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2019 – MediaPost Communications

Posted on December 13, 2019 by Danzig

The majority of businesses adopting the Internet of Thingsalso are adopting blockchain and combining it with their IoT networks, according to a new study by Gartner.

Three quarters (75%) of IoT technology adopters in the U.S. already have adoptedblockchain or are planning to by the end of 2020, according to the study, comprising a survey of 500 managers and executives with a primary involvement and responsibility for making decisions in IoTimplementations.

Among the blockchain adopters, 86% are implementing the two technologies together in various projects, according to Garter.

The integration of IoTand blockchain networks is a sweet spot for digital transformation and innovation, stated Avivah Litan, vice president at Gartner. In the long term, we expect the combination of IoT andblockchain to enable innovative devices and business models, but the necessary evolution in both blockchain and IoT will take five to 10 years to achieve maturity.

Of thosewho are implementing IoT and blockchain together, nearly two-thirds said it was because of increased security and trust.

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75% Of IoT Adopters Moving To Blockchain: Gartner 12/12/2019 - MediaPost Communications

Blockchain technology must align with the Belt and Road Initiative": Chinese government official TechNode – TechNode

Posted on December 13, 2019 by Danzig

3 min read Farah Jaafar-Crossby, CEO of Labuan International Business and Financial Centre, speaking on the stage of the International Cooperation Forum on Digital Economy and Blockchain. (Image credit: Hainan Free Trade Port International Cooperation Forum)

China missed out on the first few rounds of internet development. When companies like Google and Facebook started to dominate the worlds technology space, China was still playing catchup.

In recent years, however, the country has been trying to establish itself as a global leader in emerging technologies and innovation. Blockchain, of course, is part of that ambition. China is trying to make sure its companies are baked into blockchain at the start not only in its own market, but others as well.

China convened ministerial-level officials from countries including Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Russia, and Kazakhstan at the International Cooperation Forum on Digital Economy and Blockchain in the Hainan Free Trade Zone last Thursday.

Blockchain technology must align with the Belt and Road Initiative. It must serve the cross-border exchange in data and e-commerce between China and other countries, and facilitate the flow of physical goods, money, technology, as well as talent, said Shan Zhiguang, director of the informatization and industry development department at the State Information Center, at the forum.

On the same day, Chinese officials announced a deal for exiled Chinese blockchain exchange Huobione of the forums organizersto develop blockchain finance in a few BRI countries and the formation of a new blockchain cooperation forum with a smattering of BRI members including Indonesia, Uzbekistan, and Gibraltar. Huobi was founded in China but moved to Singapore in response to a ban on crypto exchanges; it has recently set up an office in Hainan under relaxed regulations.

Blockchain recently got a boost after Xi Jinping mentioned the technology in late October, which paved the way for a series of government initiatives, including a new cryptography law and trade finance blockchain partnerships with major banks.

Chinas blockchain bid is not about just market share: as infrastructure and regulatory frameworks around the emerging technology take shape, having a seat at the table is important.

Huobi took on a semi-official role in the forum, with founder Li Lin appearing on stage with officials from BRI countries. Li said that the company saw a need for underlying infrastructure that can work across countries and regions despite differing policies and regulations. This led the company to develop Huobi Chain, its public blockchain network, and to join international cooperation efforts, he said. But this does not mean we represent the Chinese government in any way to promote Belt and Road Initiative and compete with the US. We dont have that capability or the responsibility to carry out this mission, said Li.

Blockchains promise to improve cost, efficiency, and transparency of business and administrative processes make it especially appealing for developing nations as they undergo digital transformation. In Thailand, blockchain is being used for cross-border transactions and for preserving land deeds. Singapore, the financial hub of Asia, has rolled out regulatory efforts, including a sandbox program for fintech and blockchain startups, and experimented with the tokenization of corporate bonds.

At the forum, attending BRI officials expressed openness to cooperation. Many countries, including financial centers like Singapore as well as emerging economies like Indonesia and Malaysia, boasted of existing collaboration with the Chinese government and financial institutionsand argued for more.

Tapping into markets like Singapore, said Chia Hock Lai, president of Singapore Fintech Association, can give Chinese blockchain companies a launchpad into Southeast Asia, because in terms of established network infrastructure and financial regulatory framework.

On the state enterprise level, we are working with a lot of Chinese banks that are available in Labuan with regards to digital currencies, said Farah Jaafar-Crossby, CEO of Labuan International Business and Financial Centre (IBFC). IBFC is a Malaysian special economic zone on the island of Labuan. Jaafar-Crossby said collaboration in finance and technology with China has already started. Labuan has already licensed its first digital banking license to China Construction Bank, said Jaafar-Crossby, who said the deal will help finance all BRI infrastructure, business, and projects in the region.

However, details are scarce on how countries will implement the newly signed agreement, Li said at the press conference following the panel discussion on international collaboration.

We are working on developing the underlying infrastructure [for blockchain services]. We have come to realize that every countrys looking to leverage blockchain in different ways. However, what these countries have in common is they hope to venture beyond blockchain applications in the financial sector, said Li.

Blockchain technology must align with the Belt and Road Initiative": Chinese government official TechNode - TechNode

Ohio BMV poised to be the state’s springboard into blockchain technology – Crain’s Cleveland Business

Posted on December 13, 2019 by Danzig

The Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles (BMV) could be the first state agency to use blockchain technology when issuing vehicle titles.

"Blockchain offers the promise for custody of data that involved diverse stakeholders and serving diverse stakeholders is the nature and responsibility of government," Ohio Lt. Gov. Jon Husted said during a talk at the final day of the 2019 Blockland Solutions Conference Wednesday, Dec. 11 at the Huntington Convention Center.

InnovateOhio was created this year as a new state agency that advises on technology in order to create efficiencies and save money in government agencies. It will also serve as a clearinghouse for all state data and agencies are required to migrate all data on the InnovateOhio platform in 2020.

"The data was spread all around and everyone had their own silos and the first order of business was to get that all in the same place on the InnovateOhio platform," Husted said.

Under the new InnovateOhio office, which Husted heads, working groups identified the BMV as the state agency best suited to use new technology to better the "customer experience," Husted said.

Employing the concept that the best interactions are the ones that never happen, the BMV now has 18 sites, most in Central Ohio, where residents looking for new vehicle title, registration or driver's licenses can reserve a space online before visiting the agency.

BMV wait times in the pilot locations have saved visitors 6,000 hours, which translates into 150,000 hours a year of saved time.

More pilot locations will roll out statewide Friday and, by June 2020, the program will be available at every BMV.

Husted said that InnovateOhio is looking at a proposal that with the private sector would modify vehicle titles using blockchain technology.

"It is about entrepreneurship, it is about improving the quality of people's lives, it is about changing the culture," Husted said. "People who work in government being excited about innovation," he added.

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Ohio BMV poised to be the state's springboard into blockchain technology - Crain's Cleveland Business

5 reasons Blockchain and Artificial Intelligence is Changing the Mobile Industry – Irish Tech News

Posted on December 13, 2019 by Danzig

Technology is making you smarter and efficient by the day. Mobile apps started out with offering convenience to the end-users. However, today, if you look at the apps, they tend to offer more than just convenience. These apps make your life efficiency and are more cognitive in their responses. They are intelligent, can help make your interactions better, and offer more benefits than before.

The evolution of technology is one of the reasons why most businesses and people are closing the gaps that exist, and are slowly moving towards embracing security.

The technologies such as Blockchain and Artificial Intelligence are ruling the mobile app market, and it seems that they are all set to redefine how the apps work.

The unconventional methods using which both the technologies govern the mobile apps says a lot about how the development will progress, and how intelligent and safe the future of mobile technology is.

Lets take a look at the five different ways in which AI and Blockchain together are planning to redefine the mobile app industry.

#1 Embracing Safety the Unconventional Way

The way Blockchain works and manages the records is unconventional. To date, we have seen a centralized system at work, connecting the dots and managing the systems. However, with Blockchain, the system is decentralized, and you have nodes that manage the communication and transaction. Every transaction that occurs from point A to point B is being managed by these nodes, and the communication is seamless. So, if there is a change in any of these nodes, it is communicated across the chain, and the change is noted. So, with Blockchain, the intermediaries cannot make the mistake of manipulating the data that the mobile app has received, which is why the transactions are safe and secure.

