Monthly Archives: September 2021

Bitcoin miners and oil and gas execs mingled at a secretive meetup in Houston here’s what they talked about – CNBC

Posted: September 8, 2021 at 10:07 am

Bitcoin enthusiasts, miners, and oil & gas execs gathered at a meetup in Houston to talk about the future of bitcoin mining.

HOUSTON On a residential back street of Houston, in a 150,000 square-foot warehouse safeguarding high-end vintage cars, 200 oil and gas execs and bitcoin miners mingled, drank beer, and talked shop on a recent Wednesday night in August.

These two groups of people may seem as though they are at opposite ends of the professional and social spectrums, but their worlds are colliding fast. As it turns out, the industries make for compatible bedfellows.

Just take Hayden Griffin Haby III, an oilman turned bitcoiner. The Texas native and father of three has spent 14 years in oil and gas, and he epitomizes what this monthly meetup is all about.

Haby started as a surface landman where he brokered land contracts, and later, ran his own oil company. But for the last nine months, he's exclusively been in the business of mining bitcoin.

As Haby describes it, he was "orange pilled" in November 2020 a term used to describe the process of convincing a fiat-minded person that they are missing out by not investing in bitcoin. A month later, he co-founded Limpia Creek Technologies, which powers bitcoin mining rigs with flared, vented, and stranded natural gas assets.

"When I heard that you could make this much money per MCF (a metric used to measure natural gas), instead of just burning it up into the atmosphere, thanks to the whole 'bitcoin mining thing,' I couldn't look away," Haby said. "You can't unsee that."

When China kicked out all its crypto miners this spring an exodus which Haby calls the "Chexit" that poured kerosene on the flames. "This is an opportunity we didn't think was coming," he said.

Haby tells CNBC they are already seeing demand rushing to Texas, and he is convinced that the state is poised to capture most of the Chinese hashrate looking for a new home on friendlier shores.

Bitcoin miners care most about finding cheap sources of electricity, so Texas with its crypto-friendly politicians, deregulated power grid, and crucially, abundance of inexpensive power sources is a virtually perfect fit. The union becomes even more harmonious when miners connect their rigs to otherwise stranded energy, like natural gas going to waste on oil fields across Texas.

"This is Texas, boys. We got what you need, so come on down," said Haby. "We are sitting on the energy capital of the world."

"I think Kevin Costner said it best: 'If you build it, they will come,'" said Haby.

An underground meetup of bitcoin miners and oil & gas execs was held at a 150,000 square-foot warehouse safeguarding high-end vintage cars.

Parker Lewis is one of Texas' de facto bitcoin ambassadors. Everyone knows him. Everyone likes him. And virtually any bitcoiner you ask refers to him as the future mayor of Austin.

Lewis is an executive at Unchained Capital, a bitcoin-native financial services firm. He isn't in politics yet but he is hustling across the state of Texas to spread the good word on the world's biggest cryptocurrency. In May, the Houston Bitcoin Meetup consisted of only 20 people in a fluorescent-lit conference room in an office. Then Lewis decided to get involved.

"I just knew Houston would be prime to explode because of the energy connection to mining if we organized a good meetup," Lewis told CNBC. "It's also key to Texas being the bitcoin capital of the world."

His efforts are paying off. Wednesday's meetup drew more than 200 attendees from across the state of Texas, as well as California, Colorado, Louisiana, Pennsylvania, New York, Australia and the UK.

The buzz was electric on Wednesday night. You had to shout to be heard. And no one in the room mentioned any cryptocurrency beside bitcoin. There was also an unmistakable air of stealth and FOMO. The people who showed up to this event did so, at least in part, because they didn't want to get left behind.

Capturing excess and otherwise wasted natural gas from drilling sites and then using that energy to mine bitcoin is still firmly in the category of avant-garde tech.

Haby, who's affable and an open book on most things, clams up when it comes to sharing the location of his company's mining sites. "West Texas" is as much as Haby would give CNBC, though if the name "Limpia Creek" is any indication, that would place them 100 miles due north of Big Bend National Park.

His secrecy was par for the course that evening.

Oilmen, turned bitcoin miners, Griffin Haby with Conner Murphree and Jordan Kuntz at one of their bitcoin mining sites in Texas.

Bitcoin miner Alejandro de la Torre was born in Spain, but he's spent years minting bitcoin all over the world, most recently in China. When Beijing cracked down on all things crypto, De La Torre got a call from his boss at 3 A.M. telling him he had to go to Texas. He was in Austin the next day.

Since then, he's been shipping his new-generation mining gear to the U.S. in bulk.

