This article first appeared in Digital Edge, The Edge Malaysia Weekly on March 28, 2022 - April 3, 2022

Luno, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Digital Currency Group (DCG), has launched Luno Expeditions, a global early-stage investment arm to support the best fintech, crypto and web 3.0 founders on their journey to build the next generation of financial services.

Luno Expeditions will spearhead all of DCG’s early-stage crypto investing (seed and pre-seed), with a dedicated team set up to scale up to 300 investments per year and expand the focus beyond crypto into the broader fintech space globally.

Luno Expeditions has already invested in more than 20 leading crypto and fintech companies in the last few months, including a crypto compliance solutions platform, a non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace in the US, a bank dedicated to women in Pakistan and a groundbreaking remittance solution in Tanzania.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) signed a new cloud framework agreement (CFA) with the Malaysian government, together with a local IT provider and AWS partner Radmik Solutions Sdn Bhd, to accelerate cloud adoption in the public sector and help agencies save costs, boost digital skills and drive innovation.

This allows Radmik to provide technology and consulting services to government agencies while contributing towards Malaysia’s digital economy. AWS is the first international cloud service provider to have signed a CFA with the government as a long-term commitment in supporting the country’s digital transformation.

Government agencies and departments can now access AWS Cloud services through a streamlined procurement model as the CFA removes the administrative overhead for individual agencies and departments through favourable, pre-negotiated contract terms and conditions, which streamlines the cloud adoption process for government agencies and helps them save costs as a result of the economies of scale achieved from the aggregated procurement.

Last-mile delivery service Pgeon has introduced an insurance programme called Pgeon Care+, an insurance programme that caters for its part-time delivery drivers. This is an extension of the existing coverage for its full-time delivery riders, Pgeon Care. The company is the first delivery service provider in Malaysia to offer insurance to part-time riders, in a move to ensure that every employee is taken care of.

Pgeon Care+ covers part-time and full-time delivery drivers as well as warehouse staff, providing 24/7 nationwide coverage. The programme allows part-timers to claim up to RM10,000 for medical expenses, up to RM 9,000 for the cumulative daily hospital income and up to RM1,000 for a new smart device.

“The riders are the backbone of our service. Day or night, rain or shine, they move fast to ensure every customer gets their package on time in perfect condition. It only makes sense to take care of our employees, regardless of their status as part-timers or full-timers, as they all contribute to the company,” says Pgeon founder and CEO Clarence Leong.

Newly launched Anzen Health is set to be the latest addition to HealthMetrics’ healthcare system, serving as the central administrator managing more than 5,000 of HealthMetrics’ partners.

It will augment its services with Origin Pharmacy Sdn Bhd, which provides medication dispensing services to HealthMetrics’ corporate customers through its platform and mobile application. With a robust healthcare ecosystem that connects suppliers, customers, platform and service, its healthcare partners can expect greater efficiency and smoother transactions, including direct automated payments.

HealthMetrics’ aim is to provide end-to-end integrated corporate healthcare services, with accessible healthcare and accurate information for improved decision-making.

Shopee’s 3.15 Consumer Day post-campaign findings reveal that the number of Malaysian rural and community businesses participating as Shopee Marketplace sellers have increased 7.5 times since January 2020. Apart from driving financial inclusion in the digital economy with greater e-commerce literacy, their participation in Shopee University’s free upskilling programmes during the period increased 49 times.

The majority of these new local sellers have scaled their businesses by more than 150%, benefiting from increased warehouse and supply chain coverage. Today, there are more than two million sellers with the “local seller” tag on Shopee’s marketplace, offering consumers a wide range of authentic, made-in-Malaysia products.

Proficient, the country’s first end-to-end construction project management platform, has announced a long-term partnership with Boustead Holdings Bhd to promote the digital transformation of the industry. Boustead will leverage Proficient’s proprietary construction management capabilities for a number of its multimillion-ringgit projects across Malaysia.

Additionally, Boustead, through its wholly-owned subsidiary Boustead Digital Services Sdn Bhd, recently acquired a 10% stake in Proficient and will be looking to inject capital to bolster the latter’s expansion into local and regional markets, while accelerating more innovative functions and artificial intelligence capabilities on the platform.

