Yearly Archives: 2022

PR Newswire

ERS electronic announces the AC3 Fusion thermal chuck system, a versatile and more sustainable solution for temperature test in wafer probing

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MUNICH, April 22, 2022 /PRNewswire/ — ERS electronic, the industry leader in the market of thermal management solutions for semiconductor manufacturing, is introducing an extension of the renowned AC3 thermal chuck system, called Fusion. The system comes with a new series of high-performance chillers that have three default on-site configurable modes, each optimized to meet specific test requirements, and a Fusion mode that allows the key parameters to be defined by the user. With these modes, the AC3 Fusion thermal chuck system is a no-compromise solution for energy-efficient and flexible tri-temperature wafer test.

The AC3 Fusion chiller series comes with a new white appearance
The AC3 Fusion chiller series comes with a new white appearance

ERS’s AC3 with patented air-management technology was introduced to the market in 2005. Since then, it has gained a reputation for being one of the most cost-efficient and resource-friendly thermal chuck systems in the industry due to its recycling of the air three times: for pre-cooling, cooling, and purging.

To further minimize costs and energy consumed during temperature test, the AC3 Fusion offers the ECO mode, which can save up to 65% energy during ambient and hot test. Another component of the system is the AC3 Fusion calculator application. It allows the user to calculate the energy consumption and cost of each mode in different test scenarios.

“When we started working on AC3 Fusion, our focus was on further increasing the efficiency and reducing the environmental footprint of our system”, says CTO of ERS electronic, Klemens Reitinger. “With this solution, we are taking temperature test in wafer probing to another level by providing all of these modes in one system.”

“We believe that we have a responsibility to develop technologies that encourage and enable a lower carbon economy, which is why we have chosen to announce AC3 Fusion on Earth Day,” says Laurent Giai-Miniet, CEO of ERS electronic. “To further improve our own sustainability performance, we have joined the organization Leaders for Climate Action, which is helping us measure and reduce our emissions and ultimately reach our target of climate neutrality.”

AC3 Fusion is available to order starting from June.

About ERS:
ERS electronic GmbH has been producing innovative thermal test solutions for the semiconductor industry for more than 50 years. The company has gained an outstanding reputation with its fast and accurate air cool-based thermal chuck systems for temperatures ranging from -65°C to +550°C for analytical, parameter-related, and manufacturing tests.

Accessories, Computers, Gaming, Lifestyle, News

Razer’s Leviathan V2 PC Soundbar Takes Immersive Gaming to a Whole New Level for MYR 1,399

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Yesterday we said it is a good time to build a gaming PC. Specifically, we pointed out that building a budget gaming PC at this time is quite perfect. Thing is, it is not just budget PC parts that are being launched left and right, there are some high-end ones too like the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 Ti, making it also the perfect time to build a high-end PC.

If you are looking to build a high-performance entertainment powerhouse though, you do not want to forget to kit it out with the best possible audio gear. While it is plenty overlooked, audio is an important component in not just gaming, but for general entertainment. It can enhance and even break your experience. Even in video calls, you tend to want to prioritise a clear and stable voice communication over video, because that is where a large portion of the communications happen.

Most of the time, when you build a high-end PC and decides on the audio solution, you do not want to stay with the built-in speakers your display comes with. Most users tend to buy a pair of headphones to work with in this case. But headphones tend to be a little restrictive, and uncomfortable in extended periods of gaming. What if you also want your audio gear to be your main listening tool for movies and music without being too restrictive?

You get a sound bar of course. Yes, just like the one you see for televisions (TV). Not just any sound bar though, you get a Razer gaming soundbar made specifically to fit your crowded gaming desk set up, look good on it, and sound stellar in gaming conditions.

Leviathan V22022 SG 4
Source: Razer

Welcome to the Razer Leviathan V2, the follow-up to the highly acclaimed Razer Leviathan launched about seven years ago now. Like it predecessor, it also comes with a subwoofer box in the box. You might be fine without the subwoofer box though.

Compact, Powerful, Immersive

It packs two full range drivers to drive everything from the mid-range frequencies to the higher end ones. To give better clarity and detail on the higher-end frequencies though, Razer has also fitted two tweeters to accompany the full range drivers. To ensure that audio sounds full, especially in gaming, you must have big booms. For that, you get two down-firing subwoofers that brings some rumble to your desk when you need it.

You might think that having the speaker in front of you might take out some of its immersive feel. True, you do not have rear firing speakers to feed some spatial awareness into your ears. This soundbar comes with THX Spatial Audio technology though and is activated when you connect it to a PC. That also means that you get a virtual surround sound experience like no other on your gaming PC.

Visually Stunning and Versatile

To add to the visual drama, Razer fitted this soundbar with 18 lighting zones powered by Razer Chroma RGB. You can match the light works with your other Razer gear via Synapse, or even make your games for immersive by matching the lights to whatever you see on your screen.