"It's all through ships and from the Pacific side," De La Torre told CNBC. "The port depends on the location of where the rigs will end up."

That was as much as De La Torre would divulge, because, as he explains it, any further details about the destination, or the gear itself, could give his competitors an edge.

Bitcoin believers care a lot about privacy, as do the oil and gas guys. Some cited non-disclosure agreements as a reason to speak to CNBC in vague platitudes about business deals. Others were only willing to share their thoughts on the condition of anonymity. And some attendees worried about their job security should their employer find out they were there.

These weren't tycoons -- they were mostly up-and-coming young execs, hungry to get ahead and make a name by taking a gamble on bitcoin mining.

For years, oil and gas companies have struggled with the problem of what to do when they accidentally hit a natural gas formation while drilling for oil. Whereas oil can easily be trucked out to a remote destination, gas delivery requires a pipeline.

If a drilling site is right next door to a pipeline, they chuck the gas in and take whatever cash the buyer on the other end is willing to pay that day. "There's no choice. There's no middle finger. Whatever gas comes out that day has to be sold," explained Haby.

But if it's 20 miles from a pipeline, things start to get more complicated.

More often than not, the gas well won't be big enough to warrant the time and expense of building an entirely new pipeline. If a driller can't immediately find a way to sell the stash of natural gas, most look to dispose of it on site.

One method is to vent it, which releases methane directly into the air a poor choice for the environment, as its greenhouse effects are shown to be much stronger than carbon dioxide.A more environmentally friendly option is to flare it, which means actually lighting the gas on fire.

"Chemistry is amazing," explained Adam Ortolf, who heads up business development in the U.S. for Upstream Data, a company that manufactures and supplies portable mining solutions for oil and gas facilities.

"When CH4, or methane, combusts, the only exhaust is CO2 and H2O vapor. That's literally the same thing that comes out of my mouth when I exhale," continued Ortolf.

But Ortolf points out, flares are only 75 to 90% efficient. "Even with a flare, some of the methane is being vented without being combusted," he said.

This is when on-site bitcoin mining can prove to be especially impactful.

When the methane is run into an engine or generator, 100% of the methane is combusted and none of it leaks or vents into the air, according to Ortolf.

"But nobody will run it through a generator unless they can make money, because generators cost money to acquire and maintain," he said. "So unless it's economically sustainable, producers won't internally combust the gas."

A panel of bitcoin miners and oil & gas execs share what it's like to mine bitcoin in Texas.

Bitcoin makes it economically sustainable for oil and gas companies to combust their methane rather than externally combust it with a flare.

"There is no such thing as stranded gas anymore," said Haby.

But Ortolf has taken years to convince people that parking a trailer full of ASICs on an oil and gas field is a smart and financially sound idea.

"In 2018, I got laughed out of the room when I talked about mining bitcoin on flared gas," said Ortolf. "The concept of bringing hydrocarbons to market without a counterparty was laughable."

Fast forward three years, and business at Upstream, a company founded by lead engineer Steve Barbour, is booming. It now works with 140 bitcoin mines across North America.

"This is the best gift the oil and gas industry could've gotten," said Ortolf. "They were leaving a lot of hydrocarbons on the table, but now, they're no longer limited by geography to sell energy."

It is also helping to curtail the overall carbon footprint of some of these oil and gas sites. Recent production stats show that in the U.S. alone about 1.5 billion cubic feet of natural gas is wasted on a daily basis. And these are just the reported numbers, so the actual figures are likely higher.

Meanwhile, bitcoin miners get what they want most: cheap electricity.

The thing about all these grand visions for bitcoin mining to stay the course, it requires some manpower on Capitol Hill to safeguard its plan to scale.And right now, politicians in Washington are scrambling to figure out what and how to regulate cryptocurrencies and all the ancillary services that make up the wider ecosystem for digital currencies.

That's why another big topic of conversation at the Houston Bitcoin Meeting was political activism.

"Who knows a staffer or a representative?" one member of the crowd posed to the group. At least half a dozen people raised their hands and one stepped up to confirm they would reach out to their contact in Senator Cruz's office.

There was a sense of momentum in the audience.Several people made the point that the bitcoin contingent across the country had paralyzed a $1 trillion rubber-stamped, bipartisan bill, no small feat for a voting bloc which hitherto hadn't been viewed as much of a threat on the Hill.

But it's not just about being on the defensive for these tens of millions of voters and bitcoin faithful.They're going on the offensive by working to install like-minded people into office so that they can do something "before they do it to us," as one member of the audience said to the group.They're also teaching veteran lawmakers about bitcoin, as many representatives don't understand it.