When you combine this with AI, you are loaded with data that cannot be manipulated. As a result, the insights derived will be accurate, and decisions taken on this data and the insights derived therefrom will be precise and will help you be more profitable.

#2 Personalization with Greater Impact

It is time to personalize and tailor the solutions to meet the end users requirements. If your app has not marked the users activity and implanted solutions accordingly, then you wont be able to connect with the subscriber and complete the transaction.

Blockchain, on one hand, makes the transactions completely transparent to the users, as a result of which people share information that they believe will improve their experience. This has also increased the ability to secure the apps and making them more safe for users.

A combination of Blockchain and AI has resulted in transparent and completely coordinated app solutions that understand the users, take the data provided by them into account and ensure data privacy.

As a result, mobile app owners know what the users are looking for, and what kind of transactions they are comfortable with. This helps personalize the app solution in a better way for them and improves the overall user experience.

#3 Boosts Forecasting Methods for Businesses

With Artificial Intelligence implemented into your mobile app solutions, you have a better understanding of the market. You know what you are dealing with, and how to achieve the standards you have marked for yourself.

For instance, if you have been managing a higher stock for a long while, then you might want to figure out a way in which you can reduce the stock and manage just the inventory needed for a particular purpose. However, it is becoming increasingly impossible to judge that manually, as there is a lot of data available from different channels.

As a result, you need an intelligent technology that will tell you just how much products you need to keep aside, and how much of it is really going to be sold this month.

Lets talk about an electronics retailer who has shops in different cities. He observes that a particular brand of TV is sold more in a particular locality as compared to the others. This is just an observation for one product in one locality. How can he observe and identify the quantities sold in the different shops he owns, and know what quantity of what product or brand he needs to hold in the shop.

AI will identify the different factors controlling the sales and accordingly identify the demand for a particular shop. This will help the retailer manage the inventory and improve the sales.

#4 Cost-Effective Mobile Apps

Who doesnt want an intelligent yet cost-effective solution for their business? Mobile app solutions devised using Blockchain technology can help boost the simplicity defined for the apps, thus allowing you to create minimalistic app solutions without going too expensive. Apart from being a cost-effective solution, they help derive higher ROI, as the technology offers greater returns and profits for your business.

The technology is highly reliable, which makes it the number one choice for mobile app developers if they want to gain the trust of the users. Combined with AI, you get to implement better search abilities and transform data into impressive insights, that increase the trust in your solutions. Data collected from all points are available in this combination, which allows you to gain more accurate points to make capable decisions.

#5 Improved Security Features

The single-most cause of concern for the mobile app users is the security of the data when using a mobile app. However, you can easily keep this concern at bay as the security features are ably improving with Blockchain technology. This guarded, distributed technology makes use of enhanced cryptography techniques and has a block for every transaction. These blocks are marked with a timestamp, which means manipulation is next to impossible. Guarding your data through encryption are the blocks that improve the security features with great abilities.

When you combine Blockchain and AI, the app becomes more secure. The facial recognition technology does not allow people to enter the app without the biometrics that you have saved. This combination is indeed lethal, thus making sure that hacking does not occur and your data remains safe.

Summing Up

The combination of AI and Blockchain will ensure quicker and smoother updates for mobile apps, thus resulting in quicker adoption. As your apps are safe, and you have no issues within the apps as a result of the adoption of these technologies, you will observe that your apps are easily accepted by the app stores.

However, you need to maintain the guidelines of the app store and make your app flexible for scaling so that you are future-ready.

Have you charted a plan to adopt Blockchain for your next mobile app?

Author Bio:Pradeep Makhija is a Digital Marketing Executive at Space-O Technologies, a Mobile App development company. He likes to share his knowledge and experience with people around by writing articles related to mobile apps & new technology. In his spare time, Pradeep likes to explore and read more about the trends and needs of a mobile app in different sectors.

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5 reasons Blockchain and Artificial Intelligence is Changing the Mobile Industry - Irish Tech News

Alleged Blockchain Funds Announced at 2018 Blockland Conference Never Materialized – Cleveland Scene

Posted on December 13, 2019 by Danzig

At last year's inaugural Blockland Solutions Conference in Cleveland, local leaders in the economic development and high-tech startup space announced significant forthcoming investments for area blockchain companies.But a year after the announcements, those funds have yet to materialize.

FlashStarts, the local startup accelerator and micro venture capital firm which announced last week that it would pivot into corporate consulting, announced at the 2018 conference that it would create a $6 million pot to provide seed funding for blockchain startups.

When reached for comment last week, however, Flashstarts CEO Charles Stack said that while this pot remains "open to investors," they had "not been successful in reaching [their] $6 million goal." Nor, crucially, has the pot invested in a single company.

It turns out that creating a fund for blockchain startups is challenging for many of the same reasons that maintaining an early-stage startup accelerator is challenging.

According to Stack: "Local investors are generally more risk-averse than elsewhere.There is no coordinated local program to attract and retain startups.Our institutions are generally too focused on building entrepreneurship centers and NOT on entrepreneurs.Our local corporations have been disinterested in working with local startups."

That analysis is consistent with a Crain's report today, which announced the formation of a new nonprofit called OhioX which wants to build unity among the state's high-tech entrepreneurs.

"Initiatives like the one surrounding Blockland, which dreams of a Cleveland tech mecca, sometimes feel mismatched with reality when considering the region's struggles to grow and retain new tech companies," reporter Jeremy Nobile wrote. "That can be chalked up to any number of nuanced reasons a shortage of general support and motivated investors among them."

A shortage of motivated investors certainly didn't prevent the announcement of major investments last year. In addition to FlashStarts, the local accelerator JumpStart announced that it would devote serious resources to blockchain. On the opening night of the conference, JumpStart said it would be partnering with Ohio Third Frontier on a $100 million fund for blockchain companies in the state.

When reached for comment, JumpStart CEO Ray Leach told Scene that when they made that announcement, they were anticipating that Ohio Third Frontier would announce an RFP to support blockchain seed funding in early 2019. But that never happened.

"We are now anticipating that [Ohio Third Frontier] will release an RFP in the first quarter of 2020," Leach wrote in an email. "If this timeline happens, we anticipate $200 million in new seed and Series A capital will form across Ohio in the first half of 2020 with ~$100M+ hopefully being headquartered or invested out of Greater Cleveland by JumpStart and a handful of other seed and Series A funds who are awarded monies from the state."

But this was news to Ohio Third Frontier. When Scene reached a public information officer there, we were told that no blockchain fund was currently in the pipeline.

"There is nothing upcoming that I'm even remotely aware of," said Elizabeth Colbert, with the Ohio Development Services Agency. "I've been working with Ohio Third Frontier for about six years now, so I'm pretty in the loop on what goes on. And there's no RFP regarding blockchain in the works in any way shape or form."

Without the joint fund, JumpStart did still invest in one blockchain startup over the last year: Axuall, a company that's working in the field of digital credentialing.

The Blockland initiative has itself undergone substantial changes since late 2018. From a multi-nodal organizational structure in which an enormous collection of civic and business leaders briefly concerned themselves with things like blockchain thought leadership, government relations and young professional attraction, the initiative now focuses exclusively on its two flagship projects: the annual Solutions Conference (the second iteration of which is happening right now at the Huntington Convention Center) and the City Block real estate project at Tower City.

The Blockland project manager hired in the fall of 2018 is no longer with JumpStart; a joint "digital futures" think tank at Cleveland State and Case still has the same level of funding and physical plans that it did when it was first announced (zero); and no one seems willing to hazard a guess about the current number of blockchain coders working in the region.The goal announced at last year's conference was to have 1,000 by the end of 2019.

Representatives at Tri-C, where a blockchain course was launched last year, did not respond by our print deadline to questions about the number of students who have taken the course and their success in finding work upon graduation.