It is also a rather versatile piece of kit to have on your desk. Like the older Leviathan, the V2 is also a wireless speaker when you want it to be. It is Bluetooth 5.2 enabled so that you can connect your smartphone to it for when you just want to listen to music without your PC. Bluetooth 5.2 also ensures that the connection between your smartphone and speakers stay stellar. Just to fine tune the speakers to your liking, Razer also made the feet on the speakers detachable and replaceable for differing angles.

hero shot kv
Source: Razer
Leviathan V22022 SG 4
Source: Razer
Leviathan V22022 SG 3
Source: Razer
Leviathan V22022 SG 3 Close up
Source: Razer
Leviathan V22022 SG 2
Source: Razer
Leviathan V22022 SG 1
Source: Razer
Leviathan V22022 SG 1 Close up
Source: Razer

Availability and Price

The Razer Leviathan V2 is now available on Razer.com and its authorised retailers across the nation. It will set you back MYR 1,399, which is about the same price as most decent all-in-one soundbar these days. More information on the Razer Leviathan V2 can be found on their website.

PR Newswire

ReneSola Power Appoints Ramnath Iyer as a Director

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STAMFORD, Conn., April 22, 2022 /PRNewswire/ — ReneSola Ltd (“ReneSola Power” or the “Company”) (www.renesolapower.com) (NYSE: SOL), a leading fully integrated solar project developer, today announced that Ke Chen has stepped down as a Director of the Company and that it has appointed Ramnath Iyer, Head of ESG Asia of Invartis Consulting, to its Board of Directors effective April 20, 2022. Ke Chen will remain serving in the capacity of Chief Financial Officer. 

Mr. Iyer brings extensive capital markets experience from his prior roles as portfolio manager to multiple international asset management firms, and strategist role at investment banks. In addition, Mr. Iyer brings significant knowledge and expertise on sustainability, environmental, social, and governance (ESG) from his current role as the Head of ESG Asia at Invartis Consulting where he helps institutional investors and buyside funds integrate ESG and sustainability practices into their investing processes. 

“We are pleased to welcome Ramnath as our fellow director”, Said Himanshu Shah. “His extensive experience in ESG complements our Board’s efforts to strengthen our sustainability practices around environmental stewardship, social responsibility, and corporate governance. We look forward to his many contributions.”

About ReneSola Power

ReneSola Power (NYSE: SOL) is a leading global solar project developer and operator. The Company focuses on solar power project development, construction management and project financing services. With local professional teams in more than 10 countries around the world, the business is spread across number of regions where the solar power project markets are growing rapidly and can sustain that growth due to improved clarity around government policies. The Company’s strategy is to pursue high-margin project development opportunities in these profitable and growing markets; specifically, in the U.S. and Europe, where the Company has a market-leading position in several geographies, including Poland, Hungary, Minnesota and New York. For more information, please visit www.renesolapower.com.

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Source: ReneSola Ltd.

PR Newswire

Databricks Announces Lakehouse Offering for Customers in the Media and Entertainment Industries

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The Databricks Lakehouse for Media and Entertainment launches with early support from AWS, Cognizant, Fivetran, Labelbox and Lovelytics

SAN FRANCISCO, April 21, 2022 /PRNewswire/ — Databricks, the Data and AI company and pioneer of the data lakehouse paradigm, today launched the first lakehouse platform for data-driven businesses in the media and entertainment industry. The Lakehouse for Media & Entertainment enables organizations across the media ecosystem to deliver better data and AI outcomes for consumers, advertisers and media partners with a single and collaborative platform for data, analytics and AI. Early adopters include Databricks customers like Acxiom, Warner Bros. Discovery, and SEGA. Databricks is also working with Amazon Web Services (AWS) and industry partners like Cognizant, Fivetran, Labelbox and Lovelytics.

With use case accelerators, custom Brickbuilder Solutions and a robust partner ecosystem, businesses will be able to deliver a personalized consumer experience, prepare for consumer analytics at scale, and empower greater collaboration and secure data sharing among media teams. The Lakehouse for Media and Entertainment incorporates data solutions and use-case accelerators for critical industry use cases like AI-driven recommendation engines, customer lifetime value and churn, quality of experience, community toxicity analysis, advertising optimization and more.

With Databricks, organizations can leverage all of their data to build a holistic view of their audience and advertisers, make real-time decisions and drive innovation with advanced analytics. With support for real-time analytics, business intelligence (BI), and powerful AI capabilities on all data types, Databricks enables media organizations to use all of their data – including images, video and other unstructured data types – to develop a holistic understanding of their customers.

“Lakehouse for Media and Entertainment is central to how we engage with players and streamline our data science function here at SEGA. The lakehouse platform means that data sets are available all in one centralized environment, enabling us to track key metrics to create more personalized experiences for players, drive community activities and to build our own machine learning algorithm to tailor games to our players. ” – Felix Baker, Manager, Data Services, SEGA Europe.

“With Databricks’ Lakehouse Platform on AWS, Warner Bros. Discovery is powering the future of content discovery and audience experiences. By leveraging data to better predict consumer behavior and provide personalized content recommendations in real-time, we are able to customize the viewer experience and improve overall engagement for our customers.” – Martin Ma, Group VP, Engineering at Warner Bros. Discovery.

