Journalist Ashlee Vance travels to Montreal, Canada to meet the founders of Lyrebird, a startup that is using AI to clone human voices with frightening precision.
Hello World is a Webby and Emmy-nominated video series from Bloomberg that invites the viewer to come on a journey across the globe to find the inventors, scientists and technologists shaping our future. Join journalist and best-selling author Ashlee Vance on a quest to find the freshest, weirdest tech creations and the beautiful freaks behind them.
Bloomberg is the First Word in business news, delivering breaking news & analysis, up-to-the-minute market data, features, profiles and more: http://www.bloomberg.com
Bug and vulnerability hunting is a big business and the need for it is getting larger and larger. Up until this point, the majority of work had been from people. Either as hackers discovered holes and released exploits or as companies paid people to do the testing.
The machine triumphed in DARPA’s Cyber Grand Challenge, where teams automated white-hat hacking.
Early November 2018, Conrad Holton visited Japan at the invitation of Hamamatsu Photonics to attend the three-day Photon Fair, the company’s big event looking at its technologies and vision for the future. The Fair is held every five years near its headquarters in Hamamatsu City, about 150 miles southwest of Tokyo. In addition to thousands of customers, suppliers, and students who attended, the event was open to the public for one day to show the many technologies just emerging from the company’s research labs and how these technologies might impact fields ranging from the life sciences to transportation and manufacturing.
An interview with the CEO of Hamamatsu Photonics shows how an engineering company with a singular focus on photonics can succeed.
The adorable and enigmatic axolotl is capable of regenerating many different body parts, including limbs, organs, and even portions of its brain. Scientists hope that a deeper understanding of these extraordinary abilities could help make this kind of tissue regeneration possible for humans. With news today of the first complete axolotl genome, researchers can now finally get down to the business of unraveling these mysteries.
Axolotls are tiny aquatic salamanders whose only native habitat is a lake near Mexico City. Many animals, such as frogs, sea stars, and flatworms, are capable of tissue regeneration, but the axolotl is unique in that it can regenerate many different body parts over the course of its entire life cycle, including limbs, tail, heart, lungs, eyes, spinal cord, and up to half of its brain.
Carbon emissions are one of the big concerns impacting climate change, with projects from the development of carbon dioxide-scrubbing plants to businesses pledging to offset their carbon emissions being suggested as ways to reduce our carbon footprint. Now scientists from South Korea have come up with a breakthrough concept which can turn carbon emissions into usable energy.
Scientists from the Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST) developed a system which can continuously produce electrical energy and hydrogen by dissolving carbon dioxide in an aqueous solution. The inspiration came from the fact that much of the carbon dioxide produced by humans is absorbed by the oceans, where it raises the level of acidity in the water. Researchers used this concept to “melt” carbon dioxide in water in order to induce an electrochemical reaction. When acidity rises, the number of protons increases, and these protons attract electrons at a high rate. This can be used to create a battery system where electricity is produced by removing carbon dioxide.
The elements of the battery system are similar to a fuel cell, and include a cathode (sodium metal), a separator (NASICON), and an anode (catalyst). In this case, the catalysts are contained in the water and are connected to the cathode through a lead wire. The reaction begins when carbon dioxide is injected into the water and begins to break down into electricity and hydrogen. Not only is the electricity generated obviously useful, but the produced hydrogen could be used to fuel vehicles as well. The current efficiency of the system is up to 50 percent of the carbon dioxide being converted, which is impressive, although the system only operates on a small scale.
“Hear from leaders across science, academia, and business as they share the latest research and scientific advancements, industry innovation, and their perspective on how these domains will evolve,” Amazon’s re: Mars site says. Speakers from Amazon, MIT, UC Berkeley, NASA and Harvard are on the docket.
Amazon announces a new re: Mars conference that will gather experts in machine learning, robotics, automation and space in Las Vegas.
I love hearing the enthusiasm and joy in the voices of first time home buyers who are going to save money, bond and remodel their house together. Brand new doctors, seasoned lawyers, accountants, project managers, the boldest of GenX and Millennials who grew up swinging VR joystick in lieu of hammers. But they’ve watched Property Brothers and Love It or List and have the best database of YouTube videos for home remodeling in their entire subdivision or building. They even park in the “Pro” section at Home Depot and have their very own monogrammed Leatherman construction gloves.