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Alleged Blockchain Funds Announced at 2018 Blockland Conference Never Materialized - Cleveland Scene

Has Physics Ever Been Deterministic? New Insights on the Relationship Between Classical and Quantum Physics – SciTechDaily

Posted on December 13, 2019 by Danzig

Bagatelle or pin-board game. Credit: Lorenzo Nocchi

Researchers from the Austrian Academy of Sciences, the University of Vienna and the University of Geneva, have proposed a new interpretation of classical physics without real numbers. This new study challenges the traditional view of classical physics as deterministic.

In classical physics it is usually assumed that if we know where an object is and its velocity, we can exactly predict where it will go. An alleged superior intelligence having the knowledge of all existing objects at present, would be able to know with certainty the future as well as the past of the universe with infinite precision. Pierre-Simon Laplace illustrated this argument, later called Laplaces demon, in the early 1800s to illustrate the concept of determinism in classical physics. It is generally believed that it was only with the advent of quantum physics that determinism was challenged. Scientists found out that not everything can be said with certainty and we can only calculate the probability that something could behave in a certain way.

But is really classical physics completely deterministic? Flavio Del Santo, researcher at Vienna Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and the University of Vienna, and Nicolas Gisin from the University of Geneva, address this question in their new article Physics without Determinism: Alternative Interpretations of Classical Physics, published in the journal Physical Review A.

Building on previous works of the latter author, they show that the usual interpretation of classical physics is based on tacit additional assumptions. When we measure something, say the length of a table with a ruler, we find a value with a finite precision, meaning with a finite number of digits. Even if we use a more accurate measurement instrument, we will just find more digits, but still a finite number of them. However, classical physics assumes that even if we may not be able to measure them, there exist an infinite number of predetermined digits. This means that the length of the table is always perfectly determined.

Imagine now to play a variant of the Bagatelle or pin-board game (as in figure), where a board is symmetrically filled with pins. When a little ball rolls down the board, it will hit the pins and move either to the right or to the left of each of them. In a deterministic world, the perfect knowledge of the initial conditions under which the ball enters the board (its velocity and position) determines unambiguously the path that the ball will follow between the pins. Classical physics assumes that if we cannot obtain the same path in different runs, it is only because in practice we were not able to set precisely the same initial conditions. For instance, because we do not have an infinitely precise measurement instrument to set the initial position of the ball when entering the board.

The authors of this new study propose an alternative view: after a certain number of pins, the future of the ball is genuinely random, even in principle, and not due to the limitations of our measurement instruments. At each hit, the ball has a certain propensity or tendency to bounce on the right or on the left, and this choice is not determined a priori. For the first few hits, the path can be determined with certainty, that is the propensity is 100% for the one side and 0% for the other. After a certain number of pins, however, the choice is not pre-determined and the propensity gradually reaches 50% for the right and 50% for the left for the distant pins. In this way, one can think of each digit of the length of our table as becoming determined by a process similar to the choice of going left or right at each hit of the little ball. Therefore, after a certain number of digits, the length is not determined anymore.

The new model introduced by the researchers hence refuses the usual attribution of a physical meaning to mathematical real numbers (numbers with infinite predetermined digits). It states instead that after a certain number of digits their values become truly random, and only the propensity of taking a specific value is well defined. This leads to new insights on the relationship between classical and quantum physics. In fact, when, how and under what circumstances an indeterminate quantity takes a definite value is a notorious question in the foundations of quantum physics, known as the quantum measurement problem. This is related to the fact that in the quantum world it is impossible to observe reality without changing it. In fact, the value of a measurement on a quantum object is not yet established until an observer actually measures it. This new study, on the other hand, points out that the same issue could have always been hidden also behind the reassuring rules of classical physics.

Reference: Physics without determinism: Alternative interpretations of classical physics by Flavio Del Santo and Nicolas Gisin, 5 December 2019, Physical Review A.DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevA.100.062107

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Has Physics Ever Been Deterministic? New Insights on the Relationship Between Classical and Quantum Physics - SciTechDaily

Atos boosts quantum application development through the creation of the first Quantum User Group – GlobeNewswire

Posted on December 13, 2019 by Danzig

Paris, France, December 12, 2019 Following on from the 6thmeeting of its Quantum Scientific Council, Atos, a global leader in digital transformation, announces that it is continuing to enrich its quantum development ecosystem, through the creation of a global User Group of the Atos Quantum Learning Machine (QLM), which will be chaired by a representative from French multi-national energy company Total. This announcement follows the commercial success of the QLM, the world's highest-performing quantum programming appliance, allowing for the first time to simulate quantic behaviors. This ecosystem is supported by the Atos Quantum Scientific Council, which includes universally recognized quantum physicists. It is also further enhanced by partners such as leading software company Zapata and start-up Xofia.

Just two years on from its launch in 2017, Atos QLM users continue to grow as the QLM is being used in numerous countries worldwide includingAustria,France,Germany, Ireland, Mexico, the Netherlands,UKand theUnited States, empowering major research programs in various sectors.

The User Group will bring together current QLM customers and their ecosystems of users from around the world, including research centers, universities and global industrial companies. It will be chaired by a representative from Total, Henri Calandra, Expert in Numerical Methods and High Performance Computing. This QLM User Group aims to drive advances in quantum programming and simulation, as well as to develop and enrich collaboration between users and share best practice and support. Feedback will be used to influence Atos QLM evolutions and further enhance the technical support that it provides its customers, paving the road towards the new world of quantum computing.

Atos is committed to enrich its quantum ecosystem and with this, its research program in order to continue to provide researchers worldwide with the right conditions and solutions so that they can take advantage of the innovative opportunities provided by quantum computing. We have some of the worlds leading scientists on our Quantum Scientific Council which, together with our rich base of QLM customers, means we are creating the most advanced quantum ecosystem said Elie Girard, CEO of Atos Now, with the creation of this Group of Atos QLM Users, we are ensuring that we continue to support them to develop new advances in deep learning, algorithmics and artificial intelligence with the support of the breakthrough computing acceleration capacities that quantum simulation provides.

As President of this new User Group, Total is involved in the advancement of quantum research, together with Atos. Quantum simulationenables us to explore new ways of solving complex problems, improve performance and drive significant technological advances to prepare the future of low carbon energy. This contributes to realizing Totals ambition: to become the responsible energy major, said Marie-Noelle Semeria, Senior Vice President, Group CTO at Total.

The Quantum Scientific Council is made up of universally recognized quantum physicists, including Nobel prize laureate in Physics, Serge Haroche; Research Director, CEA Saclay, and Head of Quantronics, Daniel Estve; professor at the Institut dOptique and Ecole Polytechnique, Alain Aspect; Alexander von Humboldt Professor, Director of the Institute for Theoretical Nanoelectronics at the Juelich Research Center, David DiVincenzo; and Professor of Quantum Physics at the Mathematical Institute, University of Oxford and Singapore, Artur Ekert.

Atos ambitious program to anticipate the future of quantum computing and to be prepared for the opportunities as well as the risks that come with it - Atos Quantum program - was launched in November 2016. As a result of this initiative,Atos was the first organization to offer a quantum noisy simulation module, the Atos QLM. Earlier this year, it launched myQLM, a free tool that allows a broader ecosystem to get acquainted with quantum programming and discover some features of the Atos QLM.

Quantum computing should make it possible, in the years to come, to deal with the explosion of data, which Big Data and the Internet of Things bring about. With its targeted and unprecedented compute acceleration capabilities, notably based on the exascale class supercomputerBullSequana, quantum computing should also promote advances in deep learning, algorithmics and artificial intelligence for areas as various as pharmaceuticals or new materials.

For more information:Atos Quantum###

Photo caption: 6thmeeting of its Quantum Scientific Council at its headquarters in BezonsFrom left to right: Cyril Allouche, Director of Atos Quantum Lab, Atos.Philippe Duluc, SVP Big Data and Security Division, Atos.Philippe Vannier, Special advisor to the Chairman and CEO, for Science, Technology and Cybersecurity.Alain Aspect, Professor at the Institut dOptique and at the lcole Polytechnique.Sophie Proust, Chief Technology Office, Atos.Artur Ekert, Professer od quantum physics at the Institute of Mathematics, Oxford University and Singapore University.Elie Girard, CEO of Atos.Daniel Estve, Director of Research CEA Saclay, Director of Quantronics.David DiVincenzo, Professor at the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Director of the Institute of Theoretical Nanoelectronics at the at the Jlich Research Centre.Serge Haroche, Professor Emeritus at the Collge de France, Nobel Prize in Physics.

