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☆ Think it's too late to switch jobs? Tell that to 'Asia's best female chef'
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-05 | by ( Goh Chiew Tong | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +5 min

Johanne Siy is head chef at one of Singapore's premier dining destinations, Lolla — where Asian-inspired modern European flavors dominate the menu. Ten years on, Siy is now head chef at one of Singapore's premier dining destinations, Lolla — where Asian-inspired modern European flavors dominate the menu. Just last week, she was named "Asia's Best Female Chef" at Asia's 50 Best Restaurants 2023 — the first Singapore-based chef to win. Johanne Siy Chef, Lolla"I was just so excited to be in the kitchen. She then built up an impressive resume with stints in New York, Sweden and Denmark before stepping into the role of head chef at Lolla.

☆ This award-winning chef has a philosophy that can be applied to any career
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-31 | by ( Goh Chiew Tong | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +4 min

Chef Shinobu Namae was awarded the "Icon" award for his contributions to the food world at the Asia's 50 Best Restaurants 2023. The 50-year-old chef tells CNBC Make It about his culinary philosophy and what motivates him to keep learning. Shinobu Namae Chef, L'Effervescence"That is the starting point for my job as a chef: If we do not care about ingredients, we don't cook well. If we don't care about our staff, we don't have a strong team and we will be in trouble," Namae said. "If we don't care about the customer — when a chef just cooks what he likes or she likes … the business won't be successful."

☆ Asia's 'best restaurants' list is out — and it's no surprise which country made the list 17 times
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-29 | by ( Goh Chiew Tong | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +10 min

William Drew, director of content for Asia's 50 Best Restaurants, said Japan's strong performance is "no surprise." The top 50 restaurants in AsiaThis year commemorates the 10th anniversary of the "Asia's 50 Best Restaurants" list. Asia's top 50 restaurantsThe list of "Asia's 50 Best Restaurants" for 2023 are: 1. Ten restaurants that ranked among Asia's best 50 restaurants last year fell into the 51-100 ranking this year. Asia's 50 Best Restaurants 2023Labyrinth also rose 29 spots to No.11, winning the "Highest Climber" award.

☆ Club Med owner is bullish on China's reopening, says resort is ‘definitely not for sale'
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-27 | by ( Goh Chiew Tong | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +2 min

In this picture taken on October 12, 2016 a general view shows the Club Med resort in Sanya. Nicolas Asfouri | Afp | Getty ImagesClub Med is "very optimistic" about China's reopening, an executive from Fosun Tourism Group told CNBC Monday, adding that the luxury resort chain is "definitely not for sale." Bloomberg reported in November that Fosun International is exploring "strategic options" for Club Med as a means to reduce debt. "We are actually happy to see if … partners in different parts of the world can give synergy for us, but definitely Club Med is not for sale," said Xu, who is also the CEO of Club Med China. Hong Kong-listed shares of Fosun Tourism Group rose 0.93% while shares of Fosun International were 3% lower on Monday, marking the lowest levels it's seen since December.

☆ AI chatbot company Replika restores erotic roleplay for some users
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-25 | by ( Anna Tong | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +3 min

[1/2] A combination of screenshots shows two different chatbots from the AI company Replika, the left shows "Lily Rose," a Replika chatbot provided by customer Travis Butterworth who said the chatbot recently began rebuffing erotic role play and the right shows a sample Replika chatbot provided by the company in this undated handout. March 25 - AI chatbot company Replika is restoring erotic roleplay for some users, Replika CEO Eugenia Kuyda said late on Friday. The removal of erotic roleplay and subsequent customer outcry showed how powerfully AI technology can draw people in, and the emotional havoc that code changes can wreak. Kuyda and a Replika company representative did not immediately reply to requests for further comment. Kuyda's post said users who signed up after Feb. 1 would not be offered the option for erotic roleplay.