You can remodel your own home. Even “just” your kitchen or “just” your bathroom. You can read and have all the resources at your disposal. But don’t. Don’t even fucking think about it. Remember how you tried to cook Thanksgiving dinner last year and ended up burning up your kitchen, which is why you need to replace it? Those were simple enough directions too, right?
But what does this have to do with blockchain and more importantly your business?
Glad you asked. Well, your business is like your house. Blockchain is like a remodel. You can do it yourself. You’re after all a pro at your business. But your business isn’t blockchain. Your business is shipping, consulting, farming, logistics, banking, money exchange, insurance, lending, maybe even selling pizzas. Your business is a business. Your business isn’t a way of doing business or a business tool like blockchain. Your business is a way of generating you income to provide for your family, workers, community, financial security and future. It ain’t a way to decentralize any of those, unless you want to find out what a “decentralized” retirement looks like. (Hint, think working poor at 75 years old. #GigEconomy).
So! Before you decided to attempt to blockchain your business, ask yourself, “Could I remodel my house?” 99.99% of the time the answer is “Fucking, hell, no!” You should no more attempt to “blockchain” your business than you should remodel your house. So what do you do?
Hire a professional
Can’t afford one? Then you’re not ready to remodel your house or “blockchain” your business.
By the way, do you even know what the fuck “blockchaining your business” even is? I’m like an expert in this industry and I don’t recommend 99% of businesses “blockchain” any part of their business. Cause did you know you can “blockchain” parts of your business operations, functions and processes and not the entire business? I’ll tell you a secret, blockchain is just a tool you use to do your business. It ain’t a business itself, a panacea for customer acquisitions or guarantee of increased sales or revenue. It’s like a hammer that’s shiny and brand new, but in your hands it’s more likely to tear giant holes in your business’ model, customer base and revenue streams.
So, like you would a plumber, carpenter or WiFi guy, before you go to “blockchain your business” hire a professional. Cause the funny part is once (if) you blockchain your business, then you’ve got to run your business. Remember, blockchain isn’t your business. Your business is. Don’t allow the hype of DIY tech nerds get you wild with excitement leaving you swinging a proverbial sledge hammer through your internal operations and revenue streams.
Hire a professional. And much like building a house, don’t start by hiring a painter to lay the foundation. Hire a General Contractor to guide you through the process. And whatever you do, do not let the plumber and electricians (coders and programmers) charge you by the hour. As then, it’ll take three times as long, cost 10 times as much and your odds of being electrocuted when you drop a deuce are high.
Who is a “Blockchain General Contractor”? Axes and Eggs of course.
Blockchain plumbers, carpenters, electricians, painters, engineers and designers: Chainhaus — they’re your one stop shop. But you can always go to the Home Depot of Blockchain Deloitte Ireland.
Fly by night, Tim the Tool man, unpermitted, lien inclined, blockchain enthusiast.… On the advice of our legal counsel (www.cogentlaw.co) I won’t name those decentralized con artist. But they probably showed up to give you an estimate driving a Lamborghini and offered you custom views of the moon. So you know who they are.
Conclusion
Stick to your business. It’ll ultimately make you more money.
Oh, and if you need a real Construction General Contractor, visit www.mattbeth.com
My name is Samson. I’m an Adjunct Professor at Univ of New Hampshire School of Law, human and an anthropologist at Axes and Eggs, a Washington, DC based Think Tank and digital advisor. If you like what you read, share it! If you disagree, share what you know or how you feel in the comment section below. Feel free to hit me up on Twitter or Instagram @HustleFundBaby or follow me onLinkedIn. Finally, I would say thoughts are my own but I probably stole them from a woman.
Over the past 40 years, the fishing village of Shenzhen has been reborn as a futuristic metropolis bursting with factories. Bloomberg Businessweek’s Ashlee Vance travels to the heart of China’s tech revolution to witness this new reality firsthand, as part of a three-episode exploration of the city. In part one of Hello World Shenzhen, Vance gets a worker’s view of life in a startup and then explores one of the city’s famous electronics markets to learn how people survive (and in some cases make fortunes) in such a frenetic, competitive environment.
The quantum computing revolution is upon us. Like the first digital computers, quantum computers offer the possibility of technology exponentially more powerful than current systems. They stand to change companies, entire industries, and the world by solving problems that seem impossible today and will likely disrupt every industry.
MIT is offering online courses for professionals in Quantum Computing. Learn the business implifications, and applications of quantum, and take the next step in your career.