About AtosAtos is a global leader in digital transformation with over 110,000 employees in 73 countries and annual revenue of over 11 billion. European number one in Cloud, Cybersecurity and High-Performance Computing, the Group provides end-to-end Orchestrated Hybrid Cloud, Big Data, Business Applications and Digital Workplace solutions. The group is the Worldwide Information Technology Partner for the Olympic & Paralympic Games and operates under the brands Atos, Atos Syntel, and Unify. Atos is a SE (Societas Europaea), listed on the CAC40 Paris stock index.

The purpose of Atos is to help design the future of the information technology space. Its expertise and services support the development of knowledge, education as well as multicultural and pluralistic approaches to research that contribute to scientific and technological excellence. Across the world, the group enables its customers, employees and collaborators, and members of societies at large to live, work and develop sustainably and confidently in the information technology space.

Press contact:Laura Fau | laura.fau@atos.net | +33 6 73 64 04 18 | @laurajanefau

Atos boosts quantum application development through the creation of the first Quantum User Group - GlobeNewswire

What Is Planck’s Constant, and Why Does the Universe Depend on It? – HowStuffWorks

Posted on December 13, 2019 by Danzig

If you're a fan of the Netflix series "Stranger Things," you've seen the climatic season three scene, in which Dustin tries to cajole his brainy long-distance girlfriend Suzie over a ham radio connection into telling him the precise value of something called Planck's constant, which also happens to be the code to open a safe that contains the keys needed to close the gate to a malevolent alternative universe.

But before Suzie will recite the magic number, she exacts a high price: Dustin has to sing the theme song to the movie "The NeverEnding Story."

This may all have led you to wonder: What exactly is Planck's constant, anyway?

The constant devised in 1900 by a German physicist named Max Planck, who would win the 1918 Nobel Prize for his work is a crucial part of quantum mechanics, the branch of physics which deals with the tiny particles that make up matter and the forces involved in their interactions. From computer chips and solar panels to lasers, "it's the physics that explains how everything works."

Planck and other physicists in the late 1800s and early 1900s were trying to understand the difference between classical mechanics that is, the motion of bodies in the observable world around us, described by Sir Isaac Newton in the late 1600s and an invisible world of the ultrasmall, where energy behaves in some ways like a wave and in some ways like a particle, also known as a photon.

"In quantum mechanics, physics works different from our experiences in the macroscopic world," explains Stephan Schlamminger, a physicist for the National Institute of Standards and Technology, by email. As an explanation, he cites the example of a familiar harmonic oscillator, a child on a swing set.

"In classical mechanics, the child can be at any amplitude (height) on the swing's path," Schlamminger says. "The energy that the system has is proportional to the square of the amplitude. Hence, the child can swing at any continuous range of energies from zero up to a certain point."

But when you get down to the level of quantum mechanics, things behave differently. "The amount of energy that an oscillator could have is discrete, like rungs on a ladder," Schlamminger says. "The energy levels are separated by h times f, where f is the frequency of the photon a particle of light an electron would release or absorb to go from one energy level to another."

In this 2016 video, another NIST physicist, Darine El Haddad, explains Planck's constant using the metaphor of putting sugar in coffee. "In classical mechanics, energy is continuous, meaning if I take my sugar dispenser, I can pour any amount of sugar into my coffee," she says. "Any amount of energy is OK."

"But Max Planck found something very different when he looked deeper, she explains in the video. "Energy is quantized, or it's discrete, meaning I can only add one sugar cube or two or three. Only a certain amount of energy is allowed."

Planck's constant defines the amount of energy that a photon can carry, according to the frequency of the wave in which it travels.

Electromagnetic radiation and elementary particles "display intrinsically both particle and wave properties," explains Fred Cooper, an external professor at the Santa Fe Institute, an independent research center in New Mexico, by email. "The fundamental constant which connects these two aspects of these entities is Planck's constant. Electromagnetic energy cannot be transferred continuously but is transferred by discrete photons of light whose energy E is given by E = hf, where h is Planck's constant, and f is the frequency of the light."

One of the confusing things for nonscientists about Planck's constant is that the value assigned to it has changed by tiny amounts over time. Back in 1985, the accepted value was h = 6.626176 x 10-34 Joule-seconds. The current calculation, done in 2018, is h = 6.62607015 x 10-34 Joule-seconds.

"While these fundamental constants are fixed in the fabric of the universe, we humans don't know their exact values," Schlamminger explains. "We have to build experiments to measure these fundamental constants to the best of humankind's ability. Our knowledge comes from a few experiments that were averaged to produce a mean value for the Planck constant."

To measure Planck's constant, scientists have used two different experiments theKibble balance and the X-ray crystal density (XRCD) method, and over time, they've developed a better understanding of how to get a more precise number. "When a new number is published, the experimenters put forward their best number as well as their best calculation of the uncertainty in their measurement," Schlamminger says. "The true, but unknown value of the constant, should hopefully lie in the interval of plus/minus the uncertainty around the published number, with a certain statistical probability." At this point, "we are confident that the true value is not far off. The Kibble balance and the XRCD method are so different that it would be a major coincidence that both ways agree so well by chance."

That tiny imprecision in scientists' calculations isn't a big deal in the scheme of things. But if Planck's constant was a significantly bigger or smaller number, "all the world around us would be completely different," explains Martin Fraas, an assistant professor in mathematics at Virginia Tech, by email. If the value of the constant was increased, for example, stable atoms might be many times bigger than stars.

The size of a kilogram, which came into force on May 20, 2019, as agreed upon by the International Bureau of Weights and Measures (whose French acronym is BIPM) is now based upon Planck's constant.

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What Is Planck's Constant, and Why Does the Universe Depend on It? - HowStuffWorks

This Week in Tech: What on Earth Is a Quantum Computer? – The New York Times

Posted on December 13, 2019 by Danzig

David Bacon, senior software engineer in Googles quantum lab: Quantum computers do computations in parallel universes. This by itself isnt useful. U only get to exist in 1 universe at a time! The trick: quantum computers dont just split universes, they also merge universes. And this merge can add and subtract those other split universes.

David Reilly, principal researcher and director of the Microsoft quantum computing lab in Sydney, Australia: A quantum machine is a kind of analog calculator that computes by encoding information in the ephemeral waves that comprise light and matter at the nanoscale. Quantum entanglement likely the most counterintuitive thing around holds it all together, detecting and fixing errors.

Daniel Lidar, professor of electrical and computer engineering, chemistry, and physics and astronomy at the University of Southern California, with his daughter Nina, in haiku:

Quantum computerssolve some problems much fasterbut are prone to noise

Superpositions:to explore multiple pathsto the right answer

Interference helps:cancels paths to wrong answersand boosts the right ones

Entanglement makesclassical computers sweat,QCs win the race

Scott Aaronson, professor of computer science at the University of Texas at Austin: A quantum computer exploits interference among positive and negative square roots of probabilities to solve certain problems much faster than we think possible classically, in a way that wouldnt be nearly so interesting were it possible to explain in the space of a tweet.

Alan Baratz, executive vice president of research and development at D-Wave Systems: If were honest, everything we currently know about quantum mechanics cant fully describe how a quantum computer works. Whats more important, and even more interesting, is what a quantum computer can do: A.I., new molecules, new materials, modeling climate change

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This Week in Tech: What on Earth Is a Quantum Computer? - The New York Times

Are the Laws of the Universe Inevitable? – Discovery Institute

Posted on December 13, 2019 by Danzig

Natalie Wolchover at Quanta Magazine has a thoughtful but misguided essay on the inevitability of the laws of nature. She writes:

Compared to the unsolved mysteries of the universe, far less gets said about one of the most profound facts to have crystallized in physics over the past half-century: To an astonishing degree, nature is the way it is because it couldnt be any different. Theres just no freedom in the laws of physics that we have, saidDaniel Baumann, a theoretical physicist at the University of Amsterdam.

