The Daily Banter | Post-Alexandria, Expect More Restrictions on First Amendment Rights and Zero Restrictions on Second Amendment ... The Daily Banter In other words, we can't possibly touch Second Amendment rights, but we can almost immediately restrict First Amendment rights such as free speech, free assembly and the right to petition the government for redress of grievances. Of course, certain ... |
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Jim Little , jwlittle@pnj.com 6:32 p.m. CT June 16, 2017
Escambia County Area Transit held a "Try Transit Day" event in an effort to boost ridership Thursday June 15, 2017. County Commissioner Doug Underhill has questioned whether it is fiscally responsible to continue funding ECAT because of its low utilization rate. (Photo: Tony Giberson/tgiberson@pnj.com)Buy Photo
The union representingEscambia County Area Transit workers hasfiled a lawsuit in federal court against the Escambia County Board of County Commissioners.
The Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1395 filed a lawsuit Friday in U.S. District Court for Northern Florida alleging Commission Chairman Doug Underhill violated its members' free speech rights.
The union's complaint names all five members of the commission as defendants. The lawsuit claims that on June 6, Underhill instructed a manager with First Transit, the private company that runs ECAT, to "discipline or discharge" any workers distributing flyers supporting the transportation system and urging riders to fight against Underhill's proposal to eliminate ECAT.
Commissioners instructed county staff on May 30 to begin the process of negotiating with the union so the county could end its contract with First Transit and operate ECAT directly.
Underhill has urged his fellow commissioners and the public to take a closer look at county expenses to eliminate wasteful spending, and has pointed to ECAT as one of the examples of waste.
During the May 30 meeting, Underhill said he wants to call a referendum on whetherto continue funding a 4-cent gas tax that provides some of ECAT's funding.
Off-duty members of the union responded on June 5 with by distributing flyers at the ECAT transfer station that read in large, bold letters "FDU" and "Fight Doug Underhill." On-duty drivers also distributedbuttons that read "I need the BUS" to riders, but stopped after being told it was against county policy.
The lawsuit claims Mike Crittenden, ECAT general manager, wrote a memo to ECAT workers that said passing out flyers on ECAT property whether on-duty or off-duty was a violation of company policy.
Underhill told the News Journal on Friday he had not seen the lawsuit. But he said nothing in his conversation with the management of First Transit was directive.
"I asked a series of questions to which they provided answers to, and that was all," Underhill said. "Absolutely no order or directive was given at any time."
Mike Lowery, president of the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1395, said he's worried about the First Amendment rights of ECAT workers and riders.
"The employees at ECAT currently feel intimidated by the county commission, and worried that they'll be disciplined, up to termination, for conducting their First Amendment rights,whether they're on-duty or off-duty on ECAT property," Lowery said.
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ECAT union sues Escambia County over First Amendment rights - Pensacola News Journal
Jitsi Original author(s) Emil Ivov Developer(s) Jitsi Team and Contributors Initial release 2003; 14years ago Stable release 2.10 (build.5550) (February5, 2017; 3 months ago) Preview release 2.11 (nightly) Development status Active Written in Java Operating system Linux, Mac OS X, Windows (all Java supported) Size 52.4 MB Windows (bundles its own private JRE)[1] 78.8MB Mac OS X (includes private JRE)[2] 22MB Linux 65MB source code[3] Available in Asturian, English, French, German, Bulgarian, Japanese, Spanish, Italian, Romanian, Greek and 25 more Type Voice over Internet Protocol / instant messaging / videoconferencing License Apache 2.0[4] Website jitsi.org
Jitsi (formerly SIP Communicator) is a free and open source multiplatform[5]voice (VoIP), videoconferencing and instant messaging application for Windows, Linux, Mac OS X and Android. It supports several popular instant-messaging and telephony protocols, including open recognised encryption protocols for chat (OTR) and voice/video/streaming and voice/video conferencing (SIP/RTP/SRTP/ZRTP), as well as built-in IPv6, NAT traversal and DNSSEC. Jitsi and its source code are released under the terms of the Apache Software Licence.[6]
Work on Jitsi (then SIP Communicator) started in 2003 in the context of a student project by Emil Ivov at the University of Strasbourg.[7] It was originally released as an example video phone in the JAIN-SIP stack and later spun off as a standalone project.[8]
Originally the project was mostly used as an experimentation tool because of its support for IPv6.[9][10] Through the years, as the project gathered members, it also added support for protocols other than SIP.
Jitsi has received support from various institutions such as the NLnet Foundation,[11][12] the University of Strasbourg and the Region of Alsace[13] and it has also had multiple participations in the Google Summer of Code program.[14][15]
In 2009, Emil Ivov founded the BlueJimp company which has employed some of Jitsis main contributors[16][17] in order to offer professional support and development services[18] related to the project.
In 2011, after successfully adding support for audio/video communication over XMPPs Jingle extensions, the project was renamed to Jitsi since it was no longer a SIP only Communicator.[19][20] This name originates from the Bulgarian (wires).[21]
On November 4, 2014, Jitsi + Ostel scored 6 out of 7 points on the Electronic Frontier Foundations secure messaging scorecard. They lost a point because there has not been a recent independent code audit.[22]
On February 1, 2015, Hristo Terezov, Ingo Bauersachs and the rest of the team released[23] version 2.6 from their stand at the Free and Open Source Software Developers European Meeting 2015 event in Brussels. This release includes security fixes, removes support of the deprecated MSN protocol, along with SSLv3 in XMPP. Among other notable improvements, the OS X version bundles a Java 8 runtime, enables echo cancelling by default, and uses the CoreAudio subsystem. The Linux build addresses font issues with the GTK+ native LookAndFeel, and fixes some long standing issues about microphone level on call setup when using the PulseAudio sound system. This release also adds the embedded Java database Hyper SQL Database to improve performance for users with huge configuration files, a feature which is disabled by default. A full list of changes is[24] available on the project web site.
Jitsis conference call window on Mac OS X
Jitsi supports multiple operating systems, including Windows as well as Unix-like systems such as Linux, Mac OS X and BSD. Beta packages built for Android are available[25] but the projects roadmap describes the porting to Android as on hold.[26] It also includes:[27]
The following protocols are currently supported by Jitsi:[5]
Jitsi is mostly written in Java[32] which helps reuse most of the same code over the various operating systems it works on. Its GUI is based upon Swing. The project also uses native code for the implementation of platform specific tasks such as audio/video capture and rendering, IP address selection, and access to native popup notification systems such as Growl.
The project uses the Apache Felix OSGi implementation[33] for modularity.
Among others Jitsi uses the JAIN-SIP protocol stack for SIP support and the Jive Software Smack library[34] for XMPP.[35]
As Jitsi can handle IPv6 it is especially interesting for direct PC-to-PC (peer-to-peer) communication, for instance, if both sides were trapped behind NAT routers, but could obtain a reachable IPv6 address via a tunnel-broker.