“With a suite of data tools powered by Databricks and AWS, Acxiom is building data-driven strategies for clients that address the full marketing tech ecosystem and are designed to deliver actionable results that drive business impact. ” — David Skinner, Chief Strategy Officer, Acxiom.

“Being able to deliver more value through big data, analytics and AI is one of the top focus areas for media and entertainment organizations around the globe. We are delighted to support Databricks’ Lakehouse for Media and Entertainment on AWS, which will help customers produce smarter consumer experiences, better advertiser outcomes and an enhanced content lifecycle through the power of data.” – Marc Aldrich, General Manager, Global Media & Entertainment at AWS

“Databricks is partnered with Cognizant to connect CSPs, content owners and OTT platform owners with extensive viewer experience insights, device usage and contextual awareness in real-time utilizing modern AIops capabilities. It unleashes advanced ad targeting, personalization and service enhancement based on aggregation en-masse not possible with single-purpose QoE solutions in the market.” — Tiran Dagan, Cognizant’s CDO and Industry Head for CMT.

Powerful industry solutions customized for the data lakehouse

Designed to jumpstart the analytics process, Lakehouse for Media & Entertainment Solution Accelerators offer a blueprint of data analytics and machine learning use cases and best practices to save weeks or months of development time for an organization’s data engineers and data scientists. Popular solution accelerators pre-built for Databricks customers across the media and entertainment industry include:

  • Recommendation Engines: Create more personalized experiences for customers with AI-powered content recommendations that drive engagement and monetization opportunities.
  • Customer Lifetime Value (CLV): Easily identify and better understand the most valuable customers with CLV models that focus on spending patterns and retention to help guide better marketing investments and product development choices.
  • Streaming Quality of Service: Increase viewer retention and analyze both streaming and batch data sets to ensure a performant streaming content experience that drives engagement and loyalty.
  • Toxicity Detection for Gaming: Cultivate healthier gaming communities by leveraging natural language processing for the real-time detection of toxic language from in-game user comments and chats.

Databricks Partners deliver deeper functionality for M&E customers

Along with AWS and consulting partners like Cognizant and Lovelytics are accelerating the adoption of the lakehouse platform by developing Brickbuilder Solutions for the Media and Entertainment industry, tailor-made to combine the power of the Databricks Lakehouse Platform with the proven experience of partners. The Lakehouse for Media and Entertainment launches with additional support and capabilities from leading technology partners Labelbox and Fivetran.

  • AWS for Media and Entertainment: AWS aligns purpose-built M&E capabilities specifically for the data and analytics space. AWS and Databricks have a long history of helping M&E organizations transform their direct-to-consumer, advertising and content businesses with the power of big data, analytics and AI.
  • Video Quality of Experience by Cognizant: Enables lakehouse customers to mitigate video quality issues that drive viewers to churn – whether it’s playback failure, delayed time-to-first-frame, or a rebuffing issue. Cognizant’s solution pairs fine-grained telemetry data with AI/ML to quickly identify and remedy video quality issues in near real-time.
  • Sports and Entertainment Analytics by Lovelytics: Brings streaming data to life including optimizing baseball’s Statcast data to help teams at every level analyze thousands of data points on player performance throughout the season. With AI and predictive analytics to predict and forecast performance, the Lovelytics solution enables sports and entertainment organizations to optimize strategy in-game as well as the fan and live event experience.
  • Labelbox for Media: Labelbox is a training data platform used to produce high-quality training data from images, video, and text – a challenge for many media organizations given their businesses revolve around unstructured data. Combining Databricks and Labelbox gives customers an ideal environment for unstructured data workflows and deriving value from their media assets.
  • 360 Views with Fivetran: A data integration service, Fivetran integrates over 180+ data sources across operational, ad and mar tech data sources. For media publishers, Fivetran automates ingestion from dozens of data sources into Databricks’ Lakehouse allowing the business to build a 360-degree view of their customers that improves targeting and drives revenue.

“Executing on a strategy around data, analytics and AI is more critical than ever for media companies to remain agile, competitive and data-driven as audience demands change with the rapidly evolving media landscape,” said Steve Sobel, Global Industry Leader for Media & Entertainment at Databricks. “We are thrilled to collaborate with industry leaders like AWS, Cognizant, Fivetran, Labelbox and Lovelytics to bring the Databricks Lakehouse for Media and Entertainment to the industry, and enable media leaders to personalize, monetize and innovate in delivering smarter, 1;1 experiences for consumer and advertisers across the globe.”

For more information, visit Databricks’ Lakehouse for Media and Entertainment homepage. If you are attending the NAB Show 2022, visit Databricks with AWS at booth W3500.

