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June 2019 www.intellinews.com I Page 25
In addition to supporting third-party smart home devices, Yandex is releasing a range of its own gadgets – the ‘Smart Bulb,’ the ‘Smart Plug’ and the ‘Smart Remote Control.’ (find more details in Yandex’s press release).
One year ago Yandex launched a Google Home- style smart speaker, dubbed Yandex.Station, also using Alice’s AI capacities.
AI-powered video stream personalization Yandex also announced that its users are now provided with personalized video stream for live and on- demand video on Yandex.Live, the company’s streaming content platform. A new HDMI dongle, dubbed ‘Yandex.Module,’ is also being launched to enable users to stream Yandex.Live to their TV screens.
Yandex.Module is integrated with Alice: thus,” users can control the media player with their voice via the Yandex Search App, Yandex Browser, Yandex.Station or any other Alice-enabled smart speaker,” as explained by the company.
Bulgaria to invest €12mn in EU supercomputing centre
Bulgaria will invest €12mn in the supercomput- ing centre the country will host after being picked by the European Union earlier in June, European Commissioner for Digital Economy and Society Mariya Gabriel was quoted as saying by news outlet Dnevnik.
Earlier in June, Gabriel announced that Bulgaria, the Czech Republic and Slovenia are among eight EU member states selected to host supercomput- ing centres. The European Commission describes the initiative as a step towards making Europe
a top supercomputing power globally.
The total investment in the supercomputing cen- tres is €1bn, of which €486mn will come from the European Commission, while the remainder will be invested by member states and private part-
ners, Dnevnik quoted Gabriel as telling reporters following a meeting with Prime Minister Boyko Borissov.
The project in Bulgaria will cost €18mn. The re- maining €6mn will be invested by the EC.
“The deadline is by the end of 2020 – until then the funds should be operational. Moreover, in the next programming period of the EC, with the new programme Digital Europe for the supercomputing [centres] will be allocated €2.7bn. These funds will be included in further development,” Gabriel said.
The centres are part of the European High-Per- fomance Computing Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC JU) that will pool EU and national resources to develop top-of-the-range exascale supercomput- ers for processing big data.
The supercomputing centres will be located in So- fia (Bulgaria), Ostrava (Czechia), Kajaani (Finland), Bologna (Italy), Bissen (Luxembourg), Minho (Por- tugal), Maribor (Slovenia), and Barcelona (Spain).
Rostelecom expects to close a deal to buy Tele2 before the end of this year
Rostelecom expects the government will approve its purchase of operator Tele2 and the transaction will close before the end of the year, the head of the company Michael Oseevsky said.
“We are working with the government. We are moving forward. We expect that in summer all the necessary documents will be released,” he said.
In March, Rostelecom agreed on the terms to con- solidate a 100% control in Tele2, and now the parties are discussing technical issues. Oseevsky assured that Tele2 will remain an independent company with the existing management, and the revenues of the combined company will be about RUB500bn.
Rostelecom currently owns 45% of Tele2. The rest is owned by Tele2 Russia Holding AB, in which