“As a pioneer of Malaysia’s construction management scene, we understand the rising significance of technology in making the operational processes of developers and corporations more efficient. Using our expertise in end-to-end digital construction management, we aim to empower Boustead with the best innovations that call for a seamless transition from manual processes such as paperwork, logistics and inventory, to a fully automated and highly efficient procedure,” says Proficient CEO Jitin Girdhar.

ELMLAB, a local R&D company that specialises in connectivity technology, and REKA, an R&D firm that focuses on automation, have signed a memorandum of understanding to form a joint venture to lead the development of technology for autonomous vehicles (AVs).

Connectivity technology will enable teleoperation of AVs for improved road safety and timely arrivals. This technology will be made available to operate soundly on both 4G and 5G ecosystems, while ELMLAB and REKA cooperate to build a standard web 3.0 using blockchain technology as a framework for transparent supply chain management in e-mobility.

“We believe in strength through collaboration, between ELMLAB and REKA, Malaysians will have access to advanced digital tools which can result in a more convenient and safer way of living,” says ELMLAB director Choo Tzer Maan.

Our password-sharing days may be over as Netflix plans to trial a scheme that charges users who share their accounts with people outside their households in the next few weeks.

An additional surcharge of US$2.99 will be applied to a Standard or Premium account to add an extra member who doesn’t live under the same roof. The testing fee will be rolled out in Chile, Costa Rica and Peru before Netflix confirms the major decision.

This is another shift in the company’s strategy to target existing customers, instead of reeling in new subscribers, after it was reported that the streaming platform only expects to have an additional 2.5 million subscribers in 1Q2022.

Google is pushing an update with 11 security fixes that will protect vulnerable Chrome users on Windows, MacOS and Linux after discovering new high-level threats to its browser. According to Forbes magazine, Use-After-Free (UAF) and Heap buffer overflow exploits are the most popular routes to hacking Chrome.

UAF are memory hacks created when a programme fails to clear the pointer to the memory after it is freed. Meanwhile, the Heap buffer overflow, or Heap smashing, happens when the heap overflows and allows critical data structures to be overwritten.

Despite having no new Zero-Day vulnerabilities, Google recently warned about the rise of zero-day hacks as well. The update comes with Chrome 99.0.4844.74, which will be rolled out over the coming days and weeks.

Twitter Shops and Pinterest have introduced additional features for a swift online shopping experience on their platforms.

In Twitter’s blog post, the social media platform introduced Twitter Shops, which lets merchants choose up to 50 products to be displayed in its shop that are accessible from their profile pages.

The previous Shop Module on Twitter only allowed merchants to display up to five items. The new feature gives merchants a larger, fully immersive space to highlight a longer catalogue of products.

After adding an augmented reality feature called “AR Try On For Home Décor”, which lets users visualise preferred furniture being placed in their homes using their phones before making a purchase, Pinterest introduced an in-app checkout feature on March 11.

The platform also plans to add a “personal shopping concierge” feature and to make it easier for sellers to upload catalogues and keep pricing up to date. A trends tool will help sellers view real-time search data and learn more about their target audience.

For the past two years, there has been an increased emphasis on sustainability or on environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) compliance. As larger companies become more selective about working only with business partners who take ESG practices seriously, their trading partners, including small and medium enterprises (SMEs), can no longer afford to be “business as usual”.

With that in mind, Climate Governance Malaysia, in collaboration with leading businesses in the country, is organising a two-month programme called “How To Start Your Sustainability Journey” that will run from March 30 to June 1. There will be seven sessions, for a total commitment of eight hours. All sessions are free and will be conducted virtually.

The programme is primarily targeted at SMEs to equip them with the basic knowledge and tools to kick-start their sustainability journey. Participants will have the opportunity to hear from experts, starting with knowledge sessions where management tools will be shared and culminating in practical coaching sessions as participants turn their learnings into action.

For more information visit https://www.cgmalaysia.com/event-details/how-to-start-your-sustainability-journey-1

U Mobile Sdn Bhd has appointed Michael Tung as head of its consumer business. He will oversee the end-to-end management of consumer business across the following business streams: prepaid, post-paid, broadband, international direct dialling and roaming, device and retail branches.

