TECHNOLOGY

Libra faces support test

FACEBOOK’S Libra cryptocurrency faces a pivotal meeting of backers on Monday, days after the ambitious project to bring digital coins into mainstream commerce suffered a severe setback when major payment firms quit.
Mastercard and Visa abandoned the Geneva-based Libra Association on Friday, as did eBay, fintech startup Stripe and payments company Mercado Pago.
The exodus followed warnings from politicians and regulators, from the United States to Europe, that Libra risked upsetting global financial stability, undermining users’ privacy and facilitating money laundering.
The latest withdrawals followed the departure of PayPal from the Libra Association earlier this month, and leave Facebook without the backing of any major payments firms for the project, due to launch by June 2020.
At the meeting, which will take place in Geneva, members will agree interim articles of association, said a spokesman for Vodafone, one of the highest-profile companies remaining in the project.
Articles of association are typically written rules that lay out how a company or organisation is governed.
The Libra Association will also appoint a board at the meeting, the Wall Street Journal reported this month.
A spokeswoman for the Libra Association declined to comment on the meeting.
The group said this month that it would give details after the meeting of the 1,500 “entities” that have indicated “enthusiastic interest” to take part in the project.
The association, whose remaining 22 members include ride-hailing firms Uber and Lyft, also consists of non-profit organisations, venture capital groups and blockchain firms.

But the departure of major financial firms meaning it can no longer count on a global player to help consumers turn their currency into Libra and facilitate transactions. This presents a new stumbling block for Libra’s efforts to convince regulators and politicians about the coin’s safety.
France pledged last month to block Libra from operating in Europe, while the Bank of England laid out high hurdles it must meet before its launch. US Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell has also suggested the project could not advance before concerns were assuaged.
Libra, announced as Facebook expands into e-commerce, will be backed by a reserve of real-world assets, including bank deposits and short-term government securities, and overseen by the Libra Association.
The structure is intended to foster trust and stabilise the price volatility that plagues cryptocurrencies and renders them impractical for commerce and payments.
Factbox: Facebook’s Libra in trouble as firms jump ship
A number of payment processors and fintech companies that joined Facebook Inc’s digital currency project Libra with great fanfare earlier this year, have abandoned the project, dealing a blow to the social media giant’s plans.
The move follows warnings from politicians and regulators around the world about the implications of creating a global digital currency and the threat it will pose to financial stability, undermining users’ privacy and facilitating money laundering.
Following is a list of the companies and partners that have pulled out of the Libra project:
Paypal Holdings Inc: The US payments processor was the first member to withdraw from the Libra Association on Oct. 4.
eBay Inc: The e-commerce firm said on Friday it would no longer be the founding member of the Libra association as it wants to focus on rolling out its managed payments experience for customers.
Visa Inc: A spokesperson said on Friday Visa will not join Libra at this time, but the final decision will be based on different factors including the association’s ability to fully satisfy regulatory expectations.
Mastercard: Mastercard joined the list of companies to pull out of the agreement, and said on Friday it would not join the association, despite believing that there are potential benefits in financial inclusion initiatives.
Stripe Inc: A Stripe spokesperson confirmed on Friday it is exiting Libra. The fintech startup, added it will be following progress on Libra cryptocurrency closely, and will be open to working with the libra association at a later stage.
Mercado Pago: Mercado Pago, a Latin American payments company, has also dropped out of the project.
Booking Holdings Inc: The online travel agency will no longer be supporting Libra, CNBC tweeted on Monday. Booking Holdings did not immediately respond to Reuters’ request for comment. – Reuters