"We need to target anyone who is anti-bitcoin. There are 45 million of us in America, and we are not silent," said this same attendee.

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Bitcoin miners and oil and gas execs mingled at a secretive meetup in Houston here's what they talked about - CNBC

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Yes, Bitcoin Is A Brand. Heres What That Means. – Bitcoin Magazine

Posted: at 10:07 am

Just as the Apple brand is to tech, McDonalds is to burgers, Nike is to sneakers and Coke is to cola, so is the Bitcoin brand to cryptocurrency.

Whoa hold the phone! you say. Bitcoin isnt a brand. It's a currency. Currencies arent brands!

Well, thats a traditional way of looking at it. And Bitcoin is anything but traditional.

Think of it this way: blockchain is a technology. Coins are an asset on the blockchain. Bitcoin is a brand that brings its unique selling proposition to blockchain.

To be clear, Bitcoin is not an ordinary brand. Its what I call a User-Generated Brand (UGB). Because Bitcoin lacks a centralized brand owner or chief marketing officer, it is molded by a large ecosystem of foundation members, technologists, investors, miners, commentators, thought leaders, innovators, journalists and more. Nevertheless, as a UGB, the cumulative effect of its brand assets stand for something.

Still skeptical? Consider this:

Moreover, what makes the Bitcoin brand so intriguing are some other less cut-and-dry factors:

Okay, so youre onboard: Bitcoin is a brand. A User-Generated Brand. Next question you may be asking is: so what? Consider these:

The Contract A great brand, at the end of the day, is a promise (a contract) that the sum total of it what it stands for and how it behaves will provide confidence and comfort that if you put your faith in it (by purchasing, investing, advocating, etc.), youll be rewarded. For all the reasons stated above, Bitcoin is in an enviable pole position, particularly as it relates to wooing institutional investors and their allocation committees who, once fully bought in, would represent a true tipping point in the race to bitcoin adoption. To propel this forward, as a UGB, it is incumbent on the communitys most vocal believers to not just talk amongst themselves (as they are apt to do) but to the masses in ways that will elucidate that promise to them.

The Community A great brand feeds off the passion of its most active users. In fact, passion is the fuel that ignites any brands fire. So while Bitcoin, as a UGB, may not have a chief marketing officer, it does have an army of de facto marketing officers (many of whom read this magazine). Collectively, they believe that Bitcoin and its underlying technology is a true force for good in democratizing finance and have many forums for sharing that point of view. For them, its important to spread the word: Bitcoins primary purpose is not about making money, its about making a change. And, as with any movement, the rubber meets the road when its story can be told in calm and simple terms, using analogies that everyone understands.

The Coattails Versus The Contrarian Project founders, foundations and decentralized autonomous organizations of every size and shape have a decision to make: regardless of their technical or functional relationship, do they ride Bitcoins coattails or cast it off as a fine but flawed product that is ripe for disruption? It will vary from case to case for sure, but contrarians should be forewarned: brands with the community, contract, passion and purpose that Bitcoin has are formidable. While a small group of insurgents may rejoice at the thought of dethroning the king, most of these contrarians efforts will be rejected entirely by the Bitcoin community, as proven by previous hard forks.

The Conventional Wisdom Dominant brands are typically expected to act in conventional ways. In fact, it can be argued, it is the shackles of category conventions that box them in, allowing challengers to erode or overtake their position. So is Bitcoin a conventional player in an unconventional category? Hardly. Conventional behaviors come with time and a sense of dominance that is considered an impenetrable moat. This leads to a risk-averse, defensive posture and possible stagnation. But Bitcoin is still in its infancy and is at the center of a tsunami of innovation. To the UGB community that is pushing boundaries and challenging the status quo I say, Rock on!

To summarize: to some, the very thought of traditional, centralized marketing in the Bitcoin space is antithetical to the category. As with any radical change in conventions and norms, this is to be understood. But, even as a User-Generated Brand, the marketing of Bitcoin most certainly is influential in ways that will certainly evolve over time. As advertising veteran Regis McKenna famously said, marketing is everything, and everything is marketing.

Today, while metrics such as Reddit subscribers, social comments per hour, Twitter followers, website traffic and community size dominate the discussion of brand health (and are closely watched by investors), there will certainly be other, perhaps more influential metrics, as the roles, bullhorns and motivations of key voices decentralized and centralized in the ecosystem evolve.

As it does, you can be sure that Bitcoin will be at the forefront of this evolution. Because if it looks like a brand, acts like a brand and works like a brand, then it is a brand. That its a UGB simply means that you cant expect the same rules that governed branding and marketing over the past 25 years to hold.

