the Translation Automation User Society (TAUS) recognises this Speech-to-Speech (S2S) technology as the paradox the technology currently finds itself in.

Leap motion

Leap Motion, Inc is an American company that manufactures and markets a computer hardware sensor device that supports hand and finger motions as input, analogous to a mouse, but requires no hand contact or touching.

The Leap Motion controller is a small USB peripheral device which is designed to be placed on a physical desktop, facing upward. It can also be mounted onto a virtual reality headset.

Leap Motion presents an entirely new way to interact with your computers. For the first time, you can control a computer in three dimensions with your natural hand and finger movements.

The technology for Leap Motion was first developed in 2008. Following an initial angel investment, David Holz and his childhood friend Michael Buckwald founded the company in 2010 while Holz was studying for a PhD in mathematics.

The company in June 2011 raised a $1.3M seed financing round with investments from venture capital firms Andreessen Horowitz, Founders Fund, and SOSV, as well as several angel investors.

Later in February 2016, Leap Motion released new software, called Orion, designed for hand tracking in VR (virtual reality).

Electrovibration Technology

Electrovibration Technology is not a touch screen. It’s a feel screen! Little motors embedded in smartphones and tablets vibrate to apply the haptic feedback that adds sensation to typing on a virtual keyboard. More than a year ago a company called Senseg demoed an alternative using an electrostatic field, and not a vibrating motor, to create tactile feedback.

Electrovibration technology will change the mobile touchscreen experience dramatically and you will be able to feel different kinds of texture in the coming years.

In 1950, Edward Mallinckrodt, a researcher at Washington University in St Louis, accidentally discovered the phenomenon of electrovibration (also known as electrostatic vibration). He noticed that a brass electric light socket had a different texture when a light was burning than it did when the light was turned off. Along with a team of researchers, he began exploring the phenomenon in more detail by running experiments using an aluminum plate with insulating varnish.

Over a half-century after Mallinckrodt’s discovery, a collaborative team of researchers from Carnegie Mellon University and Disney Research developed an algorithm for rendering 3D textures onto a touch screen using electrovibration. Nicknamed TeslaTouch, the system modifies the frequency and amplitude of an alternating voltage applied to an electrode beneath a touchscreen.

By changing this voltage, TeslaTouch allows a software interface on a tablet computer to provide real-time haptic feedback by modifying the perceived friction of different parts of the screen. As the user swipes, taps, pinches, and manipulates objects on a touchscreen, the software can generate tactile effects that mimic the bumps, ridges, and textures of the surfaces of different objects.

Driverless vehicles

A visitor looks at a self-driving car by Google at the Viva Technology event in Paris, France, June 30, 2016. Photo: Reuters

A driverless car is a robotic vehicle that is designed to travel between destinations without a human operator. It is also sometimes called as a self-driving car, an automated car or an autonomous vehicle.

The dream of a self-driving automobile goes as far back as the middle-ages, centuries prior to the invention of the car. The evidence for this comes from a sketching by Leonardo De Vinci that was meant to be a rough blueprint for a self-propelled cart.

It was around the early part of the 20th century that a real concerted effort to develop a driverless car that actually worked started to take shape, beginning with the Houdina Radio Control Company’s first public demonstration of a driverless car in 1925.

The first self-sufficient and truly autonomous cars appeared in the 1980s, with Carnegie Mellon University’s Navlab and ALV projects in 1984 and Mercedes-Benz and Bundeswehr University Munich’s Eureka Prometheus Project in 1987.

Since then, numerous major companies and research organisations have developed working prototype autonomous vehicles including Mercedes-Benz, General Motors, Continental Automotive Systems, Autoliv Inc, Bosch, Nissan, Toyota, Audi, Volvo, Vislab from University of Parma, Oxford University and Google.

Cybersecurity researchers called for computer systems to urgently install updates a day after the release of details of the so-called Spectre and Meltdown vulnerabilities affecting the chips powering most modern PCs and many mobile devices.