She cites Baumann to describe the incredible interlocked intricacy of physical laws:

[L]aws essentially dictate one another through their mutual consistency that nature pulls itself up by its own bootstraps. The idea turns out to explain a huge amount about the universe.

Wolchover describes how the forces of nature seem to emerge almost miraculously (the word is chosen by physicist Adam Falkowski in a comment quoted by Wolchover) from the mathematics of quantum mechanics:

[P]hysicists determine how elementary particles with different amounts of spin, or intrinsic angular momentum, can consistently behave. In doing this, they rediscover the four fundamental forces that shape the universe. Most striking is the case of a particle with two units of spin: As the Nobel Prize winner Steven Weinbergshowedin 1964, the existence of a spin-2 particle leads inevitably to general relativity Albert Einsteins theory of gravity. Einstein arrived at general relativity through abstract thoughts about falling elevators and warped space and time, but the theory also follows directly from the mathematically consistent behavior of a fundamental particle.

This beautiful simplicity of the laws of nature seem almost inevitable.

I find this inevitability of gravity [and other forces] to be one of the deepest and most inspiring facts about nature, saidLaurentiu Rodina, a theoretical physicist at the Institute of Theoretical Physics at CEA Saclay who helped tomodernize and generalizeWeinbergs proof in 2014. Namely, that nature is above all self-consistent.

What is inevitable here is not the mathematical beauty of physical law, but the circumlocutions scientists use to evade design in nature. If anything in the universe is inevitable, it is entropy and chaos. Nature falls apart, inevitably. Yet there is nothing inevitable about natures elegant harmony. Mathematical physics indeed reveals deep structure in nature, and most remarkably, that structure is beautiful, full of unexpected simplicity and poetic coincidence. Antimatter is hidden in Diracs relativistic wave equation, and oscillating bodies from galaxies to ocean waves to quarks are described quite elegantly by the simple calculus of oscillating springs. Einsteins metric tensor contains the Big Bang and black holes and an enormous but finite universe curved back in on itself.

None of this splendor and precision is inevitable, any more than a Shakespearean sonnet or the Sistine ceiling are inevitable. The mathematical subtlety of physics is the work of a living Mind of inexpressible grace and power.

The design of nature is not inevitable. Creation is from purpose, not decay. Those select scientists who are privileged to see and understand the intricate mathematical beauty of nature owe its Author a citation.

Photo: Jupiters Cloud Tops: From High to Low, by NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Gerald Eichstadt.

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Are the Laws of the Universe Inevitable? - Discovery Institute

Inside the weird, wild, and wondrous world of quantum video games – Digital Trends

Posted on December 13, 2019 by Danzig

IBM Research

In 1950, a man named John Bennett, an Australian employee of the now-defunct British technology firm Ferranti, created what may be historys first gaming computer. It could play a game called Nim, a long-forgotten parlor game in which players take turns removing matches from several piles. The player who loses is the one who removes the last match. For his computerized version, Bennett created a vast machine 12 feet wide, 5 feet tall, and 9 feet deep. The majority of this space was taken up by light-up vacuum tubes which depicted the virtual matches.

Bennetts aim wasnt to create a game-playing machine for the sake of it; the reason that somebody might build a games PC today. As writer Tristan Donovan observed in Replay, his superlative 2010 history of video games: Despite suggesting Ferranti create a game-playing computer, Bennetts aim was not to entertain but to show off the ability of computers to do [math].

Jump forward almost 70 years and a physicist and computer scientist named Dr. James Robin Wootton is using games to demonstrate the capabilities of another new, and equally large, experimental computer. The computer in this question is a quantum computer, a dream of scientists since the 1980s, now finally becoming a scientific reality.

Quantum computers encode information as delicate correlations with an incredibly rich structure. This allows for potentially mind-boggling densities of information to be stored and manipulated. Unlike a classical computer, which encodes as a series of ones and zeroes, the bits (called qubits) in a quantum computer can be either a one, a zero, or both at the same time. These qubits are composed of subatomic particles, which conform to the rules of quantum rather than classical mechanics. They play by their own rules a little bit like Tom Cruises character Maverick from Top Gun if he spent less time buzzing the tower and more time demonstrating properties like superpositions and entanglement.

I met Wootton at IBMs research lab in Zurich on a rainy day in late November. Moments prior, I had squeezed into a small room with a gaggle of other excited onlookers, where we stood behind a rope and stared at one of IBMs quantum computers like people waiting to be allowed into an exclusive nightclub. I was reminded of the way that people, in John Bennetts day, talked about the technological priesthood surrounding computers: then enormous mainframes sequestered away in labyrinthine chambers, tended to by highly qualified people in white lab coats. Lacking the necessary seminary training, we quantum computer visitors could only bask in its ambience from a distance, listening in reverent silence to the weird vee-oing vee-oing vee-oing sound of its cooling system.

Wottons interest in quantum gaming came about from exactly this scenario. In 2016, he attended a quantum computing event at the same Swiss ski resort where, in 1925, Erwin Schrdinger had worked out his famous Schrdinger wave equation while on vacation with a girlfriend. If there is a ground zero for quantum computing, this was it. Wotton was part of a consortium, sponsored by the Swiss government, to do (and help spread the word about) quantum computing.

At that time quantum computing seemed like it was something that was very far away, he told Digital Trends. Companies and universities were working on it, but it was a topic of research, rather than something that anyone on the street was likely to get their hands on. We were talking about how to address this.

Wootton has been a gamer since the early 1990s. I won a Game Boy in a competition in a wrestling magazine, he said. It was a Slush Puppy competition where you had to come up with a new flavor. My Slush Puppy flavor was called something like Rollin Redcurrant. Im not sure if you had to use the adjective. Maybe thats what set me apart.

While perhaps not a straight path, Wootton knew how an interest in gaming could lead people to an interest in other aspects of technology. He suggested that making games using quantum computing might be a good way of raising public awareness of the technology.He applied for support and, for the next year, was given to my amazement the chance to go and build an educational computer game about quantum computing. At the time, a few people warned me that this was not going to be good for my career, he said. [They told me] I should be writing papers and getting grants; not making games.

But the idea was too tantalizing to pass up.

That same year, IBM launched its Quantum Experience, an online platform granting the general public (at least those with a background in linear algebra) access to IBMs prototype quantum processors via the cloud. Combined with Project Q, a quantum SDK capable of running jobs on IBMs devices, this took care of both the hardware and software component of Woottons project. What he needed now was a game. Woottons first attempt at creating a quantum game for the public was a version of the game Rock-Paper-Scissors, named Cat-Box-Scissors after the famous Schrdingers cat thought experiment. Wootton later dismissed it as [not] very good Little more than a random number generator with a story.

But others followed. There was Battleships, his crack at the first multiplayer game made with a quantum computer. There was Quantum Solitaire. There was a text-based dungeon crawler, modeled on 1973s Hunt the Wumpus, called Hunt the Quantpus. Then the messily titled, but significant, Battleships with partial NOT gates, which Wootton considers the first true quantum computer game, rather than just an experiment. And so on. As games, these dont exactly make Red Dead Redemption 2 look like yesterdays news. Theyre more like Atari 2600 or Commodore 64 games in their aesthetics and gameplay. Still, thats exactly what youd expect from the embryonic phases of a new computing architecture.

If youd like to try out a quantum game for yourself, youre best off starting with Hello Quantum, available for both iOS and Android. It reimagines the principles of quantum computing as a puzzle game in which players must flip qubits. It wont make you a quantum expert overnight, but it will help demystify the process a bit. (With every level, players can hit a learn more button for a digestible tutorial on quantum basics.)

Quantum gaming isnt just about educational outreach, though. Just as John Bennett imagined Nim as a game that would exist to show off a computers abilities, only to unwittingly kickstart a $130 billion a year industry, so quantum games are moving beyond just teaching players lessons about quantum computing.Increasingly, Wootton is excited about what he sees as real world uses for quantum computing. One of the most promising of these is taking advantage of quantum computings random number generating to create random terrain within computer games. In Zurich, he showed me a three-dimensional virtual landscape reminiscent of Minecraft. However, while much of the world of Minecraft is user generated, in this case the blocky, low-resolution world was generated using a quantum computer.