This is a guest post by Rich Feldman. Opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.

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Chairman of Nigerian Economic Crimes Commission: Crypto Growth Is a ‘Far Greater Danger to the World Economy’ Economics Bitcoin News – Bitcoin News

Posted: at 10:07 am

The chairman of Nigerias Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Abdulrasheed Bawa, has singled out the growth of cryptocurrencies as something that now poses a far greater danger to the world economy. Therefore, in order to deal with such dangers or threats, Bawa advocates for a collective and collaborative approach by authorities around the world.

According to a report by Vanguard, the EFCC chairman made these remarks while speaking at a symposium organized by the Centre for International Documentation on Organized and Economic Crime (CIDOEC). Meanwhile, at the same meeting which was organized to discuss the cost of economic crimes and who should foot this bill, Bawa is quoted explaining why countries must collaborate on this. He said:

[Economic crimes] affect the vital structures of global economies, causing significant damage to the global financial system and depriving developing nations of the needed resources for sustainable development.

Bawa also warned that developed countries, just like their less developed counterparts, are not immune from a scourge that has been magnified by the proliferation of cyber-crimes which threatens the stability of global financial institutions. To drive home this point, Bawa uses the example of how criminals are now choosing to transact or receive illegal monies [such as ransom money]for cyber-attacks in cryptocurrencies.

In the meantime, the EFCC chair also delved into the topic of who should bear the costs of economic crimes. The report quotes Bawa explaining his viewpoint on this matter. He said:

As the victims of crime continue to suffer globally from the effects of financial crimes, either directly or indirectly as part of a social system, the determination of who pays or who should pay becomes a critical measure of the criminal justice system in place.

Still, the EFCC chairman is adamant that perpetrators and not the victims should be made to pay for the crimes.

Do you agree with Bawas remarks about cryptocurrencies? Tell us what you think in the comments section below.

Image Credits: Shutterstock, Pixabay, Wiki Commons

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only. It is not a direct offer or solicitation of an offer to buy or sell, or a recommendation or endorsement of any products, services, or companies. Bitcoin.com does not provide investment, tax, legal, or accounting advice. Neither the company nor the author is responsible, directly or indirectly, for any damage or loss caused or alleged to be caused by or in connection with the use of or reliance on any content, goods or services mentioned in this article.

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Microsoft joins OpenInfra Foundation to support open source infrastructure – VentureBeat

Posted: at 10:07 am

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Microsoft has joined the OpenInfra Foundation as a platinum member, linking up with existing member companies (and financial contributors) such as Facebook, Red Hat, AT&T, and Ericsson.

The OpenInfra Foundation was formed initially back in 2012 to govern OpenStack, an open source and open standards-based cloud computing platform that developers use to build and manage private or public clouds. It constitutes various components, including a compute service for running virtual machines (VMs); a networking and storage service; and a self-service dashboard for companies to provision all their resources.

In the intervening years, the foundation has expanded its focus to other open infrastructure initiatives as the datacenter itself has evolved. Today, the foundation helps foster open source communities looking to create tools for all manner of use cases, spanning cloud-based datacenters, containers, edge computing, 5G, and more, with hosted projects including:Airship, Kata Containers, OpenInfra Labs, StarlingX, Zuul, and OpenStack itself.

That Microsoft has elected to join the OpenInfra Foundation makes a great deal of sense. Though Microsoft offers its own OpenStack alternative for private clouds in the form of Azure Stack, many companies want more flexibility in a hybrid cloud world they may prefer to use OpenStack on top of Azure.

Microsoft is joining this effort to support building the next decade of open infrastructure technology because hybrid cloud is an important element of our technology portfolio, noted Ryan van Wyk, Microsofts partner software engineering manager for Azure for Operators, in a press release. We believe in a variety of clouds public and private, from hyperscale to edge, each tuned to the unique workloads that our customers need to deliver and we cant do it without open source.

But that isnt the sole reason why Microsoft has joined the OpenInfra Foundation.

Microsoft added that its ultimately aiming to represent the interests of its telecom customers in the OpenStack and OpenInfra communities, while actively contributing to OpenInfra projects including OpenStack and Airship, and identifying ways to integrate these projects into Microsoft Azure product roadmap as it evolves.

With the continued rollout of 5G, operators are restructuring their networks for the cloud, allowing them to introduce new services more quickly and reallocate resources as required. As such, back in JuneMicrosoft announced a major partnership with AT&T which will see the telecom giant transition its 5G mobile network to Microsofts cloud, paving the way for Azure to manage all AT&T mobile network traffic.