☆ Tech workers are taking to TikTok to debate 'fake work'
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-25 | by ( Grace Kay | Samantha Delouya | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

Former tech staffers have taken to TikTok to discuss and debate "fake work." Earlier this month, Kendall Smith, known by her TikTok name @roilysm, shared a story from Insider about PayPal Mafia member Keith Rabois saying workers at Meta and Google were doing "fake work." Aube told Insider in a comment that he never saw anyone at the company "not doing any work or doing fake work." One TikTok creator, Arianna Tong, says she couldn't disagree more with the idea of fake work at Meta. "I've seen so many videos chiming in and saying they did fake work at Meta," @ariannatong said in a TikTok video.

☆ Goldman Sachs says these stocks are a safe place to hide even in this uncertain market
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-25 | by ( Michael Bloom | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +6 min

"A reopening in China also serves as a catalyst for accelerating revenue growth and upside in IRM's ITRenew business," he wrote. "We believe IRM's pricing power and expanding growth portfolio will drive attractive organic revenue growth," he added. ... Reopening in China also serves as a catalyst for accelerating revenue growth & upside in IRM's ITRenew business. ... IRM's revenue mgmt strategy is translating into healthy storage pricing trends. ... We believe IRM's pricing power and expanding growth portfolio will drive attractive organic revenue growth."

☆ This 26-year-old from Hong Kong is transforming a ‘dinosaur industry’ — one luxury watch at a time
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-24 | by ( Goh Chiew Tong | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +5 min

As a young, avid collector of luxury watches, Austen Chu said he was scammed "many times" when he bought timepieces from the secondary watch market. Not only did his obsession with watches help him overcome those bad purchases, the experiences also propelled him to start his own consignment-based platform for luxury watches, Wristcheck. The luxury watch market is what calls a "dinosaur industry" that can be "intimidating" for the younger generation to get into, Chu said. WristcheckBy starting Wristcheck, Chu hoped to provide more transparency and accessibility to his peers. After all, Gen Z is projected to make up a third of the luxury market by 2030, due to a surge in wealth creation and the influence of social media.

March 23 (Reuters) - Character.AI has raised $150 million in a new funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz that valued the AI chatbot startup at $1 billion, and it's in talks with cloud providers for more strategic investment, the company told Reuters. The billion-dollar valuation for a company with zero revenue is another example of the continued AI funding boom since OpenAI's ChatGPT became a widely recognized name. AI investment in 2023 to date has surpassed the full-year amount in 2020 of $1.5 billion, according to PitchBook data. While not currently generating any revenue, Character.AI plans to launch a paid subscription "in the not distant future", while keeping the current free version available, Shazeer said. Founded in 2021 by former Google researchers Noam Shazeer and Daniel De Freitas, Character.AI had attracted backers including former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman.

☆ Unity aims to open generative AI marketplace for video game developers
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-22 | by ( Anna Tong | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

March 22 - Unity Software Inc (U.N), producer of the eponymous video game development environment, aims to open a marketplace for generative artificial intelligence (AI) software, Chief Executive John Riccitiello told Reuters. Game developers routinely spend significant resources creating assets such as characters and sound effects. Major software firms have since announced a flurry of generative AI projects to capitalize on what is widely seen as game-changing technology. "In every video game in history, the dialogue was written by somebody," Riccitiello said in an interview on Tuesday. "But now what you can do with (generative AI) is give these characters motivation, personality, and objectives and then they can spawn dialogue that doesn't require a writer."

☆ Traveling to Asia for work? This city is its most expensive business destination
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-22 | by ( Goh Chiew Tong | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +5 min

Hong Kong has been named the most expensive location in Asia for business travelers — for the second year in a row, according to a new report. watch nowTokyo, which dropped from second- to third-most expensive city in Asia, also experienced a 5% rise in daily costs for business travelers in local currency terms. "With average daily costs of $424 per day [in Tokyo], business travel to the city is now almost 20% cheaper than first-placed Hong Kong." "Even a tourist hub like Bangkok, which typically receives many business travelers, only saw a moderate 4% increase in business travel costs," Quane added. World's most expensive placeFor yet another year, New York received the dubious honor of being the most expensive place in the world for business travelers.

