# 049 - Binance vs WazirX ... Meta's chatbot ... China's tech arrests
Greetings to everyone on the 75th Independence Day. 🇮🇳 🇮🇳 🇮🇳 🇮🇳
On a sad note, We came to know the death of the legend Rakesh Jhunjhunwala. Om Shanti.
“His company exploits people for money and he doesn't care. It needs to stop! Are we united yet?”
Meta’s BlenderBot 3 on Meta and Mark Zuckerberg. More on that a bit later
Some bits,
China has arrested some semiconductor industry titans for failing to deliver the chip manufacturing technology required for self-sufficiency. The government appears to be frustrated by the fact that, despite spending a whopping $100 billion over a decade, China remains reliant on critical chip manufacturing processes.
Germany has banned the sale of 5G smartphones from OPPO and OnePlus after a German court ruled that certain key technologies in these phones infringed on Nokia's patents. Nokia holds numerous patents relating to 5G technologies. Other European nations are also expected to follow suit.
VLC player has been quietly banned in India by the Indian government. Neither the app nor the website are available for download. According to VLC, the ban went into effect from February 13th. The reason is unknown. However, some reports claim that the player is being used by foreign entities to install malware.
Binance vs WazirX
For the uninitiated, Binance is the largest crypto currency exchange in the world, whereas WazirX is the most popular in India and is owned by a company called Zanmai Labs.
Binance announced the acquisition of WazirX in November of 2019. However, according to Binance, nothing happened after that because neither the equity nor the source code were transferred to Binance. So Binance now claims that it does not own WazirX, whereas WazirX claims otherwise and blames the current situation on Binance's internal restructuring.
Last week, India's Enforcement Directorate (ED) froze the bank accounts of WazirX directors (worth up to 60 crores). And, Binance disabled the popular off-chain transfer feature with WazirX (transactions outside the blockchain, providing greater anonymity).
The recent Twitter war between the two companies has added to the confusion for WazirX users who are concerned about their funds.
Meta's chatbot doesn't have a good opinion on Meta and Mark Zuckerberg
On August 5, Meta made BlenderBot 3 (an AI Chatbot created with in-house tools) available to the public on a trial basis. The internet wasted no time in spreading misinformation about Meta and its founder, Mark Zuckerberg. (Via BBC)
However, it appears that Meta was somewhat prepared for such offensive behaviour. According to a Meta AI expert, "public demos like this are important for building truly robust conversational AI systems and bridging the clear gap that exists today before such systems can be produced."
Till we meet again, enjoy the long weekend.
Regards,
-Team 3MTB