About Databricks

Databricks is the data and AI company. More than 7,000 organizations worldwide — including Comcast, Condé Nast, H&M, and over 40% of the Fortune 500 — rely on the Databricks Lakehouse Platform to unify their data, analytics and AI. Databricks is headquartered in San Francisco, with offices around the globe. Founded by the original creators of Apache Spark™, Delta Lake and MLflow, Databricks is on a mission to help data teams solve the world’s toughest problems. To learn more, follow Databricks on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook.

Press Contact:
Press@databricks.com

Computers, Gaming, Lifestyle, News

ASUS AMD Radeon RX 6400 GPUs are the Next Best Thing for 1080p Gaming 

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Last year, if our friends asked us about building a PC or a gaming rig for themselves, we would have said that it is not a good time. We would have also told them to maybe get a gaming laptop instead, especially with prices of parts soaring out of control, 

Fast forward to 2022 though and the PC component market has shown signs of recovery. Prices of GPUs and CPUs have dropped by 20-25%. While components are still sold above recommended retail prices, situations are not as bad as before and stocks are slowly becoming more available.  

DUAL RX6400 4G 2D light
Source: ASUS

In terms of current component prices, it is a better time now to build your own PC. In the current market climate, there has never been a better time to build a PC because new components are launching left and right. It is an especially good time to build budget gaming rigs thanks to ASUS releasing the latest AMD Radeon GPU. 

It is called the AMD Radeon RX 6400, and just as its numbers suggest, it is an entry-level GPU. It is still a modern AMD GPU though, and they say that it will do 1080p gaming rather well. We trust them on this and recommend that you stick to a 1080p gaming build on this.  

It is meant for a budget rig, so you cannot expect miracles out of it. Still, you get 4GB of GDDR6 memory out of the card. You also get HDMI 2.1 and DisplayPort 1.4a outputs, which should allow you to have two monitors working simultaneously. It is also a PCIe 4.0 card, which also means that it should perform better than some of the AMD Radeon RX 5000 series GPUs.  

DUAL RX6400 4G 2D light
Source: ASUS
DUAL RX6400 4G back 2D
Source: ASUS
DUAL RX6400 4G image3 light
Source: ASUS
DUAL RX6400 4G vgabox
Source: ASUS
DUAL RX6400 4G image1 light
Source: ASUS

Of course, the GPU comes with AMD’s latest RDNA 2 architecture on the 2039 MHz clocked chip. The GPU can be boosted up to 2321 MHz when you need maximum power for your games. When the GPU consumes little to no power, its fans turn off for silent operation. The Radeon RX 6400 also comes with support for DirectX 12 Ultimate, AMD Fidelity FX technology, AMD Radeon Super Resolution, and AMD’s Smart Access Memory technology for even better gaming experiences.  

ASUS’ AMD Radeon RX 6400 comes in two flavours – ASUS Dual Radeon RX 6400 and ASUS Phoenix Radeon RX 6400. The Dual variant comes with two fans for maximum cooling performance while the Phoenix comes with a single fan design. Currently only the ASUS Dual Radeon RX 6400 will be available in Malaysia for MYR 960. There are no confirmations on when the more affordable single-fan Phoenix Radeon RX 6400 will be available in Malaysia. More information on the AMD Radeon RX 6400 can be found on AMD’s website.  

PR Newswire

IBM study finds Singaporeans are victims of financial fraud at a higher rate than most countries

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  • IBM also announces IBM z16, the next-generation system, bringing industry-first real-time AI to transaction processing at scale to help prevent fraud in real-time, a challenge that costs Singaporeans an average of S$1,648 in the past 12 months due to fraudulent financial charges
  • IBM z16 is the industry’s first quantum-safe system. Building on IBM’s history of security leadership, IBM z16 also is specifically designed to help protect against near-future threats that might be used to crack today’s encryption technologies.

SINGAPORE, April 21, 2022 /PRNewswire/ — According to a new report by IBM (NYSE: IBM), geographies and generations differ greatly in the frequency and impact of financial fraud, as well as their attitudes toward fraud detection and the institutions responsible for protecting them from bad actors.

IBM z16, the next generation system designed to help prevent fraud in real-time, a challenge that cost the financial industry $32B in card losses in 2021.
IBM z16, the next generation system designed to help prevent fraud in real-time, a challenge that cost the financial industry $32B in card losses in 2021.

The 2022 IBM Global Financial Fraud Impact Report also found that as global consumers have moved nearly exclusively to credit card and digital payments, Singaporeans have been victimized more regularly than all other countries surveyed in the report, costing Singapore consumers an average of S$1,648.52 per year in fraudulent financial charges made by unauthorized third parties.

“Financial fraud and cyber threats are a growing menace to global banks and financial institutions, increasing the need for companies to improve and accelerate preventative methods to stay one step ahead of sophisticated criminal activity,” said Shanker Ramamurthy, Managing Partner, Global Banking & Financial Markets, IBM. “And while the global economy’s evolution toward a cashless society took a huge leap during the pandemic, at the same time, the risk of financial fraud has also grown at an unprecedented rate.”