Quantum mechanics is known for its randomness, so the easiest possibility is just to use quantum computing as a [random number generator], Wootton said. I have a game in which I use only one qubit: the smallest quantum computer you can get. All you can do is apply operations that change the probabilities of getting a zero or one as output. I use that to determine the height of the terrain at any point in the game map.

Plenty of games made with classical computers have already included procedurally generated elements over the years. But as the requirements for these elements ranging from randomly generated enemies to entire maps increase in complexity, quantum could help.

Gaming is an industry that is very dependent on how fast things run

Gaming is an industry that is very dependent on how fast things run, he continued. If theres a factor of 10 difference in how long it takes something to run that determines whether you can actually use it in a game. He sees today as a great jumping-on point for people in the gaming industry to get involved to help shape the future development of quantum computing. Its going to be driven by what people want, he explained. If people find an interesting use-case and everyone wants to use quantum computing for a game where you have to submit a job once per frame, that will help dictate the way that the technology is made.

Hes now reached the point where he thinks the race may truly be on to develop the first commercial game using a quantum computer. Weve been working on these proof-of-principle projects, but now I want to work with actual game studios on actual problems that they have, he continued. That means finding out what they want and how they want the technology to be [directed].

One thing thats for certain is that Wootton is no longer alone in developing his quantum games. In the last couple of years, a number ofquantum game jams have popped up around the world. What most people have done is to start small, Wootton said. They often take an existing game and use one or two qubits to help allow you to implement a quantum twist on the game mechanics. Following this mantra, enthusiasts have used quantum computing to make remixed versions of existing games, including Dr. Qubit (a quantum version of Dr. Mario), Quantum Cat-sweeper (a quantum version of Minesweeper), and Quantum Pong (a quantum version of, err, Pong).

The world of quantum gaming has moved beyond its 1950 equivalent of Nim. Now we just have to wait and see what happens next. The decades which followed Nim gave us MITs legendary Spacewar in the 1960s, the arcade boom of the 1970s and 80s, the console wars of Sega vs. Nintendo, the arrival of the Sony PlayStation in the 1990s, and so on. In the process, classical computers became part of our lives in a way they never were before. As Whole Earth Catalog founder Stewart Brand predicted as far back as 1972 Rolling Stone in his classic essay on Spacewar: Ready or not, computers are coming to the people.

At present, quantum gamings future is at a crossroads. Is it an obscure niche occupied by just a few gaming physics enthusiasts or a powerful tool that will shape tomorrows industry? Is it something that will teach us all to appreciate the finer points of quantum physics or a tool many of us wont even realize is being used, that will nevertheless give us some dope ass games to play?

Like Schrdingers cat, right now its both at once. What a superposition to be in.

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SpaceX Is Delivering Cannabis to the Space Station – Futurism

Posted on December 13, 2019 by Danzig

That Sticky-Icky in Space

On Sunday, a SpaceX Dragon capsule docked with the International Space Station hauling nearly three tons of cargo. SpaceXs next ISS resupply mission is scheduled for March 2020, and while that trip might not include any super-buff mighty mice, itll be packing something equally unique: cannabis.

On Tuesday, agri-tech company Front Range Biosciences announced plans to send cannabis to the ISS. No, its not space-shipping weed to get astronauts high. Instead, itll send plant cultures of hemp, the legal cannabis strain with low levels of compound THC.

The cultures will remain in an ISS incubator for 30 days while BioServe Space Technologies (a Front Range project partner) monitors them remotely from the University of Colorado, Boulder.

After their 30 days in space, the cannabis cultures go home to Earth so Front Range can see what effect, if any, microgravity and space radiation had on their gene expression.

There is science to support the theory that plants in space experience mutations, Front Range CEO Jonathan Vaught said in a release. This is an opportunity to see whether those mutations hold up once brought back to earth and if there are new commercial applications.

READ MORE: A Company Is Sending Cannabis and Coffee to Space to See if They Mutate [Motherboard]

More on cannabis: Seven Ways Cannabis Legalization Will Make the Future Better

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SpaceX Is Delivering Cannabis to the Space Station - Futurism

Futurist Predicts "The End of the World as We Know It" – Futurism

Posted on December 13, 2019 by Danzig

Growing Divide

As jobsare automated out of existence, the division between the very wealthy and the very poorwill grow and any notion of a comfortable middle class will vanish.

Thats according to Roey Tzezana, a future studies researcher at Israels Tel Aviv University, according to Haaretz. That stands in contrast to the common argument that new jobs will emerge as others vanish, painting a grim picture for the workforce and global economy.

Tzezana argues that the jobs that tend to survive automation are lower-paying, according to Haaretz, meaning that as companies generate increased wealth, almost none of it ends up in the pockets of workers. Instead, more people are stuck living paycheck to paycheck, even if unemployment rates are technically low.

This figure is the end of the world for the average people, Tzezana said, speaking about the growing gap between labor productivity and wages. It reflects a rather depressing picture: The state and the economy are advancing by storm but the workers are almost not benefitting from this progress and are left behind. It is almost a catastrophe.

The end result? A society defined by pockets of extreme wealth but otherwise dominated by people who barely have enough to get by.

READ MORE: Futurist Sees The End of the World as We Know It for Average Person [Haaretz]

More on automation: Globally, Most Workers Think Robots Couldnt Handle Their Jobs

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Futurist Predicts "The End of the World as We Know It" - Futurism

Climate Activist Greta Thunberg Is TIMEs Person of the Year – Futurism

Posted on December 13, 2019 by Danzig

New Addition

Every year since 1927, TIME magazine has chosen one person, group, object, or idea that for better or for worse has done the most to influence the events of the year.

The list of past recipientsincludes a slew of presidents, monarchs, and religious leaders, as well as scientists, journalists, and even the computer itself.

And now, 16-year-old Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg.

In August 2018, Thunberg began skipping school on Fridays so she could protest outside her nations Parliament, demanding it do more to address climate change. Her protest inspired other youths to demand action from their own governments, and soon, Thunbergwas the face of a global movement.

She symbolizes the agony, the frustration, the desperation, the anger at some level, the hope of many young people who wont even be of age to vote by the time their futures are doomed, Varshini Prakash, co-founder of the climate advocating Sunrise Movement, told TIME.

In the 16 months since Thunberg started striking for the climate, shes addressed the United Nations, met with Pope Francis, and urged every person in power whod listen to do more to protect the environment if not for themselves, then for the generations to come.

We cant just continue living as if there was no tomorrow, because there is a tomorrow, Thunberg told TIME. That is all we are saying.

READ MORE: Greta Thunberg Is the Youngest TIME Person of the Year Ever. Heres How She Made History [TIME]

More on Greta Thunberg: Shrinks Are Treating Climate-Traumatized Kids for Eco-Anxiety

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Climate Activist Greta Thunberg Is TIMEs Person of the Year - Futurism

Futurist sees the end of the world as we know it for average person – Haaretz

Posted on December 13, 2019 by Danzig

In Providence, Rhode Island where Dr. Roey Tzezana now lives, signs on the street advertise Rent a Son. The signs are put up by people offering services that a son is supposed to do for his parents: shovel the snow, hang pictures and come for a visit. Someone looking in from the outside might think that this is a brilliant initiative after all, the population is aging and many of the elderly live alone. Why be just a handyman if you can be a son for rent?

But Tzezana, an Israeli future studies researcher, who studies the job markets of the years to come, too, sees the signs as a glimpse into the future. Tzezana, a researcher at the Blavatnik Interdisciplinary Cyber Research Center of Tel Aviv University, and a research fellow at the Humanity Centered Robotics Initiative of Brown University, says such services are exactly the jobs that those who cant find a place in technological professions will be forced into and some are being forced into them now.