Researchers on Wednesday published details of the flaw, which unlike many other vulnerabilities stems from the chip itself and how it safeguards private data stored on computers and networks.

The researchers at Google showed how a hacker could exploit the flaw to get passwords, encryption codes and more, even though there have been no reports of any attacks using the vulnerability.

“The full extent of this class of attack is still under investigation and we are working with security researchers and other browser vendors to fully understand the threat and fixes,” said Mozilla researcher Luke Wagner in a blog post.

The revelations “attack the foundational modern computer building block capability that enforces protection of the (operating system),” said Steve Grobman, chief technology officer at security firm McAfee.

“Businesses and consumers should update operating systems and apply patches as soon as they become available.”

– Intel updates –

Computer chipmaking giant Intel — the focus of the first reports on the flaw — said the company and its partners “have made significant progress in deploying updates” to mitigate any threats.

“Intel expects to have issued updates for more than 90 percent of processor products introduced within the past five years,” an Intel statement said.

“In addition, many operating system vendors, public cloud service providers, device manufacturers and others have indicated that they have already updated their products and services.”

But John Bambenek, a Fidelis security researcher who works with the SANS Internet Storm Center, warned that it may be too soon to know the extent of the problem.

“This bug is probably worth its name and logo considering the pervasive nature of the vulnerability,” Bambenek said in a blog post.

“Contrary to some initial reporting, this is NOT just an Intel bug, it affects AMD and ARM processors as well. These could even be used in cloud… environments to leak memory outside the running virtual machine.”

In a web page dedicated to the vulnerability, security researchers said Meltdown and Spectre may “get hold of secrets stored in the memory of other running programs. This might include your passwords stored in a password manager or browser, your personal photos, emails, instant messages and even business-critical documents.”

The two flaws “work on personal computers, mobile devices, and in the cloud,” the researchers said.

“All Mac systems and iOS devices are affected, but there are no known exploits impacting customers at this time,” Apple said in a post at an online support page

It advised only getting apps from its online App Store which vets programs for safety, and said it has already released some “mitigations” to protect against the exploit and planned to release a defensive update for Safari on macOS and iOS in the coming days.

Some experts pointed out that the only real “fix” in some cases would be replacing the chip itself, which would be a massive issue for the computing industry.

“The good news is patches are out for almost everything,” Bambenek said.

“The bad news is, Spectre, in particular can’t be completely mitigated by patching as it seems it will require a hardware fix. The good news is that Spectre is harder to exploit.”

The US government’s Computer Emergency Response Team initially indicated in a bulletin that only a hardware fix would solve the problem, but then removed that from an update.

“Fully removing the vulnerability requires replacing vulnerable CPU (central processing unit) hardware,” said the first bulletin.

The computer chipmaker issued a statement amid a flurry of concerns voiced after researchers discovered what was described as a “flaw” which could allow privately-stored data in computers and networks to be leaked.

Intel labeled as “incorrect” the reports describing a “bug” or “flaw” unique to its products.

“Based on the analysis to date, many types of computing devices — with many different vendors’ processors and operating systems — are susceptible to these exploits,” the Intel statement said.

“Intel believes these exploits do not have the potential to corrupt, modify or delete data.”

Intel said it was working with rivals AMD and ARM Holdings — which designs systems for mobile devices — and with the makers of computer operating software “to develop an industry-wide approach to resolve this issue promptly and constructively.”

Intel chief executive Brian Krzanich told CNBC meanwhile that “basically all modern processers across all applications” use this process known as “access memory,” which was exploited by Google researchers and kept confidential as companies work on remedies.

Jack Gold, an independent technology analyst, said he was briefed in a conference call with Intel, AMD and ARM on the issue and that the three companies suggested concerns were overblown.

“The story is not that there is a flaw in Intel chips,” Gold said.

The companies were working on remedies after “some researchers found a way to use existing architecture and get into protected areas of computer memory and read some of the data,” Gold said, adding that this is a function of all modern computer architecture.

