Mizuho Bank is leading the consortium that wants to launch J-Coin. REUTERS/Shohei Miyano

LONDON — A consortium of Japanese banks are set to launch a new national digital currency in a bid to wean citizens off cash, the Financial Times reports.

The FT says that a consortium led by Mizuho Financial Group and Japan Post Bank plans to launch the new digital currency in time for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics.

The new project, which has the support of Japan's central bank and regulators, aims to develop technology to allow Japanese people to pay for goods and services with their smartphone.

Cash currently represents 70% of all transactions by value in Japan but such a heavy cash dependency incurs costs for banks and governments. Banks must pay to handle, transport, and audit large amounts of cash, while governments risk losing tax revenue to undocumented cash-in-hand work or black market transactions.

The consortium of banks estimate that the adoption of a new digital currency could add ¥‎10 billion ($90 million; £67 million) to the economy, the FT reports. J-Coin will be exchanged at a one-to-one rate with yen.

Several European economies are moving towards a cashless society thanks to the success of digital payment methods: physical cash in circulation has declined by 27% since 2011 in Sweden thanks to the popularity of digital payments; Denmark wants to allow shops, including restaurants, gas stations, and clothing stores, to stop taking cash; The Bank of Korea has said it's aiming for a cashless society by 2020; and cash is now in the minority in Britain.

The move towards cashlessness in the Nordics has been helped by the popularity of payment apps like Swish in Sweden and MobilePay in Denmark, while the rise of contactless payments through debit and credit cards has helped in Britain.

Japanese banks are not alone in looking to develop their own digital currency. Leading banks including HSBC, Barclays, UBS, and Santander are developing a "Universal Settlement Coin" to make trade amongst themselves easier, inspired by the success of digital currencies like bitcoin.

Original author: Oscar Williams-Grut

Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson

Dara Khosrowshahi, the new CEO of Uber, is debating whether to come to London to lobby regulators after his company's app was banned in the city, according to The Financial Times.

Khosrowshahi, the former CEO of travel website Expedia, replaced Uber founder Travis Kalanick as CEO just three weeks ago and he's got several major diplomatic battles to fight all over the world.

Multiple sources, including Mark MacGann, who previously headed Uber’s European policy team, told the FT that it would be in Uber's best interests for Khosrowshahi to visit London and meet regulators at Transport for London (TfL). Uber did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

"I think Dara can't not go," MacGann reportedly said on the topic of the London trip. "He will want to go show his brand of leadership ... sending anyone else would be viewed as the 'old, arrogant Uber.'"

Transport for London (TfL) announced last Friday that Uber would not be issued with a private hire operator's licence once its current licence is up on 30 September.

Mayor of London Sadiq Khan. PA

TfL said Uber was not "fit and proper" to hold a licence, adding that the firm's approach to reporting serious driver offences, approach to driver medical and safety checks, and use of its secret "Greyball" software to dodge transport officials all contributed to its decision.

Uber said it would challenge TfL's the decision in court. The company has also launched a petition calling on Mayor of London Sadiq Khan to reverse TfL's decision. The petition had received over 634,000 signatures on Sunday.

Mayor of London Sadiq Khan welcomed an apology from Khosrowshahi on Monday. The apology was made in an open letter to Londoners. But he also invited Khosrowshahi to meet with TfL. "Even though there is a legal process in place, I have asked TfL to make themselves available to meet with him," said Khan.

London is Uber's biggest market in Europe and considered to be one of the taxi-hailing company's top three markets in terms of revenue.

Original author: Sam Shead

Original author: Sam Shead

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Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Good morning! Here is the tech news you need to know this Tuesday.

1. Apple ditched Microsoft for Google to power Siri. Search results on Siri, iOS, and Spotlight on Mac will now default to Google's search engine, as opposed to Bing.

2. Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi apologised in an open letter to Londoners following Transport for London (TfL)'s decision not to renew the company's licence. He remarked that the company will fight TfL's decision, but acknowledged Uber's past mistakes.

3. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella was against the company's decision to buy Nokia. The acquisition, worth $7.6 billion (£5.6 billion), was later written off almost entirely, resulting in thousands of people being laid off.

4. Microsoft is planning to release a quantum computing programming language. It will feature full Visual Studio integration and come with a quantum computer simulator some time before the end of the year.

5. Microsoft unveiled a new package for teachers and students called Microsoft 365 Education. The bundle will offer Windows 365 for Education, Windows 10, Enterprise Mobility + Security, and "Minecraft: Education Edition."

6. Microsoft is replacing Skype for Business with its new Microsoft Teams service. The move is an attempt to put bigger pressure on the platform's main competitor, Slack.

7. Microsoft is starting to integrate LinkedIn inside Office 365. LinkedIn's social graph will now appear inside the products of Office 365's portfolio, like Word and PowerPoint, showing contact information from LinkedIn.

8. China has blocked messaging service WhatsApp almost entirely. Now Chinese users won't be able to send WhatsApp messages, following this summer's crackdown on multimedia messages and video chats.

