Lifeboat Foundation

Android Pay keeps growing its network of supported institutions. The mobile payment system added as many as 71 new places where you can carry out Android Pay transactions. The complete list of new additions is available at the end of the article.

With Android Pay, both your credit card and the institution that services it must be compatible in order for the system to function. Google keeps adding new banks and merchants in order to increase its range of support. Once set up, the system works by simply tapping your phone on a payments terminal at the store. The functionality is also available in Android Wear 2.0 smartwatches.

Recently, Android Pay was updated with PayPal integration, enabling users to pay quickly using their PP balance. The service is available in 13 countries across the world.

Continue reading “Android Pay adds support for 71 more banks and merchants” »

On 5th of May, the cornerstone for the construction of a neuromorphic computing facility in Europe was laid at the University of Heidelberg in Germany. With the financial support of the European Union and German public and private institutions, the new building will house leading European researchers working on neuromorphic computing within the Human Brain Project, a FET Flagship of the European Commission.

With this new facility the research team from Heidelberg University, led by Prof. Dr. Karlheinz Meier, will benefit from an optimal environment to continue working on the neuromorphic computing platform, which they are developing together with other research groups within the Human Brain Project.

Continue reading “Laying the foundations of the European Institute for Neuromorphic Computing” »

Yes, this works with the financial profile of “middle class” American families.

(Tech Xplore)—RethinkX, an independent think tank that analyzes and forecasts disruptive technologies, has released an astonishing report predicting a far more rapid transition to EV/autonomous vehicles than experts are currently predicting. The report is based on an analysis of the so-called technology-adoption S-curve that describes the rapid uptake of truly disruptive technologies like smartphones and the internet. Additionally, the report addresses in detail the massive economic implications of this prediction across various sectors, including energy, transportation and manufacturing.

Rethinking Transportation 2020–2030 suggests that within 10 years of regulatory approval, by 2030, 95 percent of U.S. passenger miles traveled will be served by on-demand autonomous electric vehicles (AEVs). The primary driver of this unfathomably huge change in American life is economics: The cost savings of using transport-as-a-service (TaaS) providers will be so great that consumers will abandon individually owned vehicles. The report predicts that the cost of TaaS will save the average family $5600 annually, the equivalent of a 10 percent raise in salary. This, the report suggests, will lead to the biggest increase in consumer spending in history.

Continue reading “Analysis predicts extremely disruptive, total transition to EV / autonomous vehicles in 13 years” »

Creating rejuvenation will probably be quite expensive, but that’s no reason to give up on it. We can pull it off.

The first thing to realise is that, when you wonder how much something will cost, you’re actually wondering how many resources and how many people doing how much work it will take to do that something. That’s all that really matters. The problem is that we have a sucky economic system such that even if we do have more than enough people and resources to do the job, the monetary cost of it could be so high that you can’t get the job done without creating financial problems left and right. This should be a hint that the problem, if it exists, lies in our crappy economic system, not in rejuvenation itself or whatever other thing we may create.

Apart from the obvious fact that other hysterically expensive endeavours (such as space missions) are pulled off despite their costs, we must take into account that desperate circumstances call for desperate measures. We don’t need to tear apart our economic system and replace it with another before we create rejuvenation, and neither would we if faced with another health crisis (such as a pandemic) or a planetary crisis, but we need to get the job done despite its costs and the consequences they may have. We can’t give up on rejuvenation on the grounds that it may be too expensive to create, just like we wouldn’t in the case of an existential risk. Can you imagine that? There’s a huge asteroid on a collision course with Earth, and our only hope is a spectacularly expensive space mission to destroy it before it’s too late. Just who in their right mind would step up and say: ‘Nah, too expensive. Let’s not do it.

Money 2017 speakers Juergen Schmidhuber, Wirecard’s Joern Leogrande and Nutmeg’s Nick Hungerford discuss the changing face of AI-driven finance.

Ice-nine is a fictitious alternative structure of water that is solid at room temperature. When a crystal of ice-nine contacts liquid water, it becomes a seed crystal that makes the molecules of liquid water arrange themselves into the solid form, ice-nine. Felix Hoenikker’s reason to create this substance was to aid in the military’s plight of wading through mud and swamp areas while fighting. That is, if ice-nine could reduce the wetness of the areas to a solid form, soldiers could easily maneuver across without becoming entrapped or slowed. (Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut) Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat%27s_Cradle

Jim Rickards uses ICE 9 in his latest work “The Road to Ruin” to warn investors of a potential ICE 9 event in which the financial system literally freezes up in a domino type event as he describes in a recent interview:

Deep learning owes its rising popularity to its vast applications across an increasing number of fields. From healthcare to finance, automation to e-commerce, the RE•WORK Deep Learning Summit (27−28 April) will showcase the deep learning landscape and its impact on business and society.

Of notable interest is speaker Jeffrey De Fauw, Research Engineer at DeepMind. Prior to joining DeepMind, De Fauw developed a deep learning model to detect Diabetic Retinopathy (DR) in fundus images, which he will be presenting at the Summit. DR is a leading cause of blindness in the developed world and diagnosing it is a time-consuming process. De Fauw’s model was designed to reduce diagnostics time and to accurately identify patients at risk, to help them receive treatment as early as possible.

Joining De Fauw will be Brian Cheung, A PhD student from UC Berkeley, and currently working at Google Brain. At the event, he will explain how neural network models are able to extract relevant features from data with minimal feature engineering. Applied in the study of physiology, his research aims to use a retinal lattice model to examine retinal images.

And yet, as impressive and powerful as these new technologies and machines are—and they’re becoming more so all the time—I believe they’re an opportunity to be embraced by accountants.

Computers and software have evolved to a point where they can populate spreadsheets, crunch numbers, and generate financial statements and earnings reports more quickly and accurately than any human accountant. In fact, machines are already taking on many of an accountant’s old, routine, administrative chores—on-line tax returns, and book-keeping software, are great examples of routine work that accountants no longer have to do.

This is a good thing. It is already allowing for human accountants to be more sophisticated advisors and planners. In this way, technology can be best used as a tool that gives humans more space to focus on analysis, interpretation, and strategy. In other words, computers have enormous potential to empower—rather than displace—accountants.

Continue reading “Robots are coming to the accounting industry — here’s how to prepare” »

“Bloomberg, an entrepreneur and former mayor of New York City, and Pope, a lifelong environmental leader, approach climate change from different perspectives, yet they arrive at similar conclusions.”

Read more