Killing Palestinians isnt Israels goal. Killing Palestine is. Listen

This forecast is not good news for most people: The polarization in the job market will only grow and the inequality between those who buy the new smart machines, those who build them, and those who cannot will only widen.

In an interview with TheMarker, Tzezana sets aside all the most recent reports, such as that of the World Economic Forum, which shows that in addition to the forecasts of millions of jobs being eliminated, new jobs are created too because this, he says, is simply the wrong debate.

The deeper and more interesting questions are not whether new jobs will be created, but what is the pace that old jobs disappear and new jobs open up, or what is the pace at which the tasks the jobs require change and create a demand for new expertise, specializations and skills. The speed of closing tasks and opening new tasks is changing, and it is overwhelming, he says.

All the reports of the McKinsey consulting firm talk about technological progress requiring up skills and the ability to adapt; a view that is possible to develop, learn and grow and a way of thinking of an entrepreneur all the time looking for opportunities. All these are wonderful slogans that the large international consulting companies spread and there is a reason for it the profile of the employees in these organizations is that of young workers who learn all the time, says Tzezana. But he points out that the researchers who are happy to talk about adopting new capabilities, lifelong learning and all sorts of other buzzwords that are heard everywhere do not ask themselves whether it is appropriate for everyone.

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Many already recognize the reality that Tzezana is describing: We arent talking about a 45-year-old employee who lost a job and no one want his skills. Certainly there are people who can learn new things at any age. But how many of these people are there? Most of those in their 50s are sure they know and think they deserve to enjoy the fruits of their efforts and the seeds they sowed that experience has value.

Recently the Boston Consulting Group released a report on global trends in future jobs and found that the jobs of the future are ones such as waiting on tables, cleaning, child care and nursing care and the groups of job skills with the highest rate of growth after digital skills is social services and education.

BCG analyzed millions of job ads over three years and found that some professions have a high growth rate without being related to digital skills, such as child care, animal care, fitness training and behavioral analysis skills, are all related to the growing pursuit of general well-being and leisure. But if you ask Tzezana, this is part of the problem.

We see large polarization of the job market, in other words a continuing rise in polarization, he says, mentioning what Andrew Haldane, the chief economist at the Bank of England, said back in 2015. Even though technology has created many new jobs in recent centuries, at the same time it has led to polarization too, those with jobs requiring expertise, preferably in the exact sciences, have higher wages, while those who make do with a lower level of expertise receive lower pay. This is a result of the continual inflow of professionals in the middle whose jobs are disappearing because of automation those with a medium level of expertise.

Haldane asks, justifiably, whether we want to become a society with extreme inequality with a small number of super-rich and a great number of poor, which we are already seeing in the United States, says Tzezana. We are seeing people moving from the middle class, for example manufacturing workers whose factories closed down because the work moved to China. Now factories are returning to the United States, and this doesnt help anyone because they are automated, he says.

A factory that in the past employed 1,000 workers needs only 100 today. Those with high-level skills know how to operate the machines that replace the workers, but the workers who in the past were responsible for the machines or who did the same task as the machines need to find a new job. They are going to work in services for Uber or renting out apartments, says Tzezana.

So this is entrepreneurship, creativity? An excellent example of the entrepreneurial spirit, no?

The salary of someone who moves into the service professions drops dramatically sometimes a quarter of the previous salary, and this is not the problem of just one or two people, says Tzezana. When a lot of people experience this drop, we are talking about an economic crisis: It is not just a problem only for those who cant pay their mortgages. Sixty percent of the sales of most companies are to the general public and if the public cant afford to buy a new computer, the entire economy enters a crisis.

Penty of McJobs

So low unemployment doesnt tell the real story?

The level of unemployment in the United States is the lowest ever, but many of the new jobs only keep those filling them alive so they dont complain too much. In general, from the 1950s we have been seeing that the productivity compared to the effort invested has risen at a stupefying pace that is how the world will become a better place. To produce more with less.

But if until the 1970s the hourly pay for an employee rose at the same rate a relationship existed between productivity and hourly wages 40 to 50 years ago a dramatic change began. Productivity continued to grow, between 1973 and 2014 it rose by 74% but the hourly pay rose only by 9%. Its amazing. My explanation for this process is that at the same time the machines that were capable of being programmed came in, so did flexible work. You needed the average worker from the middle class less and it was possible to switch to machines to close factories and move them to China, where wages are lower, says Tzezana.

This figure is the end of the world for the average people. It reflects a rather depressing picture: The state and the economy are advancing by storm but the workers are almost not benefitting from this progress and are left behind. It is almost a catastrophe, he says. It doesnt match the ideas of democracy because democracy is based on the middle class. It is harder for workers from the lower class to vote in an intelligent manner and make intelligent decisions. It is a situation that over time does not enable the continuation of democracy as we know it.

This is just the beginning, says Tzezana. In a few more years we will be nearing a world in which machines will do everything at the level of human beings, and after a little while longer at a higher level. And then all the trends and forecasts will be scrambled. This is the point of singularity after which it will be hard to estimate what will happen because we have never been in such a situation in human history.

Nonetheless, Tzezana is trying to sketch a picture of the future. According to a survey conducted in the past few years among hundreds of artificial intelligence researchers, the Asian researchers believe that within 40 years artificial intelligence will do all the tasks that humans are capable of doing. This means that in another five or 10 years we will already see the changes in progress.

Dont we see it already?

We see it, but not completely. Many of the jobs have already opened, and someone who is hard-working and intelligent will find work, and in the worst case will manage barely to support themselves. Artificial intelligence knows how to give medical advice better than doctors, he says. Tzezana says the claim that people will still have a human advantage is wrong: We need to take into account technological developments, such as computers being able to understand people and the creation of avatars on the screen and in virtual reality. These avatars will be able in the next decade or two to provide more sensitive and considerate service than any human service representative can.

Status symbol

We will continue to buy services from other people, but not necessarily because we need them more because it is a status symbol, Tzezana continues. In medicine, the poor will receive a higher level of treatment from robots and machines. The rich will receive the same treatment, while the person representing the machine will be a human doctor who will say what the computer does and provide the feeling that a person is there. His role will be mostly to be an actor, a celebrity. People will come to him not because he is the best doctor, but because those who get services from him say about themselves: Im good. Tzezana says this will be true for many other professions.

The four winners will be those who control the machines, the programmers and owners the rich; those who have built up a reputation, so the rich will want to receive services from them; those who manage the teams and machines; and the fourth group, the entrepreneurs.

Whats the solution?

No one knows. What is clear is that it will be a period of large and fast changes, and it is a bit like asking me: What is the solution in the Industrial Revolution for all the remaining farmers. They will not stay farmers. In the short term, maybe it would be better to ask what is the solution that individuals can adopt so they have a better chance for work that will pay enough to support themselves respectably.

The answer is what is called the entrepreneurial spirit, learning all the time lifelong learning. To find 20 or 30 minutes a day to listen to podcasts, take online courses, even if you dont get grades or credit for them, he says. To expand your knowledge so the minute something new comes out you can jump on it before everyone and always remain a bit ahead of the crowd.

The second thing is to know how to work with computers not work on a computer, but with and alongside a computer, Tzezana says. Computers will become our collaborators in the coming decades. Governments must take a number of steps too. They must try to move as many people as possible to professions that require a high level of expertise and training, such as computer science, statistics and the exact sciences.

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Futurist sees the end of the world as we know it for average person - Haaretz

Study: Many Extreme Weather Events Were Caused by Climate Change – Futurism

Posted on December 13, 2019 by Danzig

See Clearly Now

Every year, the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society releases a reportabout all the studies published within its pages that attempted to determine the cause of extreme weather events that year.

Ever since the first annual report was published in 2011, an increasing trend has emerged: more and more fires, disastrous storms, and other events have been identified as symptoms of worsening climate change around the world, according to E&E News. Its a troubling pattern that drives home unfortunate realities: climate change means more than rising temperatures, and we can expect more meteorological devastation in the future.

The latest report analyzed studies that were published over the course of 2018. Of those, an overwhelming majority causally linked the weather in question to climate change.

Only one paper didnt, according to E&E News, but that may have been due to a limited data set not because climate change wasnt to blame.