“The financial sector is constantly under cyberattack globally and Singapore is not spared. The industry is among the most vulnerable to financial fraud and cyber threats because of the vast amount of money and valuable data that banks, and investment firms process each day. The Singapore government is working on a comprehensive approach, working with each party in the ecosystem, to counter the threats. As for financial institutions, they must continue to protect their data and systems against current and future threats – as criminals continue to up their game. It is important to ensure that Singaporeans feel confident, safe, and secure in using financial services,” said Neha Arora, Managing Director, Banking and Financial Markets, IBM.

Global Financial Impact

When it comes to fraud on a global scale, Singaporeans have generally experienced more types of fraud than other countries. Of the countries surveyed, Singapore ranks second in percentage of respondents who have experienced fraud across several categories: credit card fraud, debit card fraud, digital payment fraud (through apps such as Venmo, Zelle and PayPal), digital wallet fraud (such as Apple Pay and Google Pay), and tax fraud. In fact, Singapore ranked second in every category measuring types of financial fraud – with the exception of banking fraud (experiencing financial security issues with their banking institutions), in which it ranked first.

Nearly two out of five Singaporean respondents (39%) are not confident in their bank or credit card’s ability to handle fraudulent charges. Similarly, one-third (33%) are not confident in their financial institution’s ability to detect suspicious activity in their accounts, while more than one-third (35%) of Singaporean respondents are not confident in their bank’s ability to prevent fraud.

Respondents said they believe that banks and payment networks should be most responsible for preventing fraud. But running deep-learning models at scale in real-time has not been possible due to latency issues, meaning a significant amount of fraud is going undetected.

To help address this challenge, IBM today unveiled IBM z16™, IBM’s next-generation system with industry-first breakthroughs, including deep-learning inferencing — in real-time and at scale — for mission-critical workloads such as credit card, healthcare and financial transactions.

IBM z16 uniquely brings together AI inferencing, via its IBM Telum Processor, with the highly secured and reliable high-volume transaction processing IBM is known for. For the first time, banks can analyze for fraud during transactions on a massive scale: IBM z16 can process 300 billion inference operations per day with just one millisecond of latency.

By identifying fraud at the time of a transaction, consumers would no longer need to deal with confirmation emails or texts, or worse, having their card frozen and attempting to recover lost funds. For both merchants and card issuers, this can lead to revenue loss as consumers get frustrated with false declines and turn to other cards for future transactions. 

Other threats including tax fraud and organized retail theft are emerging as challenges for governments and businesses to control. Real-time payments and alternative payment methods are pushing the limits on traditional fraud detection techniques. Applying the new capabilities of IBM z16 to other industries is creating an entirely new class of use cases, including: 

  • Loan approval: Safe, fast approval of business or consumer loans in seconds vs hours or days
  • Clearing and settlement: leveraging AI to determine which trades and/or transactions have a high-risk exposure before settlement
  • Federated learning for retail: to better model risk against fraud and theft

In a hybrid cloud environment inclusive of on-premises and public cloud resources, it is critical to protect against today’s threats and posture against cybercriminals who may be stealing data now for decryption later. Building on IBM technologies like Pervasive Encryption and Confidential Computing, IBM z16 takes cyber resiliency a leap further by protecting data against future threats that could evolve with advances in quantum computing.

As the industry’s first quantum-safe system, IBM z16 is underpinned by lattice-based cryptography, an approach for constructing security primitives certified by NIST that helps protect data and systems against current and future threats. With IBM z16 quantum-safe cryptography, businesses can future-ready their applications and data today. IBM z16’s quantum-safe secure boot and cryptography can help clients get ahead of future quantum-computing related threats including harvest now, decrypt later attacks leading to extortion, loss of intellectual property and disclosure of other sensitive data.

About the 2022 IBM Global Financial Fraud Impact Report

IBM commissioned the study to maintain its understanding of present-day challenges that consumers are facing when it comes to financial fraud, as well as the ability of global financial institutions to retain control of their mission critical infrastructure to provide secure payment transactions in real-time. The study was commissioned by IBM and conducted by Morning Consult; a third-party market research firm based in the United States. The study was conducted among 1000 adults in six countries: the US, China, Singapore, Brazil, Japan, and Germany. The full report can be downloaded here.

Media contact

Seri Rahayu

External Communications

IBM ASEANZK – Singapore & Vietnam

seri.rahayu@ibm.com 

+60122106907 (Mobile)

Selvi R

Communications Leader 

IBM ASEANZK & Singapore

selvir@sg.ibm.com 

+65 9795 4165 (Mobile)
PR Newswire

Insider named a Leader in the IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Customer Data Platforms Focused on Front-Office Users 2021-22 Vendor Assessment

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Insider, a single platform for delivering individualized, cross-channel customer experiences, helps 1000+ leading enterprise brands and high growth startups, including Samsung, GAP Marks & Spencer, Virgin, IKEA, Burger King, Toyota, Santander, Vodafone, Madeira Madeira, Puma, Singapore Airlines, CNN, Lenovo and Estée Lauder accelerate digital growth by connecting data across channels, predicting future behavior with AI, and individualizing experiences to deliver the fastest time to value.