– Slowdown? –

Earlier this week, some security researchers said any fix — which would need to be handled by software — could slow down computer systems, possibly by 30 percent or more.

Intel’s statement said these concerns too were exaggerated.

“Contrary to some reports, any performance impacts are workload-dependent, and, for the average computer user, should not be significant and will be mitigated over time,” the company statement said.

Earlier Wednesday, Tatu Ylonen, security researcher at SSH Communications Security, noted that the flaw, if exploited, could allow hackers to gain access to private data, including passwords, banking data and encrypted or classified information.

The patch “will be effective” but it will be critical to get all networks and cloud services upgraded, Ylonen said.

“There are thousands of small cloud providers and all of them will need to upgrade,” he said.

British security researcher Graham Cluley also expressed concern “that attackers could exploit the flaw on vulnerable systems to gain access to parts of the computer’s memory which may be storing sensitive information. Think passwords, private keys, credit card data.”

Cluley said in a blog post that it was “good news” that the problem had been kept under wraps to allow operating systems such as those from Microsoft and Apple to make security updates before the flaw is maliciously exploited.

“The bad news is that no-one likes to make such low level security updates, particularly under such time-sensitive conditions,” Cluley said.

“Inevitably some businesses will find themselves disrupted by the process.”

Whether it’s a doorbell or refrigerator, a TV set or a toothbrush, chances are it will be connected to digital assistants powered by artificial intelligence aiming to anticipate needs or desires.

“I think you’re going to see the year of smart,” said Jack Gold, a technology analyst with J. Gold Associates.

One of the largest trade shows in the world, the January 9-12 CES will attract about 170,000 visitors and 3,900 exhibitors from 150 countries and will showcase innovations in computers, gaming, robotics, vehicle technology, virtual and augmented reality and more.

Gold said gadgets will be increasingly tuned to glean insights about the people using them, with an aim of anticipating what might be desired at any given moment.

“Your device will learn about you and will know your preferences, and it’ll then try to get smarter about how to interact with you,” he said.

As consumer electronics evolve, an overriding theme has become voice-assisted digital assistants being integrated into more devices, said Stephen Baker of the research firm NPD.

“I think you are going to be overwhelmed by smart homes and voice — the voice speakers yelling at you in the convention center and up and down the (Las Vegas) Strip will be overwhelming,” Baker said of CES.

He said gadget makers will infuse more products and services with virtual aides such as Amazon’s Alexa, Google Assistant, Apple Siri and Microsoft Cortana.

“What happened is all the appliance and device guys gave up (on making their own isolated smart home systems) and instead are building an ecosystem in which pretty much everybody’s devices will talk to Google or Amazon, or eventually Siri,” Baker said.

Still, says Gartner analyst Brian Blau, large and small tech firms are locked in battle to be at the heart of smart homes and devices.

“To some degree there is still a war on for the connected home platform,” Blau said.

“Communication standards are being worked out, but the other thing is whose allegiance you will commit your home to — will it be Samsung, LG, Amazon, Google?”

Carolina Milanesi of the consultancy Creative Strategies said major electronics firms like Bosch, Panasonic, Sony, Samsung are looking to showcase how several devices can work together with a connected hub.

“I definitely see the speaker still be key to controlling the connected home,” she said.

– Tesla wannabes –

Bob O’Donnell, analyst and consultant with Technalysis Research, said artificial intelligence also opens the door to “computer vision” used in drones, autonomous cars and robotics which will be showcased at CES.

Major carmakers will be on hand as well as makers of tech platforms for self-driving vehicles such as Intel’s Mobileye and chipmaker Nvidia, along with a dozen exhibitors in the autonomous car “marketplace.”

CES hosts the debut of a $130,000 electric car from Fisker — a relaunched startup led by former BMW designed Henrik Fisker whose previous venture went bankrupt — and one of several challengers to rapidly expanding Tesla.

