The Netherlands - Russia: Competition for Google? Yandex opens B2B big data division in Amsterdam and Moscow

Yandex - finally a Google Competitor?

Yandex, the Russian Google competitor, has for a while been quietly offering its MatrixNet machine learning technology to other organizations – CERN, for example, has used it to establish statistical relevance in its floods of physics data. On Tuesday, Yandex announced a more formal push into offering big data services to corporate and enterprise clients.

The company revealed Yandex Data Factory at the Le Web conference in Paris. Yandex said its technologies can be used for the personalization of recommendations, natural language processing, image and speech recognition, credit scoring, logistics optimization, demographic profiling and so on.

According to Yandex, these services have already been used by a leading European bank to crunch behavioral data, so as to match products to specific marketing channels in a personalized way. The firm’s machine learning and geolocation services were also used by a road management agency to boost accident prediction accuracy. All in all, Yandex is already providing big data services for 20 projects.

Yandex says it’s able to create various kinds of deep neural networks with MatrixNet, which is used to train ranking formulas, boosting the effectiveness of the learning process. The firm claims the cluster management tools in its Friendly Machine Learning framework make it easier to get into big data research by allowing researchers to “avoid dealing with distributed computing problems.”

It uses proprietary technologies including Yandex MapReduce and Real Time MapReduce, and Yandex Tables, which is a big data storage and processing platform.

Yandex Data Factory has an Amsterdam office as well as one in Moscow, and also has data centers across various countries. The company also offers training programs for corporate tech teams and free masters-level courses for university graduates — it  actually had a data analysis school since 2007. 

Note EU-Digest: Competition for Google ? - The Yandex search engine which is now getting more and more popular in Europe while Google continues to struggle with privacy issues. Yandex provides all the same features Google has and is also fast. The origin and the technology are Russian.  Obviously you could  be jumping from the "frying pan in the fire" by switching, but in this case one would think Yandex has far more to lose than Google and would be more inclined not to "fiddle" with your privacy.  You can  even download Yandex for your tablet or phone at the Google Play Store. To get Yandex for your laptop or computer you can download it from the Internet. It certainly is worth a try.and good for the competition and the consumer. 

Read more: Yandex opens B2B big data division in Amsterdam and Moscow — Tech News and Analysis

Incassobureaus gaan vaak hun boekje te buiten en het wordt de hoogste tijd dat de Overheid scherper gaat optreden

De Gelderlander bericht dat sommige incassobureaus het vaak niet zo nauw met de regels. Met blafbrieven en dreigementen halen zij (vermeende) wanbetalers over snel de portemonnee te trekken.

Laat je niet intimideren en houd voet bij stuk als je in je recht staat.

Toch is het schrikken als een brief van een incassobureau op de deurmat ploft. Er blijkt nog een rekening open te staan en op dwingende toon wordt snelle betaling geëist. Zo niet, dan volgen boetes, loopt de
rente op en komen ook de kosten voor de gang naar de rechter voor jouw rekening. Onder de indruk besluit je maar snel het geld over te maken.

Jaarlijks versturen incassobureaus zo'n 3,5 miljoen brieven naar (vermeende) wanbetalers. Sommige incassobureaus schuwen daarbij dreigementen niet. In blafbrieven eigenen ze zich bevoegdheden toe die
ze helemaal niet hebben. Bijvoorbeeld om een deurwaarder op je af te sturen. Of ze zwaaien met een 'concept dagvaarding', hoewel zoiets niet bestaat.

"Helaas kan in Nederland iedereen een incassobureau beginnen", zegt Jan Franssen, voorzitter van de Nederlandse Vereniging van Gecertificeerde Incasso- ondernemingen (NVI), die 70 procent van de
markt vertegenwoordigt. "Door toename van de schuldenproblematiek ruiken malafide partijen hun kans geld te verdienen met incasso. Vaak lappen zij de regels aan hun laars."

Die regels zijn in 2012 aangeschert. Voor incassokosten gelden vaste percentages en voor rekeningen tot 250 euro mag nooit meer dan 40 euro in rekening worden gebracht. Ook moet je na een aanmaning 14 dagen de tijd krijgen om – zonder extra kosten – te betalen. "Maar het is een gemiste kans dat de wet nog altijd geen eisen stelt aan de oprichting van incassobureaus", stelt Franssen. "Bovendien wordt niet gecontroleerd en zijn er geen sancties bij overtreding." Een bijkomend probleem is dat consumenten slecht op de hoogte zijn van hun rechten, zo blijkt uit een recent onderzoek van de Consumentenbond. "We krijgen veel klachten en vragen over incasso", zegt woordvoerder Joyce Donat. "Sommige mensen laten zich alleen al door het woord incassobureau schrik aanjagen. Laat je niet intimideren en zoek rustig uit of de vordering terecht is en wat je rechten en plichten zijn."

Dat kan bijvoorbeeld op de sites van de Consumentenbond en ConsuWijzer.

Netherlands - The Hague-based ICC accepts Palestine's status

The International Criminal Court has accepted the status of Palestine, clearing the way for war crimes in the Occupied Territories to be investigated, Al Jazeera has learned.

Monday's decision amounts to a symbolic victory for the Palestinians who will get a seat at the ICC: in theory, it is now legally possible for war crimes to be investigated in the Occupied Territories if requested.

The ICC, which is governed by the Rome Statute, is the first permanent, treaty-based, international criminal court established to help end impunity for the perpetrators of the most serious crimes of concern to the international community.

The court, whose headquarters is at The Hague in the Netherlands, is an independent international organisation and is not part of the UN system.

While its expenses are funded primarily by "states parties", the ICC also receives voluntary contributions from governments, international organisations, individuals, corporations and other entities.