More US women get tech jobs

WHEN Naomie Baptiste was a second-grader in Miami, her uncle, a retired Coca-Cola electrical engineer, played a mathematics game with her at the store.
If she wanted M&Ms, he made her earn the candy by figuring out the sales tax that would be added to the price of the package at the register. That calculation was one of the things that helped her build an interest in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.
“He was the first person who inspired me to be an engineer,” said Baptiste, now a sustainment engineer with the Orlando office of Lockheed Martin’s Missiles and Fire Control division.
“Those are lessons I carry into Lockheed Martin whenever we taste the sweet victory of winning a contract.”
Baptiste is part of a growing number of women with careers in technology-related fields, according to a new survey conducted by the women in STEM advocate AnitaB.org.
The study found that women make up 25.12 per cent of the workforce, far short of the organisation’s stated goal of reaching a 50-50 split by 2025, but a jump from 21.74 per cent in 2016.
The group each year hosts the Grace Hopper Celebration, a high-tech gathering that two weeks ago drew more than 25,000 attendees, most of them women, to the Orange County Convention Center.
“If women are not at the table and don’t have a community, they will feel isolated and might feel like they don’t have a voice,” said Michelle Flatt, vice president of programmes for AnitaB.org.
“We are trying to amplify that voice. We have the conference so women see each other and don’t feel isolated at work.”
A career fair at the Grace Hopper Celebration drew recruiters from some of the world’s largest tech companies: Facebook, Sony, Google, Snapchat, Microsoft.
Thousands of women walked among virtual reality installations, inspirational quotes and recruiters with resumes in hand, hoping to land a job or internship.
The process was familiar to 20-year-old Florida International University junior Catherine Angelini, who was at the convention and worked an internship with Microsoft this summer.
Tech companies should strive to hire more women because it ensures a variety of voices solving problems with technology, she said.
“The world is made up of many different kinds of people,” she said. “Being able to understand the perspective of women is important because we are part of society and helping raise the next generation.”
In Orlando, the effort to increase the number of women in technology has been inconsistent.
While locally run groups like Girls Who Code and Orlando Lady Devs have seen growth, outside support has been slow to emerge, said Suneera Madhani, an Orlando entrepreneur whose company Fattmerchant recently surpassed 100 employees.
“We have seen a lot of growth and momentum in the last five years, so that has been exciting,” she said. “But I don’t think we specialise particularly in trying to encourage more women entrepreneurs.”
Madhani said the bulk of locally led conferences and gatherings tend to be about general business, with few groups specifically featuring women in technology.
Orlando had been home to a local chapter of the women’s entrepreneurial group WeVenture until it shut down in 2016.
Madhani said the city of Orlando should help fund an initiative that encourages more women to pursue tech businesses.
“They should carve out the dollars needed to fund an organisation that can act as a parent organisation that represents all of the many chapters that are here now,” said Madhani, who also pointed out that Orlando does have a responsive business community readily available for her if she needs feedback.
“We need one place that can be the voice for women in tech here. It has to be a group effort for this to succeed.”– Orlando Sentinel/Tribune News Service

Electric car project scrapped

DYSON, the technology company best known for its vacuum cleaners, has scrapped a project to build electric cars.
The firm, headed by British inventor Sir James Dyson, said its engineers had developed a “fantastic electric car” but that it would not hit the roads because it was not “commercially viable”.
In an email sent to all employees, Sir James said the company had unsuccessfully tried to find a buyer for the project.
The division employs 500 UK workers.
Dyson had planned to invest more than £2bn in developing a “radical and different” electric vehicle, a project it launched in 2016. It said the car would not be aimed at the mass market.
Half of the funds would go towards building the car, half towards developing electric batteries.
In October 2018 Dyson revealed plans to build the car at a new plant in Singapore. It was expected to be completed next year, with the first vehicles due to roll off the production line in 2021.
Dyson wanted to make something revolutionary – but also needed to make it pay. And the sums simply didn’t add up.
Sales of electric cars are climbing rapidly. Yet they still cost more to make than conventional cars, and generate much lower profits – if any.
Major manufacturers like VW can afford to plough tens of billions into the EV industry – on the basis that economies of scale will ultimately make the technology cheaper and generate returns.
Even the upstart Tesla, widely credited with showing everyone else just how good electric cars could be, has burnt through mountains of cash and had to go cap in hand to investors.
Dyson has concluded it simply can’t afford to play with the big boys – although its efforts to make a quantum leap in battery technology will continue.
The company also planned to invest £200m in the UK in research and development and test track facilities. Much of that money has already been spent and Dyson said it would use the site for other projects.
The rest of the funds intended for the electric car project would still be spent on developing other products, including its battery technology, Dyson said.
The assistant managing director of Singapore’s Economic Development Board Tan Kong Hwee said the country would still play a significant role in Dyson’s growth plans.
“As Dyson’s decision not to pursue the electric vehicle business was taken at an early stage, the disruption to its operations and workforce in Singapore will be minimal,” he said.
The first cars had already been developed and were being tested.
But in an email on Thursday, Sir James revealed that Dyson was closing electric car facilities both in the UK and Singapore.
The project employed 523 people, 500 of whom were in UK, and Sir James praised their “immense” achievements.
“This is not a product failure, or a failure of the team, for whom this news will be hard to hear and digest,” Sir James wrote.
But, he said: “We have tried very hard throughout the development process, we simply can no longer see a way to make it commercially viable.
“The Dyson automotive team has developed a fantastic car; they have been ingenious in their approach while remaining faithful to our philosophies.”
He said the firm was trying to find alternative roles for the workers in its home division, which makes things such as vacuum cleaners, fans and hairdryers.
Sir James said Dyson would continue to work on the battery technology, which was used in the car.
“Our battery will benefit Dyson in a profound way and take us in exciting new directions.”
“In summary, our investment appetite is undiminished and we will continue to deepen our roots in both the UK and Singapore,” he said.
“This is not the first project which has changed direction and it will not be the last.” – BBC