This deal goes some way toward helping Microsoft grow its fledgling Azure for Operators platform which it announced last year, meshing cloud, cellular, and edge computing functionality. Azure for Operators is designed to help operators offer more efficient and cost-effective 5G services to consumer and enterprise customers using both Azure and open source technologies like Airship, according to the press release. Azure for Operators will also meet customers where they are today by supporting OpenStack deployed on Kubernetes, and allowing for a controlled evolution of Operator SDN deployments from VNFs to CNFs.

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14 Suspects in Cryptocurrency Investment Scam Arrested in Taiwan Featured Bitcoin News – Bitcoin News

Posted: at 10:07 am

Fourteen suspects allegedly behind a cryptocurrency scam have been arrested in Taiwan. According to the countrys Criminal Investigation Bureau, the scheme has defrauded investors out of millions of dollars.

The countrys Criminal Investigation Bureau (CIB) explained that the crypto scam allegedly defrauded more than 100 people out of about NT$150 million (US$5.41 million) over the past year. The suspects now face charges of fraud, money laundering, and breaches of the countrys Organized Crime Prevention Act, the Taipei Times reported Sunday.

Kuo Yu-chih, the CIB investigator in charge of the case, explained that a businessman with the last name Chen is believed to be the mastermind behind the fraudulent crypto scheme. He added that the scheme focused on cryptocurrencies ethereum, tronix, and tether. Chen also led the Taipei-based Azure Crypto Co., which offered cryptocurrency and other investment services.

The investigator detailed that Chen promoted crypto investments on social media, promising high earnings. He elaborated:

Chen and his staff set up websites and allegedly used photographs of pretty women to attract mainly male victims, many of whom were in retirement with substantial savings.

The attractive images drew the victims to the websites where they were persuaded to invest via interactions with whom they believed to be the attractive women, Kuo said. Chen and his staff claimed to be financial advisers specializing in cryptocurrency mining.

The bureau revealed that investigators seized ledgers containing the details of more than 100 people who invested in the scheme.

Prior to the arrests, the police monitored the schemes activities and online transactions for several months after receiving complaints. The bureau subsequently conducted raids late last month at the companys office and the residences of Chen and his staff.

What do you think about this crypto scam in Taiwan? Let us know in the comments section below.

Image Credits: Shutterstock, Pixabay, Wiki Commons

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only. It is not a direct offer or solicitation of an offer to buy or sell, or a recommendation or endorsement of any products, services, or companies. Bitcoin.com does not provide investment, tax, legal, or accounting advice. Neither the company nor the author is responsible, directly or indirectly, for any damage or loss caused or alleged to be caused by or in connection with the use of or reliance on any content, goods or services mentioned in this article.

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Assistant Professor Vivek Singhs research aimed at addressing practical problems of industry – UMSL Daily

Posted: at 10:07 am

Vivek Singh, an assistant professor in the Department of Information Systems and Technology at UMSL,has studied different aspects of cloud computing including cost, security and operations and has expanded his research to incorporate machine learning as applied in a cloud environment.(Photo by August Jennewein)

Vivek Singh had been working as a software engineer in research and development at Alcatel-Lucent in India when he decided to pursue an academic career.

He left his native country to become a research assistant in the School of Computing at the National University of Singapore and eventually found his way to the doctoral program in information systems at the University of South Floridas Muma College of Business.

But even as he threw himself into academic literature while earning his PhD and landed a job as an assistant professor in the Department of Information Systems and Technology at the University of MissouriSt. Louis, Singh has remained committed to trying to tackle real-world business problems.

Information systems is understanding interactions among organization, people, and information technology, Singh said. Its about how we can apply information technologies to solve business problems. Thats what attracted me. I had an information technology background from my masters program and from my bachelors program. I really like working on some practical problems coming from industry. Take them and see how we can solve them with academic rigor.

Singh did his doctoral research in the area of cloud computing and developed a secured cloud file system with faculty advisors Kaushik Dutta and Balaji Padmanabhan. The University of South Florida filed a patent application for the work in 2018, and it received final approval from the United States Patent and Trademark Office in July.

The idea for the invention originated after Singh read reports of instances of data leaks from cloud servers that were caused by security misconfigurations and human error. Personal data from a reported 6 million Verizon customers leaked out online,exposing customer phone numbers, names and some PIN codes, in 2017.

The secured cloud filing system Singh and his co-inventors created is designed to protect users data in case of accidental leaks occurring in a cloud computing environment.