The Jitsi community has also completed an ICE implementation called ice4j.org, which it uses to provide NAT traversal capabilities, and assist IPv4 to IPv6 transition.[36]
Audio systems supported are PortAudio, PulseAudio and WASAPI (Windows Audio Session API).
Content is authored by an open community of volunteers and is not produced by or in any way affiliated with or reviewed by PediaView.com. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License, using material from the Wikipedia article Jitsi, which is available in its original form here:
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SAN FRANCISCO What goes precipitously up, often comes crashing down to earth.
So it was with bitcoin on Thursday, when the price of the digital currency plunged19% its steepest drop in more than two years after a record run. The volatility remained on full display late Thursday and, as of Friday evening, bitcoin rebounded to$2,484.59.
The cryptocurrency, which flirted with $3,000 on Monday, sunk as low as $2,076.16 in intraday trading early Thursday amid a confluence of bad omens. Tech stocks have recently taken a thumping over concerns about their lofty valuations. Ominous reports from Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley suggested bitcoin was due for a reversal in price and required government regulation. The Federal Reserve hiked interest ratesWednesday.
Compounding worries, digital currency exchange Coinbase experienced an outage Monday because of high-trading volume. Another exchange, Bitfinex, on Tuesday said it was under DDOS attack.
Meanwhile, prices for digital currenciesripple andNEM declined the past week, though Ethereum, the second-largest currency, has soared 20% on speculation it will be the top currency. At $371.36, it lags far behind bitcoin in value.
CryptoCurrency Market Capitalizations
"Bitcoin and other digital currencies are experiencing rapid growth these days," says Guy Zyskind, CEO of Enigma,a start-up incryptocurrency investing."For this to be sustainable over time, the market has to correct itself from time to time."
The market's wild ride this week underscores"the ebbs and flows of an entirely new asset class," says Bill Barhydt, CEO of Abra, a peer-to-peer payment service.
"While the bitcoin price will likely recover and continue to rise, what we should see in the future is bitcoin becoming a solid store of value, much like gold," saysMihir Magudia, executive director of LEOcoin Foundation. "It will be relatively easy to liquidate but will not be used to commonly pay for goods and services."
Follow USA TODAY's San Francisco Bureau Chief Jon Swartz @jswartz on Twitter.
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Cryptocurrency prices likely to continue wild ride - USA TODAY
It was only a matter of time until regulators caught up with cryptocurrency ICOs. These coin offerings have gone unregulated for quite some time now, while raising millions in funding. Anyone buying into these token sales in the US is according to the law buying securities, which require special licenses from the company holding the ICO. With US regulators aiming to venture into the cryptocurrency ICO world, things could get quite interesting moving forward.
Various aspects of cryptocurrency will never be subject to traditional regulation. Virtually all of these projects are decentralized, with no single entity responsible for issuing the coins or controlling the majority of funds circulating on the network. The only entity regulators can go after are the third-party service providers found within the world of cryptocurrency. Wallet providers, exchanges, and investment schemes are bound to see more attention from US regulators moving forward.
Which brings us to cryptocurrency ICOs, the modern-day crowdfunding efforts without regulation or oversight. Everyone in the cryptocurrency world knows how ICOs are growing in popularity and seemingly raise more money than ever before. Projects raising over US$10m in funding are slowly becoming the norm rather than an exception right now. However, there are a lot of legal questions regarding the ICOs and how the tokens are distributed.
It is believed the SEC is currently taking a very close look at any cryptocurrency ICO on the agenda. This does not bode well for most of the projects out there, as very few of these teams have someone with the necessary legal knowledge on board. It is only normal US regulators want to pay close attention to what is going on in this regard, as ICOs can be seen as a way to launder money, in their opinion. A group of people raising millions of dollars overnight without regulation or oversight is suspicious, regardless of how you want to look at it.
The bigger question on peoples mind is whether or not they buy tokens or securities. According to the US legislation, a cryptocurrency token can quickly turn into a security, which causes all kinds of legal issues. If a security is created voluntarily or by accident it needs to be overseen and regulated by the SEC, regardless of its ties with cryptocurrency or otherwise. This confusion needs to be avoided at all costs, but for now, there are no clear regulatory guidelines whatsoever.
Rest assured it will not take all that long until the SEC will introduce some form of cryptocurrency ICO regulation moving forward. For now, it remains anybodys guess as to what we can expect from such a decision. If ICOs are put on the same level as IPOs, things will look very dire for cryptocurrency companies looking at this mechanism as a way to quickly secure funding. Although the SEC is apparently investigating this matter, it may take years until they come to a conclusion.
Moreover, there is the topic of trading these ICO tokens across cryptocurrency exchanges. A lot of tokens can be traded against fiat currencies, which can pose some new challenges as well once regulation materializes. For the time being, the cryptocurrency ICO sector has nothing to worry about just yet. However, this situation could change at any given moment, and a lot of teams will find themselves in an awkward position because of it.
If you liked this article, follow us on Twitter @themerklenews and make sure to subscribe to our newsletter to receive the latest bitcoin, cryptocurrency, and technology news.
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SEC may be Looking for Ways to Regulate the Cryptocurrency ICO Market - The Merkle
Forbes | Bitcoin Millionaires And Newton's Mistake Forbes Congratulations Bitcoin millionaires. You made your first and perhaps your second million of dollars -- quickly, very quickly. Perhaps in the last six months in the Bitcoin investment trust. Now make sure that you don't lose all that money faster than ... |
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Forbes | Don't Ignore Technical Analysis If You Are Trading Bitcoin Forbes Bitcoin tumbles 19%, the most in more than two years, reported Bloomberg news. As a person who uses Elliott Waves, which is a form of technical analysis, I would like to demonstrate to you how traders can benefit enormously by paying attention to ... |
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Don't Ignore Technical Analysis If You Are Trading Bitcoin - Forbes
Before we get started, let me try and define some very important terms, which I hope will make it easier for me to fully convey what exactly is going to happen on August 1st.
Hard Fork - A hard fork is a permanent divergence in the blockchain, that occurs when non-upgraded nodes can't validate blocks created by upgraded nodes that follow newer block validation rules. This can be caused by a change in a blockchain's protocol that makes previously invalid blocks/transactions valid, and as such requires all nodes or users to upgrade to the latest version of the protocol software. This essentially creates a fork in the blockchain, one path which follows the new, upgraded blockchain, and one path which continues along the old path. Generally, after a short period of time, those on the old chain will realize that their version of the blockchain is outdated or irrelevant and quickly upgrade to the latest version.
Soft Fork - A soft fork is a change to the bitcoin protocol where some previously valid blocks/transactions are made invalid, and the rest of the previously valid blocks/transactions are kept valid. Old nodes will still recognize the new blocks as valid. Soft forks don't require any nodes to upgrade since all blocks with the new soft-forked rules also follow the old rules, therefore old clients accept them. This kind of fork requires only a majority of the miners to upgrade in order to enforce the new rules.