NEW YORK, April 20, 2022 /PRNewswire/ — Insider — one platform for individualized, cross-channel customer experiences, today announced that it has been named a Leader in the IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Customer Data Platforms Focused on Front-Office Users 2021-22 Vendor Assessment. The report is a comparative study of the functional capabilities aligned with customer needs and growth strategies of 12 worldwide CDP vendors that predominantly benefit front-office users in marketing, customer experience, loyalty, customer service, support, and sales; outlining their respective strengths, challenges, and buyer considerations.

The IDC MarketScape recognizes Insider as a “robust yet intuitive platform that helps marketers achieve a 360o customer view and power customer journey analytics, orchestration, and personalization”.

Gerry Murray, Research Director, Marketing and Sales Technology at IDC said, “Insider offers a scalable cross-channel customer engagement solution for both known and anonymous users; on the foundation of a very flexible customer database, high data ingestion and processing rate, and strong consent management capabilities.”

Access your complimentary excerpt of the report here.

Hande Cilingir, Co-founder and CEO of Insider said, “Our vision of building an industry-leading cross-channel marketing platform built on a solid CDP foundation that helps our customers easily collect, manage, analyze, and activate customer data is validated with our recent positioning as a Leader in the IDC MarketScape Report 2021-22. We have bold plans in place to continue disrupting the marketing technology industry as we endeavor to help global enterprise brands reinvent the future of customer experience.”

Insider’s core customer data capabilities that enable it to outplay other vendors in the market include:

  • Identity Resolution: Ability to stitch customer identities across devices and channels by merging zero, first-, second-, and third-party customer data in real-time
  • Audience Insights: Enables marketers to analyze their entire customer base and find profitable audiences to target
  • Next Best Channel Predictions: Enables marketers to predict the right channel to engage a customer (from 12+ channels) based on their likelihood to convert or revenue potential
  • Multi-Armed Bandit Testing: Allows marketers to automatically test different cross-channel strategies and remove the manual guesswork to deliver high-converting, 1:1 experiences

Insider’s expansive related product offering portfolio, built on its CDP foundation, further makes it a strong cross-channel customer experience solution that enables 3 key capabilities:

  • Segmentation: Helps marketers define segments based on past or real-time behavior and leverage 7+ AI-led segments to predict purchase, interest, churn, CLTV, and more
  • Contextual Personalization: Data streaming APIs allow marketers to listen to customer actions and trigger contextual 1:1 experiences that increase product discovery, repeat purchases, and loyalty
  • Cross-Channel Activation: Allows marketers to build and deploy individualized journeys across 12+ channels including web, app, email, SMS, messaging platforms like WhatsApp, LINE, RCS, and more

Access your complimentary excerpt of the report here.

About Insider

Insider helps global brands and marketers across industries connect data from multiple channels, predict the future behavior of their customers with AI, and deliver individualized experiences on any channel. Insider strongly differentiates from other providers with its extensive set of digital channels including WhatsApp Business, Facebook, SMS, RCS, and more. With advanced AI-powered capabilities, Insider helps marketers orchestrate perfect customer journeys and predict the next best channel for each individual, continuously improving its platform with future-proof technologies. Learn more: useinsider.com

About IDC MarketScape

IDC MarketScape vendor assessment model is designed to provide an overview of the competitive fitness of ICT (information and communications technology) suppliers in a given market. The research methodology utilizes a rigorous scoring methodology based on both qualitative and quantitative criteria that results in a single graphical illustration of each vendor’s position within a given market. IDC MarketScape provides a clear framework in which the product and service offerings, capabilities and strategies, and current and future market success factors of IT and telecommunications vendors can be meaningfully compared. The framework also provides technology buyers with a 360-degree assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of current and prospective vendors.

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PR Newswire

Stamus Networks Supports NATO Cyber Defense Exercises

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The company to provide advanced technology and experts to support the international live-fire exercise

TALLINN, Estonia, April 20, 2022 /PRNewswire/ — Stamus Networks, a global provider of high-performance network-based threat detection and response systems, today announced it is once again participating in Exercise Locked Shields (LS22), organized by the NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence (CCDCOE) in Tallinn, Estonia.

Stamus Networks Supports NATO Cyber Defense (Locked Shields) Exercises
Stamus Networks Supports NATO Cyber Defense (Locked Shields) Exercises

Exercise Locked Shields is the largest and most complex international live-fire cyber defense exercise in the world. An annual event, Exercise Locked Shields has been organized by the CCDCOE since 2010 and is a red team (attackers) vs. blue team (defenders) exercise with teams formed by member nations and partners of CCDCOE. This year there are 24 blue teams participating with an average of 50 experts in each team. The blue teams take on the role of national cyber rapid reaction teams that are deployed to assist a fictional country in handling a large-scale cyber incident.