Although CES ends just days ahead of a major Detroit auto show, O’Donnell said automakers are eager to show their new technology to a wider public.

“It’s a place to make a statement about technologies that will have resonance,” he said.

“And the vast majority of the new innovations in cars are in fact tech things.”

– Empathy factor –

O’Donnell said the success of these new technologies will depend on how well machines can think the way people do.

“We are looking for ways these devices have contextual intelligence,” he said.

This would enable a device or assistant to understand multipart questions and develop responses which are adapted to the individual, O’Donnell said.

“The whole idea of understanding context is a big theme in AI, and we’ll see a lot of effort to improve the empathy of devices,” he said.

O’Donnell said he expects to see “an evolution of the intelligence of those devices,” adding that “AI is going to improve the experience of the device even if it doesn’t change what they are.”

At this year’s show, CES will include zones and marketplaces for sports technology, health and wellness, robotics, smart cities, product design and manufacturing and more, and conference panels on many of these topics.

Keynote speakers include Ford Motor Co. chief executive Jim Hackett, Intel’s Brian Krzanich and Huawei consumer chief Richard Yu.

Conferences on tech policy will include US Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, Federal Communications Commission chief Ajit Pai and Michigan Governor Rick Snyder.

Such people would be “central” in their social networks, and thus likelier to spread disease-causing germs from one group to another.

Assuming there is an outbreak, and not enough vaccines for every person in the world, immunising these well-connected individuals would remove social “bridges” by which germs can spread, experts wrote in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface.

The study, which tracked the digital and physical contacts of more than 500 university students, concluded that people who are central in their digital networks are also central in their real-life human networks.

“If you are a hub for your friends in the sense that you have many contacts via phone calls or on Facebook, making you a bridge between diverse communities, chances are high that you are also likely to be a bridge to connect those communities in case of an epidemic, such as influenza,” study co-author Enys Mones of the Technical University of Denmark told AFP.

“By understanding the online contacts, we can find individuals who are such central members of the population and focus targeted counter-measures on them when there are limited resources for vaccination.”

Using computer modelling, the research then calculated that vaccinating these “central” individuals would be “almost as efficient as the most optimal (existing) vaccination strategies”.

It was also cheaper, as digital activity is easy to trace.

The goal of vaccination is to reduce the size of the population at risk of infection. It achieves something called “herd immunity”, whereby unvaccinated people are increasingly unlikely to come into contact with an infectious individual.

The move by Apple responded to an uproar from iPhone users — and a series of lawsuits — after news of the battery problems stoked concerns the company was unfairly nudging consumers to upgrade.

“We know that some of you feel Apple has let you down. We apologize,” Apple said in a message to customers on its website.

“We’ve always wanted our customers to be able to use their iPhones as long as possible. We’re proud that Apple products are known for their durability, and for holding their value longer than our competitors’ devices.”

Apple said it was reducing the price of an out-of-warranty iPhone battery replacement from $79 to $29 for anyone with an iPhone 6 or later whose battery needs to be replaced, starting in late January through December 2018.

The company said it also would issue a software update to make it easier for customers to see if an aging battery is affecting performance.

“As always, our team is working on ways to make the user experience even better, including improving how we manage performance and avoid unexpected shutdowns as batteries age,” the statement said.

The controversy erupted last week after Apple acknowledged a feature to “smooth out” spikes in demand for power to prevent iPhone 6 models from shutting down due to the cold or weak batteries.

Rumors had persisted for years at tech news websites devoted to Apple products and among fans of the company’s products that iPhone performance was being intentionally slowed, perhaps to push users to buy newer models.

Apple’s latest statement said that “we have never — and would never — do anything to intentionally shorten the life of any Apple product, or degrade the user experience to drive customer upgrades.”

But it noted that “batteries are consumable components that become less effective as they chemically age” and that factors such as heat can affect performance.

Apple said a software update last year “manages the maximum performance of some system components when needed to prevent a shutdown” and that “in some cases users may experience longer launch times for apps and other reductions in performance.”