(Image Source: Bitcoin.org)
User Activated Soft Fork (UASF) - A UASF is a soft fork activated on a specified date, enforced by node enforcement instead of miner signaling. The idea is to have the economic majority, businesses and users (not miners) choose whether or not to activate this soft fork within their Bitcoin software client. On the proposed time, clients that have activated the soft fork will only accept blocks mined from miners that have also updated to start signaling for the soft fork, and will reject blocks that were created from miners that had not updated. Clients that have not updated to activate the soft fork will accept blocks mined from both miners that have updated and miners that have not updated.
By the specified date, miners are then given an opportunity to make a choice of their own, based on how much of the economic majority has activated the soft fork. If the economic majority upgrades, then miners have an economic incentive to update, as not following along would make it more difficult to sell coins mined after the chosen date, as the blocks would not be accepted by the economic majority. Essentially, miners on the old platform would be producing an altcoin not recognized by the majority of users and exchanges, making them less useful and in lower demand. Because of how the Bitcoin network only follows the longest blockchain, if a majority of hash power follows the soft fork, all nodes will follow the soft fork chain regardless of if they have updated or not, and the UASF is successful.
However, if the vast majority of the economic majority does not upgrade, then the UASF will have given miners no additional incentive to upgrade and thus miners will not update or they risk following fork rules that are or will surely be obsolete. And in fact, any of the economic majority that had upgraded now must roll back their clients to the old version, else they would be unable to spend their Bitcoin. Their updated clients would reject any blockchain that includes any non-upgraded blocks created past the specified date, so any transactions they attempt to make will be added to the soft forked blockchain which would be maintained by the soft forked nodes and miners (if there are any soft forked miners at all). This soft forked blockchain will undoubtedly remain shorter than the original blockchain containing the non-updated blocks. Thus, the soft forked blockchain will never be accepted by the non-updated clients, and the transactions of the updated clients will never be included in the original blockchain; the transactions from the updated clients will never go through.
In the unlikely case that neither side is the clear winner, this is where it gets messy. A chain split will occur, where two versions of the blockchain will emerge. All coins that existed prior to the chain split will exist on both chains. If the original "legacy" blockchain remains longer, any coins mined under the soft forked blockchain will be nonexistent according to the legacy chain, and will only exist on the soft forked chain. However, if the soft forked chain ever becomes one block longer than the original, "legacy" chain, all transactions on the legacy chain that occurred between the time of the split and the soft forked chain getting longer will be erased forever and replaced with those of the soft forked chain, at which point the soft forked blockchain will likely remain victorious.
I hope there remains no confusion over my definitions, especially so in my defining of a UASF. I will attempt to answer any questions in the comments in order to further clarify.
August 1st, and the Future of Bitcoin
Bitcoin Improvement Proposal 148 (or BIP148 for short) is a UASF that encourage users to push miners to upgrade to SegWit. SegWit, along with fixing third party transaction malleability allowing for sidechains to be developed, will also improve Bitcoin's scalability over both the short term and the long term, as the malleability fix will allow for the implementation of Lightning Network, a more permanent solution to Bitcoin's transaction speed bottleneck. As Bitcoin is a decentralized system, here's how SegWit is supposed to activate: In any consecutive chain of blocks that are 2016-blocks long, ending November 15th, 2017, 95% or more of mined blocks must signal that the miners are ready for SegWit. If that doesn't happen, SegWit activation dies. Once SegWit signaling meets the criteria, there's a 2016-block long "pause" where SegWit activation is pending, but voting no longer matters. After that point, the network will accept SegWit transactions and miners are expected to accept them into blocks.
BIP148 will activate on August 1st, 2017. All BIP148 does, is refuse to accept blocks that do not signal SegWit-ready after August 1st, 2017, either until SegWit activates or until the deadline of November 15th, 2017 hits. In so doing, it forces the existing activation mechanism to deploy SegWit. From that date on, miners that want their blocks to be accepted by nodes that have updated to BIP148 will be required to signal readiness for SegWit by switching to the creation of blocks with a new version, called 'bit 1'. After enough miners are mining 'bit 1' version blocks, enough so that 95% or more of mined blocks in any 2016-block chain are of the version 'bit 1', the above requirements for SegWit activation will be fulfilled. Then all SegWit ready nodes, which currently make up over 80% of the network, will activate and begin SegWit enforcement, and thus SegWit will have been successfully implemented into the Bitcoin Network.
(Image Source: uasf.co)
As a soft fork, BIP148 avoids having to force most users to upgrade their software. Also, the way BIP148 and SegWit are designed, once SegWit is activated, users who are not running BIP148 will still get the benefits of the activation of SegWit.
Possible Scenarios
A confrontation will happen on August 1st, but right now the exact outcome is unknown because the outcome will depend on the amount of support that miners give to the two sides. There are three possible outcomes:
BIP148 fails with very little economic majority support. BIP148 requires support from the economic majority, particularly exchanges and wallets. If this does not occur, users will not run BIP148 node software after August 1st so as to prevent a chain split. There are strong economic incentives in the Bitcoin system for nodes to cooperate and remain in consensus to prevent chain splits. If no nodes are running BIP148, then BIP148 has failed. Bitcoin goes on exactly as it did on July 31st. People who installed BIP148 nodes need to roll back their nodes to be able to spend their bitcoins. Everyone else is unaffected.
Neither side is the clear winner and the blockchain splits, where two versions of the blockchain emerge. This is the disaster scenario. All coins that existed prior to the chain split will exist on both chains. If there is a greater demand for the blocks produced by the BIP148 miners, then profit-driven miners would eventually flock to BIP148 chain and if the BIP148 chain ever becomes one block longer than the legacy chain, as in it accumulates the most proof of work, all transactions on the legacy chain that occurred between the time of the split and the BIP148 chain getting longer will be erased forever and replaced with those of the BIP148 chain. This is because both BIP148 nodes as well as legacy nodes would switch to the BIP148 blockchain, discarding the legacy chain. If 50% of the mining power goes to the BIP148, it will almost certainly become the only chain. Nobody will want to mine or transact on a chain where the mining reward and transactions can disappear at any moment forever. But unless and until this happens, there is always at least a theoretical risk that the legacy blockchain can be overtaken and be discarded like this. That chance should decrease as time goes on, but will realistically exist for hours, days, or maybe even longer. If the demand is less for the soft-fork chain, then both chains may co-exist indefinitely. BIP148 nodes will never acknowledge the legacy chain, so these nodes will not switch to the legacy blockchain regardless of which chain has more hash power. However, it is very risky to buy, accept or hold any of the BIP148 Bitcoin, too. Most importantly, there is no guarantee that BIP148 Bitcoin will continue to be used and thus the coin's long-term value is in contention.
Most likely, one of the first two scenarios will unfold, where BIP148 either succeeds triumphantly or fails definitively, and Bitcoin will go on as it were, for better or for worse. Yet despite the odds, however improbable, an investor must always consider the worst case scenario in his or her risk-reward evaluation and examine if taking on the according risk-reward is appropriate for the goals of his or her portfolio.
Disclosure: I am/we are long BTC.
I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it (other than from Seeking Alpha). I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article.