Locked Shields uses realistic technologies to train national defense teams in an exercise environment based on a fictional scenario. According to the CCDCOE, the need for collaborative exercises such as LS22 has become even more evident during the current global pandemic and current European geopolitical situation. Societies have become more dependent on virtual solutions to ensure continuity of societal functions during the pandemic. This has greatly increased the attack surface for malicious actors and requires effective collaboration between public and private entities to ensure the systems we depend on can be protected.

“Many of our long-term partners have contributed substantially to the success of the Exercise over the years” said Colonel Jaak Tarien, director of the NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence (CCDCOE). “These partners include NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence, the Estonian Ministry of Defence, the Estonian Defence Forces and several private companies such as Stamus Networks. We are incredibly grateful for all their contributions.”

Since 2016, Stamus Networks has worked with the CCDCOE in multiple exercises by contributing expert personnel and its network security solutions, including its advanced network detection and response (NDR) system – the Stamus Security Platform.

“We partner with the CCDCOE for these exercises which are designed to strengthen the defensive capabilities of our NATO allies because we have made it our mission to develop and support tools that make the job of cyber defenders easier and more impactful,” said Ken Gramley, CEO of Stamus Networks. “In addition, Locked Shield gives us a world-class proving ground for the new capabilities we incorporate in our network-based threat detection and response solutions.”

To learn more about the NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence (CCDCOE) and the Exercise Locked Shields, visit the website: https://ccdcoe.org/exercises/locked-shields/.

About Stamus Networks
Stamus Networks believes in a world where defenders are heroes, and a future where those they protect remain safe. As organizations face threats from well-funded adversaries, we relentlessly pursue solutions that make the defender’s job easier and more impactful. A global provider of high-performance network-based threat detection and response systems, Stamus Networks helps enterprise security teams know more, respond sooner and mitigate their risk with insights gathered from cloud and on-premise network activity. Our solutions are advanced network detection and response systems that expose serious and imminent threats to critical assets and empower rapid response. For more information visit: stamus-networks.com.

Business, Lifestyle, News

Netflix Loses a Chunk of Subscribers, says it is the Fault of Account Sharers – Offenders Will Be Dealt with Swiftly

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Netflix is a household name by now. In the pandemic period, it is one of the things that has kept plenty sane and pass their time while they are completely cut off from the outside world. It is, after all, one of the largest, if not the largest entertainment platform currently known to man. During the pandemic period, they really thrived.

Fast forward to today, the world is in a stark contrast compared to when the COVID-19 pandemic started. We are better at dealing with it now, we have vaccines, people are allowed out of their homes, things are returning to normal. That also means that you now have less time to enjoy Netflix and to catch up on your movies and TV shows.

No matter, Netflix still predicted that they are going to increase their membership base in 2022. For the first quarter of 2022, Netflix has just released their earnings report. The numbers do not look good, nor reflected Netflix’s 2022 projections.

The report from Netflix shows that they have lost a significant number of subscribers for the first time in 10 years. If we read their reports correctly, Netflix has reported a loss of 200,000 subscribers in the first quarter of 2022 alone. In contrast, the first quarter of 2021 saw nearly 4 million new subscribers. While 200,000 subscribers may sound significant, the entire of 2021 saw Netflix gain nearly 20 million new users. There is more concerning news for Netflix shareholders in the reports though. Netflix is expecting to lose about 2 million subscribers in the coming quarter of 2022, a significant dent in their dominance over their market segment.

Despite the rather crowded space that is the over-the-top (OTT) on-demand streaming industry, Netflix is not blaming its competition for the lost of subscribers. They are rather blaming users for their loss in market share. They specifically mentioned that the 200,000 lost subscribers are lost to users who are sharing their accounts. In their reports, Netflix estimates that among their 222 million users, 100m of them are sharing their accounts. Of course, they cited that the current development in Russia and Ukraine is not helping the situation.

Taking on Shared Accounts

Netflix has been citing shared accounts to be an issue for a while now. In their ideal world, every user with a Netflix account is individual users with their unique accounts. Inevitably, there will be people who shares single accounts to enjoy their shows at different times. In Malaysia at least, we have specific accounts that is made specifically for sharing with up to five users anyway.

Still, we are not referring to that though. Netflix refers to users who are using accounts made for a single individual and sharing the same account with the household, or friends. According to Netflix, the more than 100 million households that are using accounts owned by another household are opportunities for increased revenue. In that sense, Netflix is looking into ways to monetise account sharing soon.

To be fair, Netflix has been toying with the idea of charging customers more for accounts that are being used in households other than your own. The idea is to have a sub-account to the main account where users have their own unique login and password. That way, all watch history, lists, recommendations can be tailored to that single user. It also allows Netflix to identify that sub-account to be a unique user, obviously. The solution was first tested in Chile, Costa Rica, and Peru. There are no reports on the success of the program. We must assume that Netflix achieved some success in the tests though because they are planning to bring the solution to the global market. How much more it will cost users will be the only big question mark currently.