As Singh explained, the system makes use of cryptographic hash functions along with concatenated random numbers for each folder name to provide protection against the vulnerability of folders stored in the cloud.

The project fits within Singhs broader research.

My core research strength or area is how to apply data-driven techniques to make cloud adoption faster, he said. When organizations adopt cloud computing, they have challenges related to cost. They have challenges related to operations. They have challenges related to security.

I have research published addressing how organizations can reduce their cost in a cloud computing environment, how they can make their adoption more secure when they move to the cloud how they can protect from vulnerabilities. In terms of operations, I have looked at how organizations can see if theyre efficiently using the cloud or not.

Singh joined the UMSL faculty in 2019, the same year he completed his PhD. He was looking for a university with a good research program and that balanced it with a strong focus on teaching and service, and he said he found that at UMSL, both in the Department of Information Systems and Technology and the College of Business Administration more broadly.

I have amazing colleagues, who do really good research, and they are fantastic teachers, Singh said. We really learn a lot from senior faculty as well as from colleagues who are doing amazing work.

Singh has expanded his research to incorporate machine learning as applied in a cloud environment. Hes been working with Professor Dinesh Mirchandani, chair of the Department of Information Systems and Technology, and Professor Yiuman Tse, endowed chair in the Department of Finance and Legal Studies, on a project with a leading finance management company based in St. Louis. Theyre investigating how machine learning platforms can be used to solve problems in personal finance management.

Working with companies, we have to balance or excel at work that has high academic rigor, because we have to publish in academic outlets, Singh said. At the same time, there should be high practitioners value so that organizations see that value and they collaborate with us. That balance making sure there is both high research and high practitioners value is a challenging thing for academic faculty.

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Have you noticed the change? It’s time for Deskflix Season 6: Regrowth in the Age of Cloud – www.computing.co.uk

Posted: at 10:07 am

The world has changed in a great many ways in the last 18 months. Of all those changes, one has become integral to our lives post-pandemic: the absolute critical necessity of cloud access.

The way we collect, store, and share information has become increasingly remote. From working at home to online shopping, the way we stay connected and informed has become a constant stream of sending, receiving, and updating data in real time, all the time.

That is why, on Wednesday 22nd September, Computing's next Deskflix event (Season 6, for those keeping count) will cover Regrowth in the Age of Cloud, to unpack the multifaceted and rapidly changing world of cloud services. Acting as your guide to the mutable world of modern cloud computing, Deskflix will feature a diverse range of specialists and IT leaders, each with a wealth of experience and knowledge to answer your questions.

Hybrid, cloud-first, multi-cloud, cloud native - which one best fits my company? What is the best way to manage costs and compliance? How are regulations evolving post-Brexit? Can cloud help me hit my sustainability targets?

Join us for free at Deskflix Season 6: Regrowth in the Age of Cloud on Wednesday 22nd September, from 10am to 13:30, and get the answers to all of your questions directly from the experts. Click here to reserve your free place.

We'll have our usual mix of informative and thought-provoking keynotes, panel sessions and presentations. The event is free to attend, and better still, you can earn CPD points as you learn.

Register today for Deskflix Season 6: Regrowth in the Age of Cloud

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September may have a bad reputation for stocks, but one top strategist just hiked his S&P 500 year-end target anyway – CNBC

Posted: at 10:07 am

September may historically be a rough month for stocks, but it didn't stop National Securities' Art Hogan from hiking his S&P 500 year-end target by 7%.

He made the bullish move based on a strong second quarter earnings season and the notion Covid-19 delta variant cases are likely peaking.

"September gives us a chance to reboot," the firm's chief market strategist told CNBC's "Trading Nation" on Tuesday. "I actually think we see a pick-up in economic activity in September, and I think that will ward off some of that negative sentiment that we typically get at or about the September month."

Hogan, who oversees $34 billion in assets,hiked his S&P 500 target to 4,700 from 4,400 on the month's first trading day. On Tuesday, the index fell 15 points to close at 4,520. It's still just a fraction of a percent away from its all-time high.

"This has been one of those years where earnings and earnings expectations continue to grow, and that's where we're getting that higher target from," said Hogan.

He believes September will buck the historical negative trends due to the robust economic recovery driven by unprecedented fiscal and monetary policies. Plus, Hogan's hunch is delta cases will peak and spark more enthusiasm for stocks.

Despite seasonal headwinds and the risk backdrop, Hogan is sticking to the game plan he has employed during the pandemic. He sees equal exposure to growth and cyclical stocks as the best way to play the rapid rotations in the market.