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Bitcoins long-lasting scaling debate appeared to be heading toward a climax lately, with two proposals gaining significant traction. At one end of the fence there is Bitcoin Improvement Proposal 148 (BIP148), a user activated soft fork (UASF) originally proposed by the pseudonymous developer shaolinfry. On the other, theres SegWit2x, an agreement forged between a significant number of Bitcoin companies and miners.
The good news is that both of these proposals have a short-term solution in common: both plan to activate Segregated Witness (SegWit) this summer. The bad news is that the activation method of the two has differed, which could lead to a coin-split.
As of today, it seems this schism will be avoided at least initially. The SegWit2x development team plans to implement BIP91, a proposal by Bitmain Warranty engineer James Hilliard that cleverly makes the two conflicting activation methods compatible.
Heres how.
The current implementation of Segregated Witness is defined by BIP141. This version is included in the latest Bitcoin Core releases, and is widely deployed on the Bitcoin network. BIP141 is activated through the activation method defined by BIP9. This means that 95 percent of all blocks within a two-week period need to include a piece of data: bit 1. This indicates that a miner is ready for the upgrade. As such, SegWit would be activated if the vast majority of miners are ready for it.
Or that was the intention. So far, only some 30 percent of hash power is signaling support for the upgrade. There is a lot of speculation as to why this is the case, but it almost certainly has nothing to do with (a lack of) readiness.
Thats why other activation methods are increasingly being considered.
BIP148 is a user activated soft fork (UASF), specifically designed to trigger BIP141.
On August 1st, anyone running Bitcoin software that implemented BIP148 will start rejecting all blocks that do not include bit 1, the SegWit signalling data.
This means that if a mere majority of miners (by hash power) runs this software, they will reject all blocks from the minority of miners that does not. As a result, this majority of miners will always have the longest valid chain according to all Bitcoin nodes on the network. Consequently, all deployed BIP141 nodes will see a chain that includes over 95 percent of bit 1 blocks, meaning SegWit would be activated on the network.
However, if BIP148 is not supported by a majority of miners (by hash power), Bitcoins blockchain could split in two. In that case, there would effectively be two types of Bitcoin, where one activated BIP148 and the other did not. This may resolve over time or it may not.
SegWit2x (also referred to as SegWit2MB or the Silbert Accord), is the scaling agreement reached by a numer of Bitcoin companies and over 80 percent of miners (by hash power), drafted just before the Consensus 2017 conference.
For some time, the details surrounding SegWit2x were not very specific. As the name suggests, all that was really known was that SegWit was included in the agreement, and that it included a hard fork to double Bitcoins base block size to two megabytes.
And, of course, SegWit was meant to be implemented using a different activation method. Like the original BIP141 proposal, SegWit2x was to be activated by miners through hash power. But where BIP141 requires 95 percent hash power support, SegWit2x would only require 80 percent. Moreover, SegWit2x readiness would be signaled using another piece of activation data: bit 4 instead of bit 1.
This makes SegWit2x largely incompatible with BIP141, and especially with BIP148: Different nodes would be looking at different activation bits, meaning they could activate SegWit under different circumstances and at different times; and that would mess up SegWit-specific block relay policy between nodes, potentially fracturing the network.
Now, it seems BIP91 has provided the solution.
BIP91 is a proposal by Bitmain Warranty (not to be confused with Bitmain) engineer James Hilliard which was specifically designed to prevent a coin-split by making SegWit2x and BIP148 compatible.
The proposal resembles BIP148 to some extent. Upon activation of BIP91, all BIP91 nodes will reject any blocks that do not signal support for SegWit through bit 1. As such, if a majority of miners (by hash power) run BIP91, the longest valid Bitcoin chain will consist of SegWit-signaling blocks only, and all regular BIP141 SegWit nodes will activate the protocol upgrade.
Where BIP91 differs from BIP148 is that it doesnt have a set activation date, but is instead triggered by hash power. BIP91 nodes will reject any non-SegWit signalling blocks if, and only if, 80 percent of blocks first indicate within two days thats what theyll do.
This indication is done with bit 4. As such, the Silbert Accord can technically be upheld 80 percent hash power activation with bit 4 while at the same time activating the existing SegWit proposal. And if this is done before August 1st, its also compatible with BIP148, since BIP148 nodes would reject non-bit 1 blocks just the same.
This proposal gives miners a little over six weeks to avoid a coin-split, under their own agreed-upon terms. With a SegWit2x launch date planned for July 21st, that should not be a problem assuming that the miners actually follow through.
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BIP91: The SegWit Activation "Kludge" That Should Keep Bitcoin Whole - Bitcoin Magazine
It was with the air of a Julliard-trainedviolinist reluctantly bowing the first notes of Devil Went Down To Georgia for a family weddingthat Goldman Sachs on Monday initiated coverage of the speculative money-laundering-based asset and digital blackmail vehicle known popularly as bitcoin. Due to popular demand, its worth taking a quick look at Bitcoin here Goldmans top technical analyst Sheba Jafari wrote in a note to clients, the ellipses presumably denoting a heavy sigh. Goldman didnt want to dothis, but you gotta go where the customers are.
Jafarisconclusion: expect a top soon. Heres achart, courtesy of Zerohedge.
Thespecific call: Wary of a near-term top ahead of 3,134. Consider re-establishing bullish exposure between 2,330 and no lower than 1,915.
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Unsurprisingly, the bitcoin community didnt take too kindly to Goldman wading into their turf. If the Fed is the archfoe of the paranoid cryptolibertarian imagination, Goldman is a close second. Goldman Sachs is exactly what bitcoin is meant to destroy, said some Redditor. Added another: Lol so, Goldman gets high demand for bitcoin research, and then they turn around and say its overvalued. Ironic? All they did with their deep wisdom is make a ratio and apply it forward. Great work guys. Thats a wrap.
Lo and behold:
See that top? Just over $3,000 on the same day Goldman issued the note. Three down dayslater, bitcoin is bouncing around $2,300, the upper bound of the range Jafari spelled out.
Sometimes technical analysts get lucky. Other times they make good calls. This looks like the latter. Itmakes you wonder about the whole technical analysis thing, which often gets mocked by others in the financial world as basically an occult practice, on the level of tarot cards or Federal Reserve macro forecasting. And not only was the analysis dead-on, it was dead-on about an asset that veteran investors tend to regard as the marketequivalent of K2, an asset advertised as a safe alternative to ordinary currencies that in reality exacerbates all their worst and most volatile qualities.
So anyway, kudos to Goldman. We look forward toJafaris take on Potcoin.
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Goldman Sachs Side-Eyes Bitcoin Just Long Enough To Perfectly Call The Top - Dealbreaker
The Minnesota Department of Transportation will begin installing posters in 41 rest areas across the state this week to educate the traveling public about human trafficking and to encourage them to report suspicious activity. The posters include guidelines on how to recognize signs of human trafficking and potential victims and a toll-free hotline to report any suspicious activity.
Human trafficking often involves travel, including the transport of victims from a base of operations to locations of exploitation.