Low-Cost Netflix, but with Ads

Netflix Q1 2022 Earnings Interview

Amidst the tough competition that Netflix is now facing, they are also leaving no stone unturned to gain more market and mindshare. Reed Hastings, co-founder and CEO of Netflix has mentioned that they are now quite open to offering plans at lower costs with ads infused into the plan as an option. He says that the company is working on a solution and plan option to be introduced within a year or two.

Hastings was strongly against putting ads into Netflix and its subscription plans. He cited before that adding advertising into Netflix adds a tonne of complexity that users might not enjoy. He added that he favours the rather simple subscription model that Netflix has been offering thus far.

The move into having advertisements in Netflix is not just to fatten up the entertainment company’s pockets though. In effect, it is supposed to also bring subscription costs down while allowing Netflix to maintain their margins. At the same time also, it could be a viable path for Netflix to finally bring Live Sports as a part of their offerings. We are imagining watching F1 on Netflix without having to make any work arounds here.

PR Newswire

Kakao Brain Unveils Efficient Text-to-Image Generator, RQ-Transformer, on GitHub

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  • Doubled the sampling speed compared to company’s ‘minDALL-E’ model
  • Achieved enhanced quality and faster sampling speed by configuring high-resolution images as low-resolution 3D tensors
  • Technology to be presented at global computer vision conference, CVPR 2022

SEOUL, South Korea , April 20, 2022 /PRNewswire/ — Kakao Brain has announced that it published its advanced text-to-image generator Residual-Quantized (RQ) Transformer on open-source community GitHub[1] in late March. RQ-Transformer, the text-to-image AI technology comprised of 3.9 billion parameters and 30 million text-image pairs, significantly improves the quality of generated images while reducing computational costs and achieving a sampling speed that exceeds every other text-to-image generator available worldwide.

RQ-Transformer successfully addresses the high computational costs and slow image generation of existing models. By primarily leveraging the residual quantization technique, which uses a fixed size of codebook to recursively quantize the feature map in a coarse-to-fine manner instead of simply increasing codebook size, RQ-Transformer is able to learn more information in a shorter period of time.

Boasting the highest number of parameters with 3.9 billion in Korea as well as the fastest sampling speed among Kakao Brain’s text-to-image AI models, RQ-Transformer outperforms the 1.4-billion-parameter minDALL-E, another open-source text-to-image model created by Kakao Brain, with double the sampling speed.

RQ-Transformer can understand text combinations it sees for the first time and create a corresponding image. Sample images generated on the text condition, ‘the Eiffel Tower in the desert,’ are shown below:

Sample images generated on the text condition, ‘the Eiffel Tower in the desert'
Sample images generated on the text condition, ‘the Eiffel Tower in the desert’

RQ-Transformer is just the beginning of Kakao Brain’s technology as it puts forward the fundamental technology that enables rapid image generation while maintaining cutting-edge performance. With this technology as its cornerstone, Kakao Brain plans to strengthen this model and improve the quality of images generated via computer programs, learn more data with greater cost-effectiveness, and build technologies that go beyond simply generating images on fed information to help humans visualize the ideas in their head on screen.

Recognized for its all-around superior approach, the text-to-image technology was selected to be presented at CVPR 2022,[2] an annual global computer vision conference which will be held in June this year. To uphold a high standard in its technologies, Kakao Brain’s Generative Model (GM) Team, in charge of the research & development (R&D) of image generation models, will continue to finetune this model in the pursuit of even more sophisticated images and faster sampling speeds.

“The computer generating images based on human commands signifies the tech’s ability to distinguish and understand the intention behind the demand,” said Kim Il-doo, CEO of Kakao Brain. “We’re incredibly excited to see where this research leads us, and we believe that this revolutionary AI model marks the beginning of the journey to a future where humans and computers can communicate freely.”

More information on RQ-Transformer is available on GitHub at https://github.com/kakaobrain/rq-vae-transformer.

About Kakao Brain

Kakao Brain is a world-leading AI company boasting unparalleled AI technologies and research & development networks. The company was established by Kakao in 2017 to solve some of the globe’s biggest ‘unthinkable questions’ with solutions enabled by its lifestyle-transforming AI technologies. Constantly driving innovation in the world of technology, Kakao Brain has developed numerous groundbreaking AI services and models designed to enhance quality of life for thousands of people, including minDALL-E, KoGPT, CLIP/ALIGN, and RQ-Transformer. As a global pioneer of AI, Kakao Brain has the responsibility of fostering a vibrant tech community and robust R&D ecosystem as it carries out its mission to form new tech markets with endless potential. For more information, visit https://KakaoBrain.com/.

[1] GitHub provides internet hosting for software development and is mostly used to host open-source projects. As of November 2021, GitHub is the largest source code host with over 73 million developers and 200 million repositories.

[2] CVPR (Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition), co-sponsored by Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and The Computer Vision Foundation (CVF) since 1983, is regarded as one of the most acknowledged annual conferences in the computer vision sector, along with European Conference on Computer Vision (ECCV) and International Conference on Computer Vision (ICCV).

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