On June 8th, the South Korean Advisory Committee met to develop a legal framework for national crypto exchanges. Following the Coinrail Market’s recent hack, the South Korean government is enforcing stricter investor protection guidelines: Know Your Customer (KYC) and Anti-Money Laundering (AML).
Continue reading… “Bitcoin regulation : South Korea is making progress”
Gen Z, Millennials and Gen X outvoted older generations in 2018 midterms
Voters in Missouri take part in November’s elections. Turnout reached a record high for the 2018 midterms. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)
Midterm voter turnout reached a modern high in 2018, and Generation Z, Millennials and Generation X accounted for a narrow majority of those voters, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of newly available Census Bureau data.
Continue reading… “Gen Z, Millennials and Gen X outvoted older generations in 2018 midterms”
Things that can lower your rating: being rude, leaving trash, drinking beer and vomiting.
Drivers and passengers now have to agree to Uber’s updated community guidelines before using the app.
Uber has long deactivated drivers who get low ratings. Now the ride-hailing company is turning the tables.
Uber announced Wednesday that those passengers who receive bad marks from drivers will be booted from the platform. But, Uber said, they’ll have to “develop a significantly below average rating.”
Continue reading… “Uber is now kicking low-rated passengers out of its cars”
A sci-fi novelist on what he learned writing a trilogy of speculative novels that extrapolate how feeds shape our lives, politics, and future
Feeds shape our world. Google uses hundreds of variables to determine the search results you see. A complex statistical engine produces your personalized Netflix queue. Facebook uses everything it knows about you and your friends to build your timeline. Your credit score is compiled from third-party data brokers. Taylor Swift uses facial recognition software to identify stalkers at concerts. Even these Herculean efforts are dwarfed in scale by the Chinese social credit system that will integrate data from many disparate public and private sources.
Feeds are inevitable to the extent that they are useful. Every minute of every day, 156 million emails are sent, 400 hours of video are uploaded to Youtube, and there are 600 new page edits to Wikipedia. There is so much more information than we can possibly digest, and feeds are the imperfect filters that we use to try to distill what we want from all that’s out there. But their imperfections generate horrendous side effects, like unjust parole decisions made on the basis of racially biased data. And even more fundamentally, the sheer scale of feeds, and their incomprehensibility to most users, give their masters enormous hidden power.
Continue reading… “In a world awash in information, the curator is king”
Chinese space scientists are currently outfitting their Mars Rover with scientific instruments in preparation for a launch next year.
The “Mars 2020 mission spacecraft is undergoing integration,” Wang Chi, director of China’s National Space Science Center, told Space News.
Continue reading… “China is now assembling its 2020 Mars Rover”
To keep clients, Nippon Steel is developing super-strong metal
Cars must get lighter to meet new emissions rules or electrify.
Imagine the weight of 24 elephants bearing down on a tiny spot the size a postage stamp.
That’s how much pressure Nippon Steel Corp.’s strongest metal can withstand. The Japanese company is pushing the envelope in order to stay relevant as the auto industry, its most important customer, goes through major changes.
Continue reading… “The Reinvention of steel could make car bodies 30% lighter”
Do you remember the strange thrill of losing a tooth when you were a child? On the one hand, you had the distressing feeling of seeing blood and feeling it pop out. At the same time, you knew something exciting was going to happen when you put it under your pillow. If you were lucky, by the next morning, the tooth was gone and some money had magically appeared.
Continue reading… “Dentists are asking parents not to throw their kids’ baby teeth, here’s why”
Business-software giant Salesforce instituted a new policy barring retail customers from using its technology to sell semiautomatic weapons and some other firearms.
SAN FRANCISCO — On its website, Salesforce.com touts retailer Camping World as a leading customer of its business software, highlighting its use of products to help sales staff move product. A Camping World executive is even quoted calling Salesforce’s software “magic.”
But behind the scenes in recent weeks, the Silicon Valley tech giant has delivered a different message to gun-selling retailers such as Camping World: Stop selling military-style rifles, or stop using our software.
The pressure Salesforce is exerting on those retailers — barring them from using its technology to market products, manage customer service operations and fulfill orders — puts them in a difficult position. Camping World, for example, spends more than $1 million a year on Salesforce’s e-commerce software, according to one analyst estimate. Switching to another provider now could cost the company double that to migrate data, reconfigure systems and retrain employees.
Continue reading… “Tech giant brings software to a gun fight”
A new discovery by University of Minnesota and University of Massachusetts Amherst researchers could increase the speed and lower the cost of thousands of chemical processes used in developing fertilizers, foods, fuels, plastics, and more.
A team of researchers from the University of Minnesota and University of Massachusetts Amherst has discovered new technology that can speed up chemical reactions 10,000 times faster than the current reaction rate limit. These findings could increase the speed and lower the cost of thousands of chemical processes used in developing fertilizers, foods, fuels, plastics, and more.
Continue reading… “Energy researchers break the catalytic speed limit”
Less Tilt Brush, more CAD
Logitech has announced a new VR stylus called the Logitech VR Ink Pilot Edition that’s designed to make it easier to draw and sculpt in virtual reality. Unlike existing VR controllers from the likes of HTC, you hold Logitech’s VR stylus like a traditional pen, and it can seamlessly transition between drawing in the air and drawing on a flat surface.
It’s a neat idea, but it sounds like Logitech is still going through the process of working out its reason for being. A teaser video shows the stylus being used mainly for 3D CAD work to design cars and planes, but the company also says it’s seeking industry partners and app developers to work out more use cases for the accessory. Either way, Logitech seems to be aiming this squarely at professional designers rather than part-time Tilt Brush hobbyists.
Continue reading… “Logitech made a VR stylus you can use on a table or in the air”
Indiana Rep. Sen. Jim Banks’ Hospital Competition Act of 2019 would curtail the pricing power of regional hospital monopolies, and incentivize them to restore a competitive market.
For generations, the prices that hospitals charge patients with private insurance have been shrouded in secrecy. An explosive new study has unlocked some of those secrets. It finds that employers and their insurers are failing to control hospital costs, increasing calls for transparency into insurer-hospital agreements.
Kratos XQ-58A Valkyrie combat drone.
Kratos and AeroVironment are teaming up to make it happen.
For nearly half a decade, DARPA — the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency — has been hard at work on a (not so) secret project: to build a flying aircraft carrier, a flying piloted “mother ship” capable of launching and recovering drone aircraft.
Little did DARPA know that two of its favorite contractors, defense companies AeroVironment (NASDAQ:AVAV) and Kratos Defense & Security (NASDAQ:KTOS), were about to go one better.
Continue reading… “Flying aircraft carriers could be here sooner than you think”
By delving into the futuring techniques of Futurist Thomas Frey, you’ll embark on an enlightening journey.
Learn More about this exciting program.