According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Twin Cities is one of the 13 U.S. cities with a particularly high rate of child prostitution, and Minnesota has the third highest number of human trafficking cases in the nation, said MnDOT Commissioner Charlie Zelle. MnDOTs responsibility for maintaining the quality and safety of multiple modes of transportation, including highways, airports, rail lines, transit systems and commercial vehicles, provides unique opportunities to see and stop human trafficking activities..
Zelle, on behalf of MnDOTs nearly 5,000 employees, signed a pledge in January 2017 to join Transportation Leaders Against Human Trafficking and make fighting human trafficking a MnDOT priority by developing and sharing resources to inform and empower MnDOT employees as well as the traveling public. Nearly 20 million travelers visit Minnesota rest areas each year.
If you see signs of human trafficking or are a trafficking victim, resources are available to you. For general trafficking information, to connect with a service provider or to report a tip on potential human trafficking activity, call the National Human Trafficking Resource Center at 1-888-3737-888. Submit a tip on the NHTRC website at https://traffickingresourcecenter.org/report-trafficking.
The National Human Trafficking Resource Center is a national, toll-free hotline available to answer calls in multiple languages from anywhere in the country, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, every day of the year. The NHTRC is not a law enforcement or immigration authority and is operated by a nongovernmental organization funded by the Federal government.
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MnDOT to post human trafficking awareness messages at state rest ... - International Falls Journal
Humanity has died out and all that's left on Earth are the mutated animals and household robots we left behind. This is how you're introduced to the world of Post Human W.A.R, a turn-based strategy game that pits sentient vacuum cleaners against tracksuit monkeys against each other in warfare.
There are, in fact, three different factions - or groups - to choose from in Post Human W.A.R. They're all battling to decide the fate of the world now that humans have been wiped out. The mutated animals are hoping to destroy everything - they're pretty angry about the state they've been left in - the robots are hoping to protect humanity's heritage, and finally the monkeys are hoping to pick back up where the humans left off, becoming the new dominant species.
Once you've picked which side you'll serve, you then enter battle with the others, which requires you to pick units and spread them across a honeycomb grid - positioning your fighters to be the most effective is crucial. While fighting, either in single-player or online against strangers, you'll also need to make use of the environment, as well as react to the enemy's bluffs - adding a psychological level to the game's tactics.
If you want to get involved in the beta of Post Human W.A.R right now, you can. Just enter via our widget below and unlock your key.
When you've grabbed your code redeem via Steam. Simply click the Add a Game button at the bottom left of the Steam client window, and Activate a Product on Steam. Follow the instructions, download the game, and get playing!
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Post Human W.A.R giveaway
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Grab one of 2,000 Post Human W.A.R beta keys and start playing ... - PCGamesN
Summer is almost here and were dreaming of sunshine and palm trees. We might not be there yet, but here at Tech.Co, were adding some of this tech-savvy gear to our packing list! Each week, we scour the web for five of the latest and greatest ideas in tech. This week in Startup Spotlight we found a company helping women take sabbaticals, an app to end cold food, a portable vault for the beach and more.
Behere is a service that helps working women travel by taking care of the planning. That way, they spend more time enjoying their free-moments on vacation instead of dealing with logistics. Beheres travel and work lifestyle experience can last from one month to six.
Behere covers the necessities like major travel, a furnished apartment and (our favorite) a workspace with reliable high-speed internet. Additionally, they support a balanced lifestyle with suggested itineraries and networking opportunities. They have a calendar of social events and guides created by women for each city. The guides are tailored to your preferences, whether its adventure or an authentic Italian pizza youre seeking. Still cant find what youre looking for? Behere provides constant access to assistance for scheduling and events.
Visiting a food truck for lunch can be the highlight of your day, but not everyone has time to stand in line and wait. Bistro Planet is changing the way foodies order from food trucks through the use of its free app.
Users can browse nearby truck menus, order and pay directly through the app. Unlike other food delivery, youll never have to worry about cold food. An alert is sent to your phone as soon as your order is ready. That half-an-hour lunch break doesnt seem so short now, after all.
Just in time for Fathers Day, the Purseat is a great gift for any parents on the go. As its name implies, the Purseat is an easy-to-carry collapsible car seat that can hold items like a purse. Its compact design eliminates the awkwardness of most car seats by making car seat installation and removal simple no matter the vehicle.
The Purseat is perfect for air travel because of its size. It can store fragile devices such as ipods or expensive childrens toys. It can also transform into a traveling booster seat or bed. The purse unfolds with a click and is ready to go. Suitable for ages 3 through 12, the Purseat is convenient protection for children during travel.
Here at Tech.Co, we know that taking technology to the beach can be tricky. Between the sand, surf and strangers, it seems unlikely a device can ever truly be safe. Introducing the Aquavault, a portable vault that attaches to lawn chairs and secures your valuables. The safe is made of durable plastic and features a roomy cargo hull and three-digit combination lock. If it looks familiar, its probably because you saw it make a splash on SharkTankbut this safe is for more than the beach. The Aquavault can attach to any horizontal bar on useful everyday items like umbrellas, strollers, golf carts, boats and more.
Invitees ignoring your e-vites? Events are all about attendance and Hobnob changes the way people manage events and RSVPs. The app allows users to create invites and collect RSVP information from their contacts in an unobtrusive way through text message.
Users input event information, select a template and the app creates an invite formatted for SMS messaging. The host can send the invite to any of his or her contacts because invitees can see the invite without having the app. Perfect for planning that 4th of July celebration!
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Startup Spotlight: World Travel, Compact Car Seats and Portable Vaults - Tech.Co
New York Times | Otto Warmbier Came Home in a Coma. Travel Company Says North Korea Is 'Extremely Safe!' New York Times I truly believe that the North Korean people will benefit from any contact they get, however small, with those that come from the outside world, said Ron Lish, an American businessman who visited North Korea in February. It's my belief that these ... |
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( CNN ) In a world where phones offer a filter, sticker or effect for every photo, images can become more dramatic than the real thing.
But there are still places that even Photoshop can't improve on, where nature's palette concocts colors that seem unreal, or where designers have turned ordinary neighborhoods into wonderlands.
Here are 25 of the world's most colorful places. No filter necessary.
Large enough to be seen from space, the colors of the Great Barrier Reef are glorious enough to challenge Pixar animators.
The coral reefs and islands stretch 2,300 kilometers long, but it's not just the coral that delights.
The fish add swirls of their own hues as they feed and make their homes there. The reef has become less colorful, though, as warming seas have killed off the coral which are profoundly attuned to ocean temperatures.
Huge swaths of the reef stretching over hundreds of miles bleached out during the last summer, and scientists warn the next great killing isn't long off.
Muizenberg's colorful beach huts don't need an Instagram filter to dazzle.
Victorian bathing houses line the broad beach at Muizenburg, painted in bold primary and secondary colors, as if from a kindergarten art set.
The little houses are leftover from the days when women walked to the beach fully, and ornately, clothed and needed a place to change into their slightly less cumbersome swimming gear.