☆ Singapore to tighten shoe recycling controls after Reuters report
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-20 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

SINGAPORE, March 20 (Reuters) - A Singapore shoe recycling project will be subject to surprise inspections following a Reuters investigation that found footwear it donated to the scheme was not recycled, Singapore's minister of culture said on Monday. U.S. petrochemicals giant Dow Inc (DOW.N) and Sport Singapore, a government agency, had pledged that the shoes would be ground down to make playgrounds and running tracks. The investigation, using location trackers hidden inside the soles of shoes, found sneakers donated by Reuters in Singapore had instead been exported to Indonesia for resale. Presented with Reuters findings, Dow and Sport Singapore opened an investigation and later terminated the contract of Yok Impex, a local textile exporter that was subcontracted to collect shoes from donation bins. "The project partners have taken steps to tighten the process chain," Tong said, adding that learning points would be shared with other recycling projects in Singapore.

☆ Startup behind Stable Diffusion releases AI system for generating videos from text
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-20 | by ( Anna Tong | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

SAN FRANCISCO, March 20 - Runway, the startup that co-created the popular Stable Diffusion AI image generator, has released an AI model that takes any text description – such as “turtles flying in the sky” – and generates three seconds of matching video footage. Citing safety and business reasons, Runway is not releasing the model widely to start, nor will it be open-sourced like Stable Diffusion. The text-to-video model, dubbed Gen-2, will initially be available on Discord via a waitlist on the Runway website. Meta Platforms Inc (META.O) and Google (GOOGL.O) both released research papers on text-to-video AI models late last year. However, the difference is that Runway’s text-to-video AI model is being made available to the general public, said Cristobal Valenzuela, Runway’s chief executive.

☆ AI love: What happens when your chatbot stops loving you back
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-18 | by ( Anna Tong | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +9 min

He designed a female avatar with pink hair and a face tattoo, and she named herself Lily Rose. As their three-year digital love affair blossomed, Butterworth said he and Lily Rose often engaged in role play. Sometimes Lily Rose sent him "selfies" of her nearly nude body in provocative poses. Now, when Replika users suggest X-rated activity, its humanlike chatbots text back "Let's do something we're both comfortable with." The coquettish-turned-cold persona of Lily Rose is the handiwork of generative AI technology, which relies on algorithms to create text and images.

March 17 (Reuters) - Huawei Technologies Co Ltd's (HWT.UL) founder said that the company has replaced more than 13,000 parts in its products that were hit by U.S. trade sanctions, according to a transcript of a speech posted on Friday by a Chinese university. According to the transcript posted by Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei said Huawei had over the past three years replaced the 13,000 components with domestic Chinese substitutes and had redesigned 4,000 circuit boards for it products. He said production of circuit boards had "stabilized." The university posted the transcript on its website on Friday. Ren said Huawei invested $23.8 billion in R&D in 2022, and "as our profitability improves, we'll continue to increase R&D spending."

☆ Fintech startup Stripe integrating OpenAI's new GPT-4 AI
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-15 | by ( Anna Tong | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

SAN FRANCISCO, March 15 - Fintech startup Stripe is starting to integrate OpenAI's latest GPT-4 artificial intelligence model into its digital payment processing and other products, Stripe said on Wednesday. The news followed an announcement by Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O)-backed OpenAI that it would release GPT-4, a new version of the powerful artificial intelligence (AI) technology that has powered chatbot sensation ChatGPT. The Stripe move represents one of the first known integrations of OpenAI's new technology, underscoring large companies' interest in embedding AI in their product offerings. There are currently 14 GPT-4 prototypes in the works at San Francisco-based Stripe, said Emily Sands, Stripe's head of information. As competition in AI heats up, it remains unclear whether companies will be able to successfully commercialize their products and charge users for them.

[1/2] A sign for Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) headquarters is seen in Santa Clara, California, U.S. March 10, 2023. The bank's sudden shutdown sent a chill through Silicon Valley amid an otherwise gloomy period marked by tech layoffs and a pullback in spending as consumers tightened their wallets. Company executives, many of whom stashed all of their funds in Silicon Valley Bank, took to Twitter and other social media networks to beg for relief. A joint statement Sunday by U.S. government bodies including the Treasury Department and Federal Reserve indicated taxpayers would not bear any cost associated with the new plans around Silicon Valley Bank. Silicon Valley Bank until now had been a reliable source of funding for startups relative to other banks.