Some of the studies found that the extreme weather events that they were analyzing were only possible in a world with a changing climate. For instance, a 2017 heat wave near Australia couldnt have possibly happened unless climate change was real and driving the wave itself.

And as our worsening climate creates entirely new weather problems, we may be stuck an ever-rising amount of new storms.

READ MORE: Climate change is influencing more disasters study [E&E News]

More on the environment: Scientists Are 99.9999 Percent Sure Humans Caused Climate Change

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Study: Many Extreme Weather Events Were Caused by Climate Change - Futurism

Man Behind Plot to Steal a Domain at Gunpoint Is Headed to Prison – Futurism

Posted on December 13, 2019 by Danzig

Desirable Domain

A bizarre plot to steal a domain name at gunpoint has earned an Instagram influencer a lengthy prison sentence.

Rossi Lorathio Adams II of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, was the man behind State Snaps, a social media company with 1 million combined followers, many of whom used the slogan Do it for state. Adams wanted to buy the domain doitforstate.com, but its owner, Cedar Rapids resident Ethan Deyo, refused to sell.

In 2017, Adams hired his cousin, Sherman Hopkins, Jr., to break into Deyos home with a gun and force him to transfer the domain to Adams GoDaddy account. But during the execution of the plot, Deyo got control of the gun, shot Hopkins several times in the chest, and then called the police.

Hopkins survived the incident and pled guilty to one count of interference and attempted interference with commerce by threats and violence, which earned him a 20-year prison sentence.

In April, a jury found Adams guilty of one count of conspiracy to interfere with commerce by force, threats, and violence for his role in the plot.

On Monday, the Department of Justice announced that a judge had handed down Adams sentence: 14 years in federal prison seemingly wrapping up one of the strangest crimes of the internet era.

READ MORE: An Instagram influencer was sentenced to 14 years in prison after a crazy plot that involved holding someone up at gunpoint for a domain name [Business Insider]

More on the plot: Someone Used a Gun to Try to Steal a Domain Name

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Man Behind Plot to Steal a Domain at Gunpoint Is Headed to Prison - Futurism

adidas and 032c Explore Futuristic Realism for Latest Collaborative Collection – adidas

Posted on December 13, 2019 by Danzig

Inspired by the contemporary fashion industry's current state of flux, the German sportswear brand adidas and the Berlin-based magazine and fashion brand 032c have come together once again to launch a collaborative collection exploring futuristic realism. Drawing on both our increasingly fluid digital culture and our tactile experience of the evolving world today, the collaboration responds to the volatile landscape we inhabit online, in our psyches, and in our physical environment.

Speaking to the natural relationship between the two brands, 032c Apparel creative director Maria Koch explains: We have always been inspired by adidas. We grew up on and in adidas, in fact, so on a personal level that legacy is embedded in our approach to sportswear, to youth culture, and to how sportswear can act as a counter-cultural catalyst.

Encompassing accessories and footwear, the collection has a strong focus on adaptability and multi-functional durability. Standing out as a new vision for versatile footwear, the adidas by 032c Salvation sneaker updates the form and function of an archival 1990s runner with performance technology enhancements and an agile, post-digital aesthetic. The adidas by 032c backpack, duffel, and multi-strap all-black accessories feature reinforced straps and metal loop hardware for heightened usability in any context, no matter how unpredictable from work day to nightlife, ideation to action, among other adaptations.

Featuring actress Lera Abova and artist Yngve Holen and shot by Timothy Schaumburg on the Baltic Sea coastline north of Berlin, the collection campaign distills the essence of unembellished realism. Capturing a stark grey atmosphere, the imagery offers an outward looking-perspective from 032c and adidas native Germany.

Emphasizing the futurism and functionality at the heart of the project, the collection was previewed at an immersive installation during Innersect 2019 in Shanghai. Guests were prompted to explore how technology can enhance our relationship with clothing through a virtual recreation of the 032c Workshop featuring an augmented reality magic mirror.

Proposing a new future for fashion that celebrates the distinct realism of quality, form, and function, this second round of products from the adidas by 032c ongoing collaboration which began with the adidas by 032c GSG9 earlier this year is available globally from December 13, 2019.

adidas.com/032c@adidasOriginals

CDC: These Are the Brands Linked to the Vaping Epidemic – Futurism

Posted on December 13, 2019 by Danzig

As of Tuesday, 48 people have died from a mysterious lung disease health officials are now callingby the mouthful e-cigarette or vaping product use associated lung injury,often shortened to EVALI.

When researchers first identified the disease this summer, the only link they could find between patients was that they all vaped. But now, theyre starting to home in on exactly what the 2,291 known EVALI sufferers have been sucking into their lungs and a shady vaping brand has emerged as a primary cause of the epidemic.

On Friday, the Centers for Disease Control released a list of THC vaping brands EVALI sufferers said they used prior to contracting the disease, and Dank Vapes which isnt so much a company as it is a label often used to market black-market cannabis oils accounted for 56 percent of the products.

Other vaping brands used by EVALI sufferers included TKO (15 percent of products), Smart Cart (13 percent), and Rove (12 percent).

This is valuable information, because it could help ensure more people dont fall victim to EVALI but given that 20 percent of the 1,782 hospitalized patients the CDC has information on say they never vaped THC, it doesnt entirely clear up the mystery behind the ongoing vaping epidemic.

THC-containing products continue to be the most commonly reported e-cigarettes, or vaping, products used by EVALI patients, and it appears that vitamin E acetate is associated with EVALI, the CDC wrote on Friday.

However, many substances and product sources are being investigated, and there might be more than one cause, it added. Therefore, while the investigation continues, persons should consider refraining from the use of all e-cigarette, or vaping, products.

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CDC: These Are the Brands Linked to the Vaping Epidemic - Futurism

Margaret Lawrence ’36, Who Was Rejected From Cornell’s Medical School Because She Was Black, Dies at 105 – Cornell University The Cornell Daily Sun

Posted on December 13, 2019 by Danzig

When Margaret Lawrence 36 arrived in Ithaca in 1932, she was the only black student in her class. Denied on-campus housing due to her race, the future psychoanalyst and pediatrician once slept in an attic, working as a live-in maid to help pay for her Cornell degree.

Lawrence whose name was Margaret Cornelia Morgan at the time applied in her senior year to the medical school to continue her education at Cornell, but was denied, since twenty-five years ago there was a Negro man admitted, a dean explained, and it didnt work out. That student had died from tuberculosis.

The Cornell Daily Sun June 12, 1936

Of this roster of graduates published in 1936, Margaret Lawrence 36 was the only black student.

Columbia University did accept Lawrence, propelling the alumna to eventually direct the Therapeutic Developmental Nursery at Harlem Hospital and becoming chief of the Developmental Psychiatry Service for Infants and Children for 21 years.

When Lawrence who would be known for her empathy for children patients, according to The New York Times was in medical school, she continually faced the compounded difficulty of sexism and racism as one of 10 women, and the only black woman in her class.

At Cornell, Lawrence was a skilled archer, scoring in the top eight and snagging a spot on the archery team, according to archived editions of The Sun.

She would chronicle these challenges in a book titled Balm in Gilead: Journey of a Healer, written by her daughter, Prof. Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot, sociology, Harvard University. In one recollection, Lawrence described how when she turned 21 and went to register to vote, she was asked to take a literacy test.

The Cornell Daily Sun on May 22, 1934

During her time at Cornell, Lawrence was involved in archery, repeatedly scoring among the top.

Lawrences story resonated with former Cornell University President Frank H. T. Rhodes, who reportedly heard her struggles and penned a short apology letter for the discrimination in 2008.

He wrote her a short letter of sincere and serious apology for the assaults ofdiscrimination and racism she had suffered, Lawrence-Lightfoot said.

According to The New York Times, Lawrence-Lightfood said that her mother appreciated the respectful and heartfelt apology.

Lawrence died on Wednesday in Boston at an assisted living center at the age of 105.

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Margaret Lawrence '36, Who Was Rejected From Cornell's Medical School Because She Was Black, Dies at 105 - Cornell University The Cornell Daily Sun

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