The bathing boxes are now more likely to hold surf boards or a family's sandcastle construction equipment, but the bold colors retain their link to earlier times.
The full glare of modern Tokyo shines down on the intersection outside Shibuya Station, often touted as the busiest intersection in the world.
When the lights turn red, up to 1,000 pedestrians cross the street in every direction at the same time.
Once a tangle of neon signs, Shibuya is now lit by higher-wattage electronic billboards screaming in every hue that a pixel can take.
Arizona's Painted Desert is famous for its dramatic formations and colorful stones.
Clay and sandstone worn by the eons into dramatic formations take on unlikely shades in Arizona's Painted Desert.
Lavender, orange, red, gray and pink tones stretch across the stone in layers of geologic history. The colors change as the sun moves across the sky, but the one that rarely emerges is green. The landscape is beautiful but barren.
Famous for soccer, tango and the vivid colors of its houses, La Boca is a curious mix of a neighborhood that's both genuinely working class and home to several essential tourist attractions.
The cobblestone street known as El Caminito is lined with merrily painted buildings, sidewalk musicians and vendors selling art.
The tango evolved in La Boca, from its mix of immigrants, as did much of Buenos Aires's slang which is as colorful as the buildings.
St Basil's Cathedral, on Red Square's southern edge, represents Russia as fully as any piece of architecture possibly could.
Often shrouded in snow and shot in grim tones in American movies, the full glory of the 16th-century cathedral can be a revelation for visitors.
Reds, greens and blues in dizzying patterns were added 200 years after the building was completed, covering the original edifice that was disappointingly white.
A small industry surrounds New England's annual autumnal show, helping visitors predict when and where to catch the fall colors at their peak.
The golds, scarlets and purples vary from place to place and from year to year, but exploring is half of the fun, driving through the hills hoping for that perfect landscape of trees that look like they were dipped in a jewelry box and came out gilded.
Antigua Guatemala: Street scenes. (Photo by: Kobby Dagan/VW Pics/UIG via Getty Images)
Surrounded by smoking volcanoes and painted in a centuries-old palate, Antigua shows off its colors as they would have originally appeared in colonial times.
The old city is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and every building is painted in a careful selection of 12 colors -- soft yellows, pinks, blues and reds with names like Rojo Santo Domingo or Amarillo La Merced.
When the rain comes, the surrounding mountains burst into greens, setting the city like a flower atop a garden.
Canoes filled with pink dragon fruits, red rose apples and purple mangosteens drift along the canals in Bangkok's floating markets.
Among the best is Damnoen Saduak, where vendors paddle their boats early in the morning until the midday heat makes it too unbearable to keep going.
The floating markets attract lots of tourists, for good reason.
They're a glimpse into Thailand's past and the almost unthinkable days before cars clogged Bangkok's streets.
A photo of the Valley of Flowers in Uttarakhand could at a glance be mistaken for an airbrush painting on velvet of a fantasy landscape, the sort of art once found in Alabama flea markets and now redeemed by the value put on their kitsch.
The valleys in the West Himalayas fill with alpine flowers that astound for their sheer numbers and the variety of species.
Yellows, violets, pinks and oranges just seem too much for nature to have planted in one spot.
Perhaps that's why the landscape gets mentioned in Hindu mythology.
It's a place more for the gods.
Cinque Terre's cliffside villages are even more magical during the golden hour. (Daniel Stockman/Flickr/CC by SA 2.0)
The five pastel villages of Cinque Terre trace their history to the early medieval times, hugging dramatic cliffs over the sea and crisscrossed by narrow paths that find ways across seemingly impregnable territory.
Gardens carved into the hillside over two millennia are now as much a part of the landscape as the castles and churches that rise up in full "Game of Thrones" style.
Cars have been banned and plans are underway to limit tourist numbers, helping the soft colors by the blue sea regain some of their ancient magic.
Summertime is lavender season in Provence, when the hilly fields bloom in world-famous purples whose smells are as beguiling as the colors.
The fields are boldest in June and July, but in August the distilleries gear up, producing all manner of products with the flowers' fragrance.
Seeing fields of purple that would normally be full of greenery creates jarringly beautiful moments that remind us of nature's many possibilities.
Keukenhof in Lisse is the best place to see Holland's spring colors.
At the end of spring, usually around late April, Holland's tulip fields reach their peak.
They're not the only flowers worth visiting.
Holland also grows hyacinths and daffodils and other colorful blossoms, but the tulips boast more variety and quantity. The rows of colors line the countryside like crayons spread on the floor.
When they're blooming, it only takes a bicycle to explore them.
The Danakil Depression is one of the most hostile environments on the planet.
The scorching heat would be oppressive already, but add to that miniature geysers that shoot acid water and ruptures in the Earth that spew fiery molten lava.
The heat causes mirages hovering over the pools and among the Seussian-shaped salt domes. This distant region is called, oddly enough, Afar.
Most of the visitors are geologists and astrobiologists, imagining life on other planets in colors so unusual on Earth.
Think pink: Tanzania's Lake Natron.
The water in Lake Natron is a toxic mixture of salt and soda.
A few fish can survive around the edges, but the lake is mostly home to microbes that turn the water into a shocking red color, laced with salty crust that covers the surface in strands of white and pink.
Birds or other animals with the misfortune to die in the water get covered in a chalky coating of sodium carbonate, creating the illusion that their bodies turned to stone.
Rainbow colors splash across the Praa Canto in Rio's Santa Maria favela, washing over the masonry in stripes.
The paint brought the plaza together in a single vision for the neighborhood and changed the way the rest of the city saw it.
Santa Maria is now part of the tourist circuit, and the project led by Dutch artists Jeroen Koolhaas and Dre Urhahn has now spread around the world, with cleverly designed murals transforming rough neighborhoods.
The otherworldly landscape of the Rainbow Mountains is a result of oxidation and erosion. (Yeung Ming/Flickr/CC by 2.0)
The Rainbow Mountains of China, in the Zhangye Danxia Landform Geological Park, look like an accident, as if giant children spilled their paint buckets down the slopes in streaks of blue, yellow, red and green.
The colors come from iron and other minerals mixed into the sandstone hills. The pigments emerged from years of oxidation and erosion that have worn away at the landscape.
The umbrellas first popped open in 2011 during Agueda's art festival, sheltering the town's streets from the intense summer sun.
Cables connect rooftops to string together the bright umbrellas that light up the sky and cast colored lights on the pavements.
They're cleverly connected so that they appear to float freely like a parking lot for Mary Poppins' family reunion. The shade breathes new life into Agueda at a time when the sun would make the streets scorching hot.
The Victorian row houses in St. John's were once drab buildings, as gray as the overcast skies.
But in the late 1970s, a heritage movement caught on, inspiring residents to paint their homes in vibrant shades of blue, red, yellow and orange. The gingerbread trims, shutters and frames popularly took on accent colors that vividly outline the homes.
At some point the name Jellybean Row took hold to describe the streets, which are not a single row but block after block of cheery homes.
