Author Archives: Scalper1

Apple-FBI Feud Over iPhone Encryption Turns Ugly

The fight over smartphone encryption between Apple ( AAPL ) and the Department of Justice is being waged as much in the court of public opinion as it is in a federal court in Riverside, Calif. Late Thursday, Apple delivered an angry response to a DOJ court filing that accused the Cupertino, Calif., company of trying to sway opinion with false rhetoric and “corrosive” comments about the federal government. In its latest filing, the Justice Department accused Apple of deliberately raising technological barriers to prevent law enforcement officials from accessing data on its smartphones. It said Apple’s arguments about increasing data security on its iPhones to protect its customers’ privacy was a “diversion.” On Feb. 16, a federal judge in Southern California ordered Apple to provide “reasonable technical assistance” to the FBI to help unlock a password-protected iPhone belonging to Syed Farook, one of the killers in the San Bernardino, Calif., terrorist attack on Dec. 2. The Justice Department says the case is about only the one iPhone, but Apple believes it will set a precedent that will create a backdoor for government spies, criminals and hackers. “Apple’s rhetoric is not only false, but also corrosive of the very institutions that are best able to safeguard our liberty and our rights: the courts, the Fourth Amendment, longstanding precedent and venerable laws, and the democratically elected branches of government,” the DOJ said in its filing Thursday. Apple General Counsel Bruce Sewell took offense at the claims of federal prosecutors. “In 30 years of practice I don’t think I’ve seen a legal brief that was more intended to smear the other side with false accusations and innuendo, and less intended to focus on the real merits of the case,” Sewell said in a statement Thursday . Sewell called the DOJ filing a “cheap shot.” “We add security features to protect our customers from hackers and criminals,” Sewell said. “And the FBI should be supporting us in this because it keeps everyone safe. To suggest otherwise is demeaning. It cheapens the debate and it tries to mask the real and serious issues. I can only conclude that the DOJ is so desperate at this point that it has thrown all decorum to the winds.” Meanwhile, U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch went on “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” to defend the FBI’s stance in the case. She reiterated the government’s claims that the case is “very narrow and very focused” on one smartphone and that the feds aren’t trying to create a backdoor to Apple’s iPhone security. Apple claims that if the government succeeds in this case it will set a dangerous precedent that will allow it and other governments to keep coming back to Apple to hack its iPhones. Worse, if the technology becomes available to circumvent iPhone security, it’s only a matter of time before it leaks out to hackers and criminal enterprises who will go after iPhone users’ personal and financial data. RELATED:  Tech Rivals Unite To Support Apple In iPhone Privacy Case Vs. FBI .

Genpact Sees Surge In Outsourcing Business; BPO Stocks Up

Highly rated but modestly traded Genpact ( G ) stock bumped up a fraction Friday, after a day of show-and-tell at its analyst day Thursday that spotlighted a surge of growth for the outsourcing business. Many rival stocks were up even more, with Paychex ( PAYX ) stock up 2% in midday trading in the stock market today . William Blair analyst Anil Doradla came away “with the sense that business fundamentals were intact and that the company’s deal pipeline is healthy,” he wrote in a research note Friday. Genpact executives suggested that the company had plenty of room for growth in its business process outsourcing market, because revenue for the market overall rose 35%, to $500 billion, in the past year, while Genpact sales rose 8%, to $2.46 billion, Doradla said. But he also said BPO growth will slow. Doradla put Genpact trading at 18.8 times William Blair’s 2016 EPS estimate for Genpact, “a slight premium to its peers in the fast-growth BPO industry,” which is trading at 17.6 times estimated earnings, he said. BPO is found in more than one industry group. In IBD’s Commercial Services-Outsourcing group, Genpact ranks as the fourth-largest company, with a market cap of $5.6 billion. The group is led by Paychex with an $18.9 billion market value, Cintas ( CTAS ) at $9.5 billion and Aramark ( ARMK ) at $7.7 billion. Shares of both Cintas and Aramark were up more than 1% midday Friday. IBD’s Computer-Tech Services also hosts some heavyweight outsourcers, including Infosys ( INFY ) with a $40.3 billion market cap, and Cognizant Technology Solutions ( CTSH ) at $33.9 billion. IBM ( IBM ) is included in this group, although it does much more than outsourcing. Infosys stock was up a fraction midday Friday, while Cognizant was more than 2% and IBM nearly 2%. Genpact specializes in financial services outsourcing, contributing about 42% of its revenue. Manufacturing and health care are its other two main markets. Sales to its largest customer, General Electric ( GE ), fell 1% last year to 19% of Genpact’s total revenue. Genpact is a GE spinoff. “Overall, we came away with a bullish tone from management, both at a company-specific level and with regard to the overall BPO market,” Doradla said. “Management highlighted that the company is witnessing healthy demand in its business and that Genpact has an active deal pipeline. “Some of the key drivers for the upwardly revised figures include customers increasingly viewing BPO companies as transformation partners who not only offer a cost arbitrage, but also provide valuable insights into business operations. Specific areas in which the industry is increasingly engaging clients include IoT, big data and cybersecurity. “Bottom line, we believe that the BPO industry is poised for strong overall growth over the next several years and that Genpact stands to grow at a faster pace than the overall industry due to domain expertise and strong client relationships.” Genpact carries an IBD Composite Rating of 96, with 99 the highest, and currently is an IBD Leaderboard stock. Trading near 26.50 midday Friday, it is within range from a 26 buy point touched last month.

How To Bake A Highly Deficient Cake

What happens when you leave out a key ingredient in the recipe for baking a cake? We won’t keep you in suspense. What you get is a highly deficient cake, but how it is highly deficient can tell you quite a lot about what the omitted ingredient contributes to a competently executed cake! At Bristol Science Centre, Nerys and David illustrate what we can learn by baking four different cakes – one batch with all the ingredients the basic recipe calls for, then other batches where either the margarine, eggs or baking powder has been excluded from the recipe. The following video illustrates how the resulting cakes baked with a single missing ingredient differ from a proper cake baked with all the ingredients. The same principle applies to data analysis. For instance, if a set of economic data omits the contributions of one particular sector of the economy, and that sector turns out to contribute a large share to the performance of the overall economy, the analysis produced using such data that excludes the omitted sector’s contribution will be highly deficient, because the data itself is not adequately representative of the economy being analyzed. Much like what happens when you bake a cake without one ingredient and compare it with a cake baked with all of them, the deficiency becomes very evident when you compare the results of the deficient analysis with the results of analysis performed with data that does not omit the missing sector’s contributions. If a professional baker omitted an ingredient in a cake recipe, then their competence would certainly be at issue. If they weren’t aware that the ingredient was missing, it might all be chalked up to simple ignorance on their part – the kind of mistake that many of us all make from time to time, that we acknowledge, learn from and do not repeat. But if they were aware of the deficiency and then went on to claim that the results of their deficient recipe were just the same as a properly baked cake, then their integrity would certainly also be at issue. We wonder how many people would continue to buy the “cakes” of such a highly deficient professional baker!