9. Google has launched its $350 (£260) Project Jacquard jacket in collaboration with Levi's. Its smart sleeves contain sensors woven inside the fabric that allow the user to perform certain actions — pre-set via an app — just by touching it.

10. Amazon is dropping the price of 4K movies and TV shows, now ranging from $5 to $19 (£3.5-14), down from a maximum of $30 (£22). The move comes as a response to Apple's launch of its new Apple TV 4K.

Original author: Edoardo Maggio

Donald Trump's tweets have long raised questions about whether they violate Twitter's rules prohibiting abusive behavior on the service. 

On Monday, after a Trump tweet threatened that North Korea might not "be around much longer," Twitter was forced to explain why the President was not banned from the service. 

In a six-part tweet from Twitter's public policy account, the company said that Twitter takes "newsworthiness" and "public interest" into account when determining whether a user has violated its rules. 

Those considerations have long been used internally when deciding the fate of a problematic user, Twitter said. The company said it plans to update its public-facing policy soon to better reflect some of those other internal factors.

"We need to do better on this and will," Twitter said.

Trump's tweet came at time of heightened tensions between the US and North Korea, following several North Korean missile launches and nuclear tests that have drawn sharp criticism from the international community. On Friday a North Korean official said the country might test a hydrogen bomb over the Pacific Ocean.  

Trump and North Korean government have been engaged in a war of words, with North Korea's foreign minister calling Trump "mentally deranged" and Trump referring to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un as "Rocket Man."

After Trump's tweet on Saturday, North Korea's foreign minister told reporters that the country considers Trump's tweet to be a declaration of war, and that his country can thus legally shoot down US military planes, according to NPR. 

The episode has put Twitter in a difficult position, leading many observers to question how the company's policies against threats and abuse squared with tweets by Trump that some believe risk provoking a nuclear conflict.

Under its existing policy, Twitter reserves the right to remove content and disable accounts that post violent threats or harassment.

The company has left up Trump's tweet about North Korea because of its "newsworthiness" and "public interest value" — two factors which are taken into account for all content considered otherwise in violation of the company's content policy. 

That explanation struck some critics as tantamount to Twitter admitting that the usual rules don't apply to Trump. 

Twitter insisted it was not being inconsistent in its rules. And the company promised to update its public-facing policy to give users a better understanding of its process. 

President Trump's tweets have long posed a challenge for Twitter's terms of use policies. Throughout the 2016 presidential election and his presidency, Trump has used the platform to call out individuals and corporations that he opposes, often times using derogatory terms, as well as to introduce new items of public policy. 

Read the full response from Twitter's pubic policy group here: 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Original author: Becky Peterson

Original author: Chris Weller

The term "fake news" entered the global lexicon during the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Government officials and big tech companies are now scrambling to combat the proliferation of false or misleading news articles, but as we can see in this chart from Statista, a high level of fear remains in many countries.

It's no surprise that Brazilians are concerned about fake news. According to a 2016 report from BBC Brazil, during the week leading up to the controversial impeachment of former Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, three of the five most shared news stories on Facebook were false. While it's unfortunately late for Brazil and other countries that may have already been affected by fake news, Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook have since acknowledged the problem and have pledged to do what they can stop it.

Germany was labeled as a target for fake news in the run up to the country's recent elections, but seems to not have been affected. And Germans are the least worried about it. A 2017 study from Oxford University found that although fake news was being spread through Twitter 'bots' Germans were much more likely to share credible news stories than people in the U.S. and U.K.

Mike Nudelman/Business Insider

 

Original author: Caroline Cakebread

When Microsoft's then CEO Steve Ballmer proposed buying Nokia to shore up the company's foundering mobile phone division, Satya Nadella thought it would be a mistake. 

Four years later, he hasn't changed his mind.  

In his new book, "Hit Refresh," Nadella, who replaced Ballmer as Microsoft CEO, says he unsuccessfully tried to dissuade his predecessor from purchasing Nokia. 

According to the book, Ballmer held an informal poll among his most senior executives: Should he move ahead with an acquisition of Nokia? Ballmer made the case that without Nokia, Microsoft's struggling Windows Phone operating system and ecosystem would never be able to compete with Apple's iPhone and Google's Android, which were dominating even then. 

Nadella, who was then the top executive in charge of Microsoft's cloud business and a member of Ballmer's inner council, voted "no." 

"[It] was too late to regain the ground we had lost. We were chasing our competitors’ taillights," Nadella writes in his book.

Nadella's "no" vote was first reported by Bloomberg back in 2014, not long after he assumed the role of chief executive, but he's never before publicly acknowledged it. Other Microsoft executives joined Nadella in opposing the deal, according to the report, while Microsoft founder Bill Gates advised Ballmer against it. 

Ultimately, Ballmer got his way. Microsoft purchased Nokia in 2013 for $7.9 billion. But just as Nadella worried, the deal turned out to be a big mistake. The company ultimately took a write-down for almost the entire purchase price and laid off thousands. 

And there was another outgrowth of the deal — Ballmer's departure. Microsoft finalized the deal about a month after Ballmer said he would step down as CEO. The friction between Ballmer and Microsoft's board of directors that was generated by the Nokia acquisition is ultimately what led to his decision to resign, according to numerous reports. 