Kulusuk's colorful houses are especially eye-catching among the icebergs in the North Atlantic.
With fewer than 500 residents, Kulusuk is remote even by Greenland's standards. The island sits among icebergs off the country's mainland, in the deep blue of the north Atlantic.
It's a harsh land of hunters, fishers and, increasingly, adventure tourism. Yet the town makes itself seen by painting homes in fire-engine reds, with some oranges and blues.
The dots of color assert the town's life in a region where few people are hardy enough to hack it.
The i-City in Selangor is a peculiar blend of a hi-tech development center and an amusement park that includes an ice palace called the Snowalk, where the indoors is kept at freezing temperatures to preserve chambers of ice lit with colored lights.
In the evenings, outdoors in the tropical heat, millions of twinkle lights illuminate the trees in every artificial color imaginable.
It's a Christmas yard display amped up to the nth degree.
The Northern Lights, and their southern counterparts, flicker and curve in the sky as solar winds get caught in the Earth's magnetic field.
They're visible at both poles, most nights when the weather is clear, roughly within the Arctic Circle. The colors change as the solar particles interact with gases in the atmosphere.
The dancing, shimmering lights are impossible to capture fully in photos and often startle first-time viewers.
Police in Iceland have had to warn tourists to stop their cars to watch the lights, after a series of accidents involving drivers so entranced that they couldn't keep their eyes on the roads.
Bright lights, big city: New York's Times Square.
Times Square unleashes American capitalism in a high-wattage display that blasts light across the streets in ever-shifting displays of advertisements, news tickers, and studio lights.
There's always something to look at, trying to be bigger, brighter and sexier than whatever came before.
The neon lights of old are mostly replaced by brasher new displays so bright that it's sometimes hard to tell if it's day or night.
Legoland has set up colonies around the world, but the Billund Resort in Denmark remains the quintessential showcase of the plastic bricks that have engaged children's minds and jabbed parents' feet for generations.
Lego has branched into so many varieties of little bricks, tied to films and cartoon characters, that the park provides a welcome reminder of the simple joys of the original building blocks in primary and secondary colors.
Lego's full variety is on display, with jellybean-colored bricks constructed into castles, villages and animals.
Venice's canals create mirror images of the buildings lining the waterfronts, so that the oranges, reds and yellows extend above and below.
The Renaissance palaces reflect back in stately tones, but on the island of Burano residents go for vivid neon colors.
Each house must be a different color from its neighbors, and gets repainted every two years to prevent fading.
The community government keeps tabs on it all, ensuring that the houses stay Photoshop-perfect in real life.
See the rest here:
25 of the world's most bright, colorful places, from Venice to Rio - CNN
Sony announced PlayLink for the PlayStation 4 at E3 this week. The new app allows users to play games on their console by using the touchscreen of their iOS device. Sony previewed a few upcoming PlayLink titles that will be availble at launch. Check out the descriptions and trailers below.
PlayLink will be available for free on both the App Store and Google Play on July 4th.
That's You! - An audacious comedy quiz which challenges you and up to five friends to get personal and find out what you really think about each other. Featuring over 1,000 varied questions, reveal your daring side by taking part in doodle challenges and snapping selfies.
Hidden Agenda - This narrative-driven adventure drops you into a detective thriller rife with chilling moral dilemmas that may determine life or death. Up to six of you can join in to make tough decisions about how the story unfolds, but not all of you will be working towards the same objective
Knowledge is Power - Answer a variety of trivia questions and outsmart up to five opponents, with power plays and challenges thrown in to keep you on your toes. This game is all about speed and accuracy in the face of some wickedly crafted distractions from your opponents are you up to the task?
Frantics - Arcade-style fun and manic mini-games are all the rage in Frantics, where you and up to three friends have to face off in a variety of challenges. Bluff, battle, negotiate and co-operate your way to victory, but beware mischievous host The Fox is also on hand to stir things up.
SingStar Celebration - Hit the high notes with upbeat tracks, massive hits and your favorite party classics. Whether its your birthday, Christmas, New Years Eve or even just a Saturday night SingStar Celebration is the perfect playlist to any party, with up to eight players able to join in the fun. Use your SingStar mic or combine your smartphone with the SingStar Mic App, and get ready for your big moment.
Players who pre-register for Pocket Knights 2 at http://www.pocketknights2.com will receive exclusive rewards. The sequel to the hit RPG is set to launch worldwide on the App Store after soft launching on Google Play. You can visit the mini site link posted above or Facebook for more details about the game.
Feral Interactive announced that Hitman: The Complete First Season is coming to macOS on June 20th. The Mac version will include all six international missions and three bonus missions from the Linux version of the game.
Here are this week's noteworthy App Store releases:
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New iOS Games and Apps of the Week: PS4 PlayLink and more - The iPad Guide
Today Atosannounced that the company has won a contract with GENCI to deliver one of the most powerful supercomputers in the world, planned for the end of 2017. A successor of the Curie system installed at the TGCC, the Bull Sequana supercomputer will havean overall power of 9 petaflopsforresearch purposes in France and Europe.
GENCI welcomes the acquisition of a new Atos supercomputer, which will actively help us to maintain the scientific competitivity of our French researchers. This highly anticipated acquisition indeed marks an acceleration in French investment in research organizations. This will also be of great advantage to f industrial companies, especially SMEs and start-ups. This high-performance equipment spearheads our commitment in the European research infrastructure PRACE (PartneRship for Advanced Computing in Europe) in which GENCI is highly involved in representing France says Philippe Lavocat, CEO of GENCI.
The new supercomputer will be made available to French and European researchers for use in academic and industrial fields that require extremely high computing and data processing power.
The applications for intensive computing are many and varied, such as climatology, where the supercomputer will help to model past, present and future meteorological conditions with incredible accuracy within the framework of international activities carried out by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)[1]. When applied to life sciences, the high-performance computer will make it possible to work on the scale of basic chemical processes in molecular systems, thus paving the way for major advances in the personalization of medicine. In the energy industry, the supercomputer will not only optimize the process of combustion in motors and turbines, but also develop alternatives based on electricity with new-generation batteries in the wind, tidal and, in future, fusion power sectors. In astrophysics, only a supercomputer with this kind of power is capable of simulating the entire universe, thus putting us in a position to better understand its origin and evolution.
Based on the platform of the latest generation of the Bull Sequana X1000, which will eventually be capable of achieving an exaflop (a billion billion operations per second), the first installment of this supercomputer will have a peak computing power of 8.9 petaflops and a distributed memory capacity of almost 400 terabytes. An extension of its configuration is planned for 2019, when its computing capacity is set to increase to more than 20 petaflops.
Consisting of more than 124,000 computing cores, the supercomputer will benefit from the patented direct liquid cooling (DLC) technology used to cool the system down to room temperature, creating an energy saving of up to 40% compared to air cooling.