Tung was previously with Maxis Bhd for eight years and left his last managerial role as head of Maxis Home. He also worked at Telekom Malaysia Bhd as assistant general manager for device management and at Digi.Com Bhd as head of device marketing.

Eda Lim, former head of digital and e-commerce at L’Oréal LUXE in Malaysia, has joined Meta as client partner. She was previously with Huawei Consumer Business Group as the regional digital manager for Asia-Pacific, during which she was responsible for building stronger digital capabilities and accelerating e-transformation while connecting customers.

Before the stint at Huawei, Lim was with L’Oréal for five years. She has also worked at Citibank Malaysia as head of digital banking and Nokia Malaysia as head of marketing.

airasia Super App has appointed Michele Mattotti to the newly created role of chief marketing officer. He will focus on streamlining the travel and lifestyle company’s marketing efforts across the region.

Mattotti was previously from Heineken Malaysia, where he last served as the company’s head of e-commerce. Before that, he was head of marketing and growth at Honestbee and head of growth at dahmakan (now known as Pop Meals). He has also worked at adidas Group and boutique consultancy Carpe Diem Valuenet.

Engineers have conducted the final test, known as the wet dress rehearsal, of the Space Launch System rocket, Orion spacecraft, and Exploration Ground Systems before the Artemis I launch at Launch Pad 39B at Nasa’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Artemis I will provide the foundation for human deep space exploration and demonstrate capabilities to extend human existence to the moon.

As more teams shift to hybrid working, it is a challenging task for IT administrators to monitor and troubleshoot multiple computers in various environments. The Lenovo Deployment Assistant (LDA) and Lenovo Manageability Commander (LMC) simplifies endpoint management for IT administrators.

Integrated with Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager, LDA simplifies administrators’ daily routines as follows:

• Streamlining the process of pushing out system updates to remote devices, cutting down on the process duration from days to mere hours

• Automating large-scale firmware updates and system patches

• Monitoring the health of endpoint devices and helping diagnose hardware failures from multiple locations

Beyond providing updates for the team, LMC acts as troops of cyberdefence for a large fleet of computers. The cloud-provisioned endpoint management console that unites with DASH (Desktop and mobile Architecture for System Hardware) standards and the Intel vPro platform to enable both in-band and out-of-band access capabilities, including remote boot and control.

IT admins can use LMC to easily connect with remote devices powered by Intel Core vPro(R) processors in all situations, even with an inoperable connection.

Ideal for any company that is already using Lenovo’s System Update, Dock Manager and Commercial Vantage Software Solutions, LDA is available globally on Windows 10 and Windows 11 Pro Lenovo ThinkPad, ThinkCentre and ThinkStation devices.

Meanwhile, LMC is ready to integrate with Intel vPro and DASH standards on any commercial PC powered by the Intel vPro Platform.

If you were accused of a crime, who would you rather decide your sentence — a mathematically consistent algorithm incapable of empathy or a compassionate human judge prone to bias and error? What if you wanted to buy a driverless car and had to choose between one programmed to save as many lives as possible and another that prioritises the lives of its own passengers?

These are just some of the dilemmas that we are beginning to face as we approach the age of the algorithm, when it feels as if the machines reign supreme. Already, these lines of code are telling us what to watch, where to go, whom to date and even whom to send to jail.

But as we rely on algorithms to automate big, important decisions — in crime, justice, healthcare, transport and money — they raise questions about what we want our world to look like. What matters most: helping doctors with diagnosis or preserving privacy? Protecting victims of crime or preventing innocent people from being falsely accused?

Hello World takes us on a tour through the good, the bad and the downright ugly of the algorithms that surround us on a daily basis. Mathematician Hannah Fry reveals their inner workings, showing us how algorithms are written and implemented, and demonstrates the ways in which human bias can literally be written into the code. By weaving in relatable, real-world stories with accessible explanations of the underlying mathematics that power algorithms, Hello World helps us to determine their power, expose their limitations and examine whether they really are an improvement on the human systems they replace.  Amazon

Save by subscribing to us for your print and/or digital copy.

P/S: The Edge is also available on Apple's AppStore and Androids' Google Play.