Microsoft hardware chief Panos Panay with the Microsoft Lumia 950 and 950XL phones.Getty Images/Andrew Burton

In early 2014, Microsoft appointed Nadella CEO. While Microsoft released one new flagship Windows phone, the Lumia 950, it wasn't long before Nadella started to unwind the company's smartphone business. 

Instead of focusing on making its own phones, Microsoft, under Nadella, has concentrated on making apps and services available for Apple's iPhone and iPad and for Android devices. Microsoft should only be in mobile when it has something unique to offer, Nadella writes in his book. That could be a hint that the company is still working on its long-rumored Surface Phone.

Nadella says his biggest disappointment from the entire Nokia episode was its human cost. 

"In retrospect, what I regret most is the impact these layoffs had on very talented, passionate people in our phone division," Nadella writes.

Get the latest Microsoft stock price here.

Original author: Matt Weinberger

Original author: Rob Ludacer and Jessica Orwig

Original author: Dave Smith

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WPA Pool/Getty Images

WPP CEO Martin Sorrell believes that Facebook and Google have a reason to be worried. 

In a conversation with best-selling author and long-time New Yorker columnist Ken Auletta at Advertising Week in New York,  Sorrell said that the possibility that the two companies would face government regulation cannot be ruled out. 

"I think they do," he said, responding to Auletta's question about whether the companies needed to worry about the government. "No sovereign state will let a company become worth $1 trillion."

The WPP chief has referred to Facebook and Google as his "frenemies" time and again, saying that they needed to embrace their roles as media companies, and not merely technology companies. But, off late, the tremendous pressure on the companies had made them more of "flexible friends," he said.

This, according to him, was because of the considerable pressures they were under. Facebook has been shrouded in controversy after it was revealed that Russian entities run ads on the platform during the election, while Google has been facing an anti-trust crackdown in the EU. 

"With scale and size comes responsibility," he said. "Whether it's due to Vestager (EU Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager) and the EU putting pressure on them, political brand safety or consumer brand safety, the threat of regulation, or Steve Bannon’s exit remarks from the White House, I think Google and Facebook have become 'friendlier frenemies' or 'flexible friends.'"

He also used the occasion to slam Facebook for its recent anti-Semetic ads targeting mishap.

"As a Jew, do I like the idea that Facebook provided the ability to target Jew haters?," he said.  

Original author: Tanya Dua

Original author: jyotsna popuri

“Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them.” – Margaret Atwood

A few weeks ago, after reading the New York Times Sunday Review article The Book That Made Us Feminists, I asked Amy for several recommendations for books that were foundational to the feminist movement. I purchased all that she suggested and added them to my infinite list of books to read.

The past few days I read Susan Brownmiller’s book Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape. Written in 1975, it’s 480 pages of intense and powerful writing. After about a third of it, I turned to Amy and said, “That Margaret Atwood quote has a clear basis in history.”

Today, again in the New York Times (this time online), I read the article Push for Gender Equality in Tech? Some Men Say It’s Gone Too Far. I was almost finished with Against Our Will so it didn’t take much to infuriate me about the article. There are several men quoted in the article and others referenced. The only one whose perspective makes any sense to me is Dick Costolo’s quote.

“In just the last 48 hours, I’ve spoken to a female tech executive who was grabbed by a male C.E.O. at a large event and another female executive who was asked to interview at a venture fund because they ‘feel like they need to hire a woman,’” said Dick Costolo, the former chief of Twitter, who now runs the fitness start-up Chorus. “We should worry about whether the women-in-tech movement has gone too far sometime after a couple of these aren’t regularly happening anymore.”

In many of the conversations I’ve had around sexual harassment and sexual assault, I’ve been discussing something I’ve been referring to as the “perpetrator / victim paradox.” In this situation, the perpetrator “assaults / harasses” the victim. When the perpetrator is discovered (or almost discovered), he becomes the victim and tries to manipulate the victim into “not destroying my life.” It alternates between threats (continued perpetrator behavior aimed at the victim) and pleas (where the perpetrator takes the role of the victim, often using guilt to try and keep the victim quiet.)

Now, this doesn’t only apply to sexual harassment and sexual assault, but to any power dynamic. Which leads to the well-discussed idea that rape is much more about power than about sex. Brownmiller’s book does an incredible job of linking power to sex, especially in the context of men using sex to assert their power over women. But there was another level that jumped out at me, which was the notion of women as property, where a first man asserts their power over second man by having unwanted sex (rape) with the woman who was “affiliated” (wife, child, sister) with the second man. While Brownmiller has an incredibly long and distressing chapter on rape as part of the spoils of war, this idea infiltrates much of the book.

When I read articles like Push for Gender Equality in Tech? Some Men Say It’s Gone Too Far all I can think of is “these men are afraid of losing power to women.”

As a man, I wish other men would get over this. As our current president assembles the most male-dominated government in decades it’s clear that there is still a lot of work to do here.

Also published on Medium.

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Original author: Brad Feld

Original author: Sramana Mitra

Original author: Sramana Mitra

Original author: Maureen Kelly