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Sorry this story moves me.


A Muslim businessman has erected the tallest Christmas tree in Baghdad as a show of solidarity with Christians during the holiday season.

Yassir Saad told The Associated Press on Thursday that the initiative aims at “joining our Christian brothers in their holiday celebrations and helping Iraqis forget their anguish, especially the war in Mosul,” where Iraqi forces are battling the Islamic State group.

The 85-foot-tall (26-meter) artificial tree, with a diameter of 33 feet (10 meters), has been erected in the center of an amusement park in the Iraqi capital. Saad says the initiative cost around $24,000.

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QC and Formula 1 another opportunity and believer.


In the latest of our occasional series of interviews with interesting players behind the scenes in Formula 1 we meet a Russian scientist, who is keeping the Toro Rosso safe from cyber attacks and who has big plans for using quantum computers to create new F1 materials.

Acronis is a data support and protection business that was founded in 2003. It reportedly has five million personal consumers and 500,000 businesses using its technology in over 145 countries and offers services such as cloud security, data back up and recovery support.

Here James Allen interviews Acronis CEO Serguei Beloussov, who has a PhD in physics and sits on the board of directors at the Russian Quantum Center and Centre for Quantum Technologies in Singapore, about why Acronis has decided to spend its money on F1.

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New article on immigration and AI in The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/dec/14/donald-trump-tech-summit-immigration-automation #future


All of this could be under threat if we are to take some of the comments the Trump campaign made in the run-up to the election at face value. The outspoken candidate claimed that Mark Zuckerberg’s push for specialist H1B visas (the main visa used to hire foreign talent to tech companies) was a threat to jobs for American women and minorities. Meanwhile, Trump’s chief strategist Steve Bannon suggested that Asians have too much power in Silicon Valley.

About a dozen members of Silicon Valley’s elite – including Apple CEO Tim Cook, Alphabet CEO Larry Page, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg – will meet with Trump in New York. The meeting is likely to provide an opportunity for them to highlight their concerns and priorities with the incoming administration.

Trump was critical of Silicon Valley business practices during his campaign – from wanting Apple to stop making phones in China to saying Amazon founder Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post to exert political power and avoid paying taxes.

“If you look at the history of Silicon Valley, it’s clear that drawing on immigrants has been a big part of the vitality, creativity and success of that entrepreneurial melange,” said Marjory Blumenthal, senior policy analyst at Rand Corporation.

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Nice write up about why businesses need to worry about QC sooner v. later. Glad to see more spreading the word.


It’s coming sooner than you think.

By Greg Satell

Greg Satell is a popular writer, speaker and innovation advisor. Previously, he served as Senior Vice President – Strategy & Innovation at Moxie Interactive, a division of Publicis Groupe, one of the world’s leading marketing services organizations as well as Co-CEO of KP Media, a leading publisher of magazines and websites in Ukraine, including the newsmagazine Korrespondent and the web portal, Bigmir.

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Artificial intelligence and machine learning are predicted to be part of the next industrial revolution and could help business and industry save billions of dollars by the next decade.

The tech giants Google, Facebook, Apple, IBM and others are applying artificial intelligence to all sorts of data.

Machine learning methods are being used in areas such as translating language almost in real time, and even to identify images of cats on the internet.

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Some of the biggest names in the business are teaming up to secure the future of virtual reality.

Google, Sony, Oculus, Samsung, Acer and HTC have combined their efforts in order to create a healthy and equal industry for virtual reality hardware and software to develop and expand. The result is the Global Virtual Reality Association, a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting the growth of the virtual reality industry by providing educational resources, connecting developers with necessary resources and much more.

“The organization will foster dialogue between public and private stakeholders in VR around the world and make education and training material available to the public. Working groups will be organized around important topics for the industry, enabling us to produce relevant research and guidance. We will also host and participate in international discussions on important topics in VR to shape the public discussion on the technology. Ultimately, the group will develop best practices and share them openly.”

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This week we are celebrating Computer Science Education Week around the globe.

In this “age of acceleration,” in which advances in technology and the globalization of business are transforming entire industries and society itself, it’s more critical than ever for everyone to be digitally literate, especially our kids.

This is particularly true for women and girls who, while representing roughly 50 percent of the world’s population, account for less than 20 percent of computer science graduates in 34 OECD countries, according to this report.

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Here is the bottom line: the companies that launches QC devices, network infrastructures (platforms, IaaS, SaaS, etc.) will win as everyone knows those billions invested by tech in AI will finally have the ROI that they need to show to their shareholders at the end of the day. When you have consumers and businesses too scared to use your products thanks to the Dark Web, etc. QC is your only way out of this mess.

Without QC infrastructure; means you’re AI investment is limited and you will not see the real ROI potential that you could have. And, synbio technology such as cell circuitry used to eradicate cancer and other illness or disabilities, connected humans, etc. will not have the level of adoption and performance we need to make this area impactful and life changing for so many. Personally, I look forward to a day when hospitals, going to the doctor, etc. are things of the past.


Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT) can come up with its own scalable operational quantum computer by 2025. This could lead to quantum jump in MSFT stock in long term.

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Technological unemployment speeding up, and the elite types as always trying to get the poor and middle class to go at each others throats, rather than address the elephant charging at both of them, that robots and AI are coming for all the jobs in under 10 years now.


Other states are also learning the same basic economic lesson: Customers have a limit to what they will pay for service. Voters in Washington, Colorado, Maine and Arizona voted to raise minimum wages on Election Day, convinced of the policy’s merits after millions of dollars were spent by union advocates. In the immediate aftermath, family-owned restaurants, coffee shops and even childcare providers have struggled to absorb the coming cost increase—with parents paying the cost through steeper childcare bills, and employees paying the cost through reduced shift hours or none at all.

The out-of-state labor groups who funded these initiatives aren’t shedding tears over the consequences. Like their Soviet-era predecessors who foolishly thought they could centrally manage prices and business operations to fit an idealistic worldview, economic reality keeps ruining the model of all gain and no pain. This brings me to my last correct prediction, which is that the Fight for $15 was always more a creation of the left-wing Service Employees International Union (SEIU) rather than a legitimate grassroots effort. Reuters reported last year that, based on federal filings, the SEIU had spent anywhere from $24 million to $50 million on the its Fight for $15 campaign, and the number has surely increased since then.

This money has bought the union a lot of protesters and media coverage. You can expect more of it on November 29. But the real faces of the Fight for $15 are the young people and small business owners who have had their futures compromised. Those faces are not happy ones.

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