"Have growth on one end of a barbell and you can express opinions in things like cloud security, 5G [and] cloud computing," Hogan said. "On the other side of that, you want to be invested in things like financials, industrials and materials for their economic sensitivity and cyclicality."

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Tech industry seeks bigger role in defense. Not everyone is on board – Livemint

Posted: at 10:07 am

The Pentagon has long led the way in developing advanced technology that found its way into civilian applications, such as GPS and the internet. That balance has shifted, according to tech leaders and others. They contend that the private sector has more talent and greater research budgets than the governmentand more advanced capabilities in artificial intelligence and cloud computingall while the military grows more reliant on technology.

From the president on down, everyone is saying, OK, we are in a competition with China," said Robert Work, a former U.S. deputy secretary of defense. We are not organized to win the competition, and if we do not correct that, we are doomed to lose it."

Mr. Work is vice chairman of the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence, a panel created by Congress in 2018 and chaired by former Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt. Other members include Andy Jassy, chief executive of Amazon.com Inc.; Oracle Corp. CEO Safra Catz and top scientists from Microsoft Corp. and Alphabet Inc.s Google.

In a report released this year, the commission laid out a road map for the Pentagon to buy commercially designed software and hardware to maintain a strategic edge, as China and other nations step up their tech investments.

The effort faces an array of skeptics and critics, including in some cases rank-and-file tech engineers. Google stepped back from an AI-driven software project with the Pentagon when employees in 2018 found out about it and revolted.

The Pentagon remains a profit-rich target for big tech companies. Analysts say Amazon, Microsoft, Google and others have ambitions to win more of the billions of dollars the Pentagon spends on procurement annually, a market historically dominated by contractors such as Lockheed Martin Corp.

They dont enter markets with the goal of being No. 15," Andrew Hunter, a former Pentagon official and congressional staffer now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank, said of large technology companies.

Google, Microsoft and Amazon declined to comment.

Outside the industry, many of those who believe tech companies have become too powerful are concerned that regulating these companies will become even more difficult if they hold additional sway as critical defense contractors.

Tech companies cast themselves as the only solution to what they portray as an existential threat from China," said Shoshana Zuboff, Harvard Business School professor emerita and author of the book The Age of Surveillance Capitalism." She says that the data-collection and ad-targeting practices of Google, Microsoft, and Amazon pose the bigger threat.

The Artificial Intelligence commissions recent findings have nonetheless won support from the Biden administration, the Pentagon and Congress.

You have made crystal clear that our country needs to play catch-up, and fast," Secretary of State Antony Blinken told Mr. Schmidt and other commission members at a conference in July.

The commissions 756-page report concluded that China is already a peer of the U.S. in some areas of artificial intelligence and is funneling those advancements into its military. In contrast, U.S. tech leaders and government officials talk about the importance of public-private partnership, but there is little action in either direction to deepen it in concrete ways," the report says.

The commission envisions the military and intelligence bureaucracy working more like a large tech company, with a vast cloud-computing infrastructure enabling teams of engineers to constantly test new software and upgrade capabilities. Other recommendations by the commission, which also includes academics and former Pentagon officials, include boosts to tech-focused research, training and recruitment efforts.

Reshaping the Department of Defense will require rewiring not only hardware and software but also sprawling bureaucracy and procurement processes, a project that has been under way for years. The Pentagon has established Silicon Valley outposts, funded promising startups and tested technologies such as autonomous aircraft. But the department has struggled to adopt new technologies on a large scale, as exemplified by the yearslong legal and administrative battle over the JEDI cloud-computing initiative.

Mr. Schmidt says these hurdles can be overcome.

What Ive observed about the government bureaucracy," Mr. Schmidt said in an interview, is you go in, and you pushand if you push really hard, you can really make something happen."

Mr. Schmidt has been pushing his vision since the end of the Obama administration, when Secretary of Defense Ash Cartertapped him to lead the Defense Innovation Board, a panel of military tech advisers.

An antiwar protester in his younger days, Mr. Schmidt donned a Pentagon access badge, met top commanders and jetted to faraway bases. Aboard a wooden-hulled naval vessel in Bahrain several years ago, he watched a sailor sweep for mines using a computer running an outdated version of Windows.

The government is not prepared," Mr. Schmidt said in the interview. There are so many examples where digital technology would completely change the way the systems work."

Key Pentagon officials and members of Congress have endorsed ideas that Mr. Schmidt and other industry leaders back. Those have included creating a special technology section in the National Defense Strategy, a crucial document for Pentagon spending plans, and speeding up the process for buying new software.

Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks, in a June speech, said the department is adopting a software-engineering mind-set."