The design of Curies successor illustrates the expertise of Atos engineers, confirming Atos European leadership in the supercomputer domain. Following on from the Curie supercomputer, delivered in 2011 and already amongst the most powerful in the world, we are proud of the renewed trust that GENCI has placed in us to accompany them each day in their development of academic and industrial research states Philippe Vannier, Group Advisor for Technology at Atos.
The Atos group, leader of the supercomputer in Europe, has 22 supercomputers in the TOP500 of the most powerful machines in the world.
Specifications of the new supercomputer:
The entire solution functions under the new Bull SCS 5 environment based on the Linux Red Hat 7.x operating system. The solution also includes a cluster of Lustre multi-level storage capable of releasing a minimum output of 300 Gb/s (500 Gb/s over time) for a minimum required data storage of 5 Pio.
Atos will exhibit itsfull breadth of HPC solutions at ISC 2017 in Frankfurt, booth #D-1126.
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Atos to Build 9 Petaflop Supercomputer for GENCI - insideHPC
Today Fujitsu announced an order from the Research Institute for Information Technology at Kyushu University for a new supercomputer systemfor deployment in October 2017.
This system will consist of over 2,000 servers, including the Fujitsu Server PRIMERGY CX400, the next-generation model of Fujitsus x86 server. It is expected to offer top-class performance in Japan, providing a theoretical peak performance of about 10 petaflops. This will also be Japans first supercomputer system featuring a large-scale private cloud environment constructed on a front-end sub system, linked with a computational server of a back-end sub system through a high-speed file system.
The Research Institute for Information Technology will use this system as computational resources for JHPCNand HPCI, as well as a variety of user programs. By making this system available to users both inside and outside of the university, it will enhance the platform for academic research in Japan and contribute to the development of new academic research including AI. Fujitsu will use the technology and experience it has developed as Japans top supercomputer maker to strongly support the activities of the Research Institute for Information Technology.
As a center for education and research, Kyushu University is the largest public university in the Kyushu region, and the Research Institute for Information Technology is a nationwide joint-use facility visited by professors, graduate students, and researchers across Japan for academic research.
Currently, the Research Institute for Information Technology operates three systems: a supercomputer system (consisting of the Fujitsu Supercomputer PRIMEHPC FX10 system), a high-performance computational server system (made up of Fujitsu PRIMERGY CX400 x86 servers), and a high-performance applications server system. The three systems will be integrated as part of the new supercomputer system, creating an environment that can meet an even wider variety of needs, extending beyond the current large-scale computation and scientific simulations, to include usage and research that require extremely large-scale computation, such as AI, big data, and data science.
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Here's a gallery from a 40-node version of The Machine (aka HPE's Memory-Driven Computing initiative). These appear to be fibre-optic cables connected to some kind of chip, but it's hard to divine much more than that.
HPE
HPE chose some seriously bright neon green lights for its prototype machine.
HPE
It almost looks radioactive.
HPE
This is apparently one of HPE's X1 silicon photonics interconnect chips (in the middle of the metal clamp thing).
HPE
To create an effective exascale supercomputer from scratch, you must first invent the universesolve three problems: the inordinate power usage (gigawatts) and cooling requirements; developing the architecture and interconnectsto efficiently weave together hundreds of thousands of processorsand memory chips; and devising an operating system and client software that actually scales to onequintillion calculations per second.
You can still physically build an exascale supercomputer without solving all three problemsjust strap together a bunch of CPUs until you hit the magic numberbut it won't perform a billion-billion calculations per second, or it'll be untenably expensive to operate. That seems to be China's approach: plunk down most of the hardware in 2017, and then spend the next few years trying to make it work.
The DoE, on the other hand,is wending its way down a more sedate path by funding HPE (and supercomputer makers) to develop an exascale reference design. The funding is coming from a DoE programme called PathForward, which is part of its larger Exascale Computing Project (ECP). The ECP, which was set up under the Obama administration , has already awarded tens of millions of dollars to various exascale research efforts around the US. It isn't clear how much funding has been received by HPE.
So, what's HPE's plan? And is there any hope that HPEcan pass through three rounds of the DoE funding programme and build an exascale supercomputer before China?
HPE
In addition, and perhaps most importantly, HPE says it has developed software tools that can actually use this huge pool of memory, to derive intelligence or scientific insight from huge data setsevery post on Facebook; the entirety of the Web; the health data of every human on Earth; that kind of thing. Check out this quote from CTO Mark Potter, who apparently thinksHPE's techcan save humankind:We believe Memory-Driven Computing is the solution to move the technology industry forward in a way that can enable advancements across all aspects of society. The architecture we have unveiled can be applied to every computing categoryfrom intelligent edge devices to supercomputers."
In practice I think we're some way from realising Potter's dream, but HPE's tech is certainly a good first step towards exascale. If we compare HPE's efforts to the three main issues I outlined above, you'd probably award a score of about 1.5: they've made inroads on software, power consumption, andscaling, but there's a long way to go, especially when it comes to computational grunt.
After the US government banned the export ofIntel, Nvidia, and AMD chips to China, China's national chip design centre created a256-core RISC chip specifically for supercomputing. All that HPE can offer is the Gen-Z protocol for chip-to-chip communications, and hope thata logic chip maker steps forward.Still, this is just the first stage of funding, where HPE is expected toresearch and developcore technologies that will help the USreachexascale; only if it gets to phase two and three will HPE have to design and then build an exascale machine.
Most of the DoE's exascale funding has so far been on software. Just before this story published, we learnt that the DoE is also announcing funding for AMD, Cray, IBM, Intel, and Nvidia under the same PathForward programme. In total, the DoE is handing out $258 million over three years, with the funding recipients also committing to spend at least $172 million of their own funds over the same period. What we don't yet know is what those companies are doing with that funding; hopefully we'll find out more soon.
Now read about how cheap RAM changes computing...
This post originated on Ars Technica UK
Listing image by HPE
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US gov't taps The Machine to beat China to exascale supercomputing - Ars Technica
Today NEC Corporation announced that the Czech Hydrometeorological Institute (CHMI) will soon deploy an NEC LX series supercomputerfor weather forecasting.
We are very happy that CHMI has selected NEC to deliver an HPC solution for their weather and climate simulations, as NEC has a very special expertise in meteorological applications. For years, we have been successfully collaborating with meteorological institutes, and we look forward to cultivating these partnerships further, said Andreas Gottlicher, Senior Sales Manager, NEC Deutschland.
NECs scale-out LX series HPC cluster will enable the Czech Hydrometeorological Service to increase the accuracy of numerical weather forecasting and related applications, namely warning systems. Weather prediction models are increasingly complex, including rainfall, temperature, wind and related variables that have to be calculated as precisely as possible several days in advance. At the same time, regional peculiarities such as orography and terrain physiography need to be considered. In addition, the public must be made aware quickly of predictions of high impact weather events affecting daily life, including environmental risks linked to air pollution. High-performance computing is therefore needed for running and completing weather and climate simulation jobs in time.
System Details
The new system is scheduled to be put into operation in early 2018.
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NEC LX Supercomputer coming to Czech Hydrometeorological Institute - insideHPC