government – Page 6

Bitcoin, government, Money Talk, Science & Technology News

What can we learn from Sweden, the ultimate cashless society?

October 16, 2019

Demand for notes and coins in Sweden is so limp that cash is literally disappearing: the amount in circulation has fallen 27.5pc in the last four year

The collapse of cash in Britain has been dramatic. There were 11.5 billion fewer cash transactions in 2018 than in 2008 – a decline of 51pc. It’s a pace of change that has surprised everyone, even industry insiders.

“The rise of the debit card and the decline of cash is the phenomenon of the last decade,” says Adrian Buckle, head of research for UK Finance, the banking sector trade body.

But Britain, while on the podium, is not the world champion in cashless. That title goes to Sweden, where demand for notes and coins is so limp that cash is literally disappearing: the amount in circulation has fallen from 80bn kronor (£6.6bn) to Skr58bn (£4.8bn) in the last four years, a reduction of 27.5pc. The same period has seen ATM withdrawals fall by more than half.

Continue reading… “What can we learn from Sweden, the ultimate cashless society?”

China, government, Science & Technology News, Travel

How selling citizenship is now big business

October 16, 2019

Buying and selling citizenship is now a global industry worth an estimated $25bn a year

You can be born into it, you can earn it, and you can lose it. Increasingly, you can also invest your way into it.

The “it” is citizenship of a particular country, and it is a more fluid concept than ever before. Go back 50 years, and it was uncommon for countries to allow dual citizenship, but it is now almost universal.

More than half of the world’s nations now have citizenship-through-investment programmes. According to one expert, Swiss lawyer Christian Kalin, it is now a global industry worth $25bn (£20bn) a year.

Mr Kalin, who has been dubbed “Mr Passport”, is the chairman of Henley & Partners, one of the world’s biggest players in this rapidly growing market. His global business helps wealthy individuals and their families acquire residency or citizenship in other countries.

He says that our traditional notions of citizenship are “outdated”. “This is one of the few things left in the world that is tied to blood lines, or where you are born,” he says. He argues that a rethink is very much due.

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Bitcoin, Blockchain, China, government, Science & Technology News

China plans to kill most of the world’s bitcoin mining operations

September 25, 2019

The price could spike again.

The Chinese government will end bitcoin mining operations in the coming months, Bloomberg reported over this January, a move that could have a massive impact on the price of the world’s biggest digital currency.

China has been a central player in the development of bitcoin in recent years, but Beijing has spent the last six months cracking down on the cryptocurrency industry — shutting down local exchanges and banning initial coin offerings.

Leaked documents suggest the Chinese government plans an “orderly exit” for bitcoin mining operations in the coming weeks and months.

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Automobiles, Driverless vehicles, government, Science & Technology News

Self-driving carmakers urge regulators to toss the steering wheel out the window

September 24, 2019

Waymo, Cruise, and others call on the NHTSA to take action on human controls

The federal government should rewrite the safety rules for automobile manufacturing so self-driving carmakers can deploy vehicles without traditional controls like steering wheels and pedals, according to public comments submitted by top car and tech companies.

And they should be quick about it.

“We urge [the National Highway Safety Traffic Administration] to move ahead promptly to remove the regulatory barriers the agency has identified,” David Quinalty, head of federal policy and government affairs at Waymo, wrote in a letter posted online