Al Jazeera's Diplomatic Editor James Bays, reporting from the UN headquarters in New York, said the acceptance happened at an open meeting on Monday of the assembly of states parties of the ICC.

"What this means is that Palestine is now listed as a 'non-state party observer' - exactly the same status as the US or Russia or every other country that is not a signatory of the Rome Statute," he said.

Read more: Hague-based ICC accepts Palestine's status - Americas - Al Jazeera English

EU-Economy: EU selects projects worth 1.3 trillion-euro to revive economy and jobs

The European Union has drawn up a wish list of almost 2,000 projects worth 1.3 trillion euros ($1.59 trillion) for possible inclusion in an investment plan to revive growth and jobs without adding to countries' debts.

Investment has been a casualty of the financial crisis in Europe, tumbling around 20 percent in the euro zone since 2008, according to the European Central Bank.

Following a call by European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, EU governments have submitted projects ranging from a new airport terminal in Helsinki to flood defenses in Britain, according to a document seen by Reuters.

"Almost 2,000 projects were identified with a total investment cost of 1,300 billion euros of which 500 billion are to be realized within the next three years,'' said the document, to be discussed by EU finance ministers on Tuesday.

Read more: EU selects projects worth 1.3 trillion-euro to revive economy and jobs

Privacy Rights: The NSA spent years snooping on the world's wireless carriers - by Chris Velazco

The NSA's got its long, spindly proboscises slurping up sweet, sweet information from within governments and businesses the world over, so it shouldn't come as a surprise to hear that wireless carriers are targets, too. That's the thrust of a lengthy new report from The Intercept: The NSA is capable of snooping in on a vast majority of the world's cell phone service providers thanks to an initiative called AURORAGOLD, as revealed in key documents from Edward Snowden's archives.

Rad more: The NSA spent years snooping on the world's wireless carriers

Middle East: ‘America in Retreat’: Why Neo-Isolationism Exploded Under Obama and What We Can Do About It - by James Kirchiek

Pulitzer Prize winner Bret Stephens’ new book looks at an America in retreat from global engagement.

One of President Barack Obama’s more annoying habits is a rhetorical propensity for describing policies in black-and-white terms. The nation can either accept his ideas or risk ghastly consequences.

Naturally when you paint the world in such stark colors, you see any and all opposition as delusional, malevolent, venal or a combination of all three. In no realm of policy-making has Obama’s obduracy been more profound than foreign affairs, the area about which he knows the least but presumes to know the most.

An early and memorable indication of Obama’s tendency to portray disagreement unfairly was his response to John McCain’s suggestion, during the 2008 presidential campaign, that America maintain a troop presence in Iraq for “maybe 100 years.” The U.S. maintains forces in Germany and Japan as a stabilizing presence decades after defeating those countries in war, the Republican nominee said, and the lives of its soldiers there are not under threat. Deliberately misconstruing McCain’s remarks in both letter and spirit, Obama assailed McCain as a warmonger, “willing to send our troops into another 100 years of war in Iraq.”

A generous appraisal of Obama’s comments might chalk them up to mere campaign rhetoric. That might have been possible had not Obama—acting against the advice of his Secretary of State, Joint Chiefs Chairman, two Secretaries of Defense, and numerous other national security officials—executed plans to remove all American troops from Iraq by December 2011. The results of that rash decision, the most dire of which has been the rise of ISIS, are now plain for us to see. Obama had inherited an Iraq that was largely pacified, yet so committed was he to reducing America’s footprint in the Middle East that he sacrificed a set of hard-won gains to fulfill an ideological commitment.

Read more: ‘America in Retreat’: Why Neo-Isolationism Exploded Under Obama and What We Can Do About It - The Daily Beast

A Sovereign Wealth Fund For The Eurozone? - by Henning Meyer

Social Europe Journal has just published its latest Research Essay “Public Capital in the 21st Century” by Giacomo Corneo. The main argument of the paper is that the state should become a kind of investment state in order to make sure that high returns on capital do not further increase inequality but benefit the wider public. To achieve this, Corneo argues that governments should set up sovereign wealth funds to manage their investments and take advantage of low interest rates on sovereign bonds as investments should be debt-financed.

Having read the paper I was wondering whether this would also be an option to create the much-touted fiscal capacity for the Eurozone. Such a mechanism wouldn’t need Eurozone taxes or tax harmonisation (although both would be desirable) and does not require an open-ended commitment to joint debt. Here is how it could work: Let’s assume a Eurozone debt instrument backed by all governments can borrow for 1.5% in financial markets.

 For the sake of it let’s assume an annual return of 6% on a globally diversified portfolio, which is a realistic scenario. 25% of the return would be required to service the debt and Corneo argues that the rest should be used to pay back the principal so the debt incurred will be repaid in 15 years or so. I would argue that the remaining 75% of the return should be split between repaying the principal and increasing the size of the fund. So an alternative split of the return could look like this: 50% repayment of debt, 25% debt service, 25% increasing the size of the fund.

The key points are that the initial debt will be fully repaid after a defined period of time (so there is no open-ended commitment to joint debt) and that such a sovereign wealth fund could create a significant amount of revenue that could be the income source for a Eurozone budget. The budget would be administered by a Eurozone group in the European Parliament and could be used to help stabilise the currency area.

Apart from the need to complement this pro-cyclical instrument with counter-cyclical measures (issuing debt for current spending rather than investment that would also be repaid with priority?) that should kick in if there is a general crisis, I cannot see a reason for why this wouldn’t work, especially given that a budget of about 2% of GDP is regarded as big enough to effectively counterbalance asymmetric shocks.

Read more : A Sovereign Wealth Fund For The Eurozone?