Stalwart military contractors arent standing pat. Lockheed Martin is now competing to hire AI experts and invest in tech startups while seeking business partnerships with tech companies. Chief Technology Officer Steven Walker said Lockheed has experience from its existing military platforms that large tech companies lack.

Its going to require both of those entities with their different areas of expertise to provide what the U.S. and allied warfighter really need," Mr. Walker said.

The rise of a tech-military partnership faces other obstacles, not least of which is resistance among the technologists the Pentagon needs.

In 2017, Google agreed to help the Pentagon develop AI for recognizing objects on video. When the companys involvement in Project Maven was reported the following year, employees protested and petitioned senior executives to pull back. Google capitulated, promising not to renew the contract and later vowing not to develop AI for weapons.

Mr. Schmidt, who departed Google in 2019, has said he disagreed with Googles decisions around Project Maven, which left sour feelings in Washington.

Im not sure that the people at Google will enjoy a world order that is informed by the norms and standards of Russia or China," Gen. Joe Dunford, then chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at a forum hosted by the Washington Post in 2018. Were the good guys."

Microsoft received similar pushback from employees in 2019 for letting Army soldiers test the HoloLens augmented-reality headset, originally conceived for the likes of architects and surgeons.

At the AI commissions first public event in November 2019, Mr. Schmidt invited Google policy executive Kent Walker on stage next to the officer in charge of Project Maven. Mr. Walker characterized the dust-up as an isolated event. We are a proud American company," he said.

Microsoft this year signed a contract worth up to $21.9 billion to supply the Army with HoloLens. All three tech giants are competing for the Pentagons business in cloud computing and other areas, armed with the capital and computing infrastructure to draw top talent.

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Five reasons to move to the Cloud – Cambridge Network

Posted: at 10:07 am

Cloud computing has taken over most industries online processes -with92% of businessesstating that their IT environment (infrastructure, applications, data analytics, etc.) relies on the Cloud.

Red Hat defines cloud computing as the act of running workloads within clouds - which are IT environments that abstract, pool, and share scalable resources across a network. Neither cloud computing nor clouds are technologies unto themselves.

Cloud computing is an act - the function of running a workload in a cloud.

Clouds are environments - places where applications run.

Technologies are things - software and hardware used to build and use clouds.

Theres a reason85% of enterprises areusing multiple clouds- we share our top five reasons why you should consider moving to the Cloud instead of using on-premise infrastructure.

Time-saving:Getting started with the Cloud is far quicker and easier compared to installing a brand new local server - especially if it means ordering new hardware, which could take weeks to arrive. Application development happens more quickly in the Cloud, and we can help you seamlessly migrate, doing what you need to in seconds.

Scale:The Cloud is incredibly flexible, and you can scale resources automatically according to load; for example, at seasonal peaks when your server might have a higher workload.As importantly, you can scale back when the load reduces.

Cost saving:Moving to the Cloud can be a good business investment.Cost can be spread out monthly, rather than having to buy hardware up-front, and you wont have to spend money on physical equipment and maintenance.

Resource:Cloud computing requires fewer physical servers, which means fewer resources are used. There is no need for additional tech supportto look after the Cloud, unlike on-premise hardware, which takes teams of people to maintain. If an issue arises, you also wont need to send someone down in person to look at it.

Fewer operational issues:The Cloud has far fewer operational issues than other infrastructures and is more reliable than on-premise servers. The Cloud is operated, maintained and supported through companieswhose only job is to make the cloud functional and bug-free, so small issues are found quicker. Undetected bugs on your own hardware infrastructure can easily turn into a larger problem, which takes time and money to fix.

These are just a handful of the many advantages of moving to the Cloud - you can also benefit fromincreased efficiency, improved security, boosted performance, and have the opportunity to downsize your data centres (or completely get rid of them).

Looking to reduce your carbon footprint? Astudy by Microsoftalsofound that cloud storage can be between 79-93% more energy-efficient than a traditional on-premise data centre.

If your business is not actively utilizing the cloud,theres no better time to switch than now.

At Tier 2, we use Cloud-Native techniques, based on Cloud principles, andcan build new applications, and moderniseexisting ones. We're experienced in helping our customersdeliver Cloud-Native solutions in OpenShift. We are the UKs first Red Hat Premier Middleware Partner, and have formally recognised Red Hat OpenShift skills.

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Hearhow we helped customer Motability Operations migrate to the Cloud in our new case study, and discoverhow their cost of deployment has been reduced, without any business impact:

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Five reasons to move to the Cloud - Cambridge Network

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