Lifeboat Foundation

In Brief:

• IBM surveyed 200 global banks and financial institutions as part of two recently released studies.
• The widespread use of Blockchain could lead to more secure, efficient banking experiences.

Recent reports by IBM have revealed that by 2017, 15 percent of big banks worldwide and 14 percent of major financial institutions will be using Blockchain technology.

I believe we’re really looking at less than 10yrs given the speed of evolution of QC to date. Instead of two new QC discoveries each year to advance QC; we’re now seeing 2 new discoveries every 2 months now not to mention China and US advancements on networking and communications and scalable QC for devices which Google plans to release their QC device in 2017.

Quantum computers could bring about a quantum leap in processing power, with countless benefits for fields like data science and AI. But there’s also a dark side: this extra power will make it simple to crack the encryption keeping everything from our emails to our online banking secure.

A recent report from the Global Risk Institute predicted that there is a one in seven chance vital cryptography tools will be rendered useless by 2026, rising to a 50% chance by 2031. In the meantime, hackers and spies can hoover up data encrypted using current approaches and simply wait until quantum computers powerful enough to crack the code have been developed.

Continue reading “Quantum Computers Could Crush Today’s Top Encryption in 15 Years” »

Longevity a challenge or an opportunity?

This autumn, The Economist Events will bring global leaders from business, finance and health care together with policymakers to explore the opportunities of an ageing world.

Together they will discuss how best to adapt financial products and realign business and public policies in ways that will drive economic growth and mitigate problems that ageing societies could otherwise bring.

Continue reading “Ageing Societies 2016” »

In 5 years if you’re looking at QC in your future state roadmap; then welcome to the dinosaur age of technology.

BEIJING: China today launched a 712-km quantum communication line, stated to be the worlds longest secure telecommunications network, which boasts of ultra-high security making it impossible to wiretap, intercept or crack the information transmitted through them.

The new quantum communication line links Hefei, capital of Anhui province, to Shanghai, the countrys financial hub.

Continue reading “China Launches World’s Longest Quantum Communication Line” »

Tesla completed its $2.6 billion acquisition of SolarCity this week, and, to celebrate, the company has announced a major solar energy project: wiring up the whole island of Ta’u in American Samoa. Previously, the island ran on diesel generators, but over the past year Tesla has installed a microgrid of solar energy panels and batteries that will supply “nearly 100 percent” of power needs for Ta’u’s 600 residents.

The project seems intended to show off the potential benefits of the SolarCity acquisition, with Ta’u’s microgrid comprised of 5,328 solar panels from SolarCity and Tesla, along with 60 Tesla Powerpacks batteries for storage. But buying SolarCity remains a risky move for Tesla, with the purchase including billions of dollars of debt for a company that’s far from profitable (SolarCity spends $6 for every $1 it makes in sales). Nevertheless, Tesla CEO Elon Musk describes the acquisition as “blindingly obvious” — a necessary step in his so-called “Master Plan” to integrate clean energy generation and storage.

Continue reading “Tesla powers a whole island with solar to show off its energy chops” »

Planetary Resources, Inc., the asteroid mining company, announced today that it has finalized a 25 million euro agreement that includes direct capital investment of 12 million euros and grants of 13 million euros from the Government of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg and the banking institution Société Nationale de Crédit et d’Investissement (SNCI). The funding will accelerate the company’s technical advancements with the aim of launching the first commercial asteroid prospecting mission by 2020.

Planetary Resources’ Arkyd 6 is equipped with the first commercially licensed mid-wave infrared imager, an essential tool for detecting water on asteroids. Two spacecraft are completed and will test this technology on orbit. Planetary Resources’ President & CEO Chris Lewicki and Luxembourg’s Deputy Prime Minister Etienne Schneider pictured with the Arkyd 6 in Planetary Resources’ clean room facility in Redmond, Washington.

Continue reading “Planetary Resources And The Government Of Luxembourg Announce €25 Million Investment and target 2020 asteroid mining mission” »

“Among policy makers alert for signs of the next financial disaster, Italy’s mountain of uncollectable bank debt is a subject discussed in tones ordinarily reserved for piles of plutonium.”

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““They ‘got’ the business, and they took the time to go deep,” Mr. Vogt said.”

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SALT LAKE CITY, Nov. 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ IBM (NYSE: IBM) and NVIDIA (NVDA)today announced collaboration on a new deep learning tool optimized for the latest IBM and NVIDIA technologies to help train computers to think and learn in more human-like ways at a faster pace.

Deep learning is a fast growing machine learning method that extracts information by crunching through millions of pieces of data to detect and rank the most important aspects from the data. Publicly supported among leading consumer web and mobile application companies, deep learning is quickly being adopted by more traditional business enterprises.

Deep learning and other artificial intelligence capabilities are being used across a wide range of industry sectors; in banking to advance fraud detection through facial recognition; in automotive for self-driving automobiles and in retail for fully automated call centers with computers that can better understand speech and answer questions.

Continue reading “IBM and NVIDIA Team Up on World’s Fastest Deep Learning Enterprise Solution” »