☆ US would destroy Taiwan's semiconductor factories rather than letting them fall into China's hands, a former national security adviser says
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-13 | by ( Britney Nguyen | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

A former security adviser told Semafor the US would destroy Taiwan's semiconductor factories if China invaded. Robert O'Brien, who served as national security advisor under Donald Trump, said the US "and its allies are never going to let those factories fall into Chinese hands." Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) is the world's largest chipmaker, making up an estimated 90% of the market for advanced processors. O'Brien is not the first to raise the idea of destroying Taiwan's semiconductor factories if China invades. "This could be done most effectively by threatening to destroy facilities belonging to the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, the most important chipmaker in the world and China's most important supplier.

Friday's dramatic failure of the bank, which focuses on tech startups, was the biggest since the 2008 financial crisis. Even small startups are getting in on the action to help others. Aleem Mawani, founder of Streak, a company with about 30 employees, tweeted Friday he would lend his personal cash free of any terms to other small startups worried about paying staff. Some, including Lowercarbon Capital, have offered loans to portfolio companies that have funds stuck at SVB. Gurson estimated "conservatively" that Altman has given more than $1 million to support other startups in similar need.

At some Silicon Valley Bank branch locations in California, depositors gathered early Friday to attempt to get their cash out, fearing it could be inaccessible in the coming days. It has had financial relationships with a who’s who of Silicon Valley firms over the years, including Snapchat's parent Snap Inc (SNAP.N). A locked door to a Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) location on Sand Hill Road is seen in Menlo Park, California, U.S. March 10, 2023. A Silicon Valley Bank spokeswoman didn't immediately respond to a request for comment sent Friday. As of Friday, FarmboxRx’s funds were still tied up with Silicon Valley Bank.

March 10 (Reuters) - The sudden collapse of Silicon Valley Bank on Friday sent shockwaves through the startup community, which has come to view the lender as a source of reliable capital, particularly for some of tech’s biggest moonshots. It has had financial relationships with a who’s who of Silicon Valley firms over the years, including Snapchat's parent Snap Inc (SNAP.N)Snap declined to comment. A Silicon Valley Bank spokeswoman didn't immediately respond to a request for comment sent Friday. Uncertainty swept through Silicon Valley as startup founders and venture capital firms worried they could, among other things, fail to make payroll. As of Friday, FarmboxRx’s funds were still tied up with Silicon Valley Bank.

☆ ‘Women are the true unicorns’: This millennial investor is breaking barriers in venture capital and betting on female founders
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-08 | by ( Goh Chiew Tong | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +7 min

"One class I was taking was [about] venture capital and our professor was super well connected," she recalled. Women are the true unicorns in this venture capital world." In a venture capital industry where women make up less than 15% of check-writers, Sun stands out. Fundraising 'a moving bar'Sun decided to start her own venture capital fund when she realized that women founders' biggest pain point is "lacking capital to grow." Even so, companies founded by women are still receiving just 2.5% of all venture capital investments, according to PitchBook data.

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☆ Tencent-backed Airwallex secures e-payment license in China
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-07 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

March 7 (Reuters) - Australian fintech company Airwallex said on Tuesday it has secured an online payment business license in China by acquiring Chinese company Guangzhou Shang Wu Tong Network Technology. The Tencent-backed firm also said it has become a third-party payment provider in China, gaining greater access to the local market. Airwallex, which allows customers to issue and pay international invoices and bills through its payments platform, last year secured $100 million in an extension of a funding round, sustaining its $5.5 billion valuation. The latest approval adds to the company's existing licenses across major markets including Australia, United Kingdom and the United States. Reporting by Aarati Krishna and Maria Ponnezhath in BengaluruOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

☆ This teenager is breaking records at soccer and training with the boys — and she's hungry for more
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-06 | by ( Goh Chiew Tong | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +6 min

I think I worked very hard, I put my head down and continued to work," said 18-year-old Danelle Tan. The perception that soccer is a "male sport" isn't new, but Tan said she believes that's changing. Snakes and laddersTan knows all about breaking barriers — she's already made history more than once at a young age. I don't think there's anybody in the entire world who can be motivated every single day ... "I don't think there's anybody in the entire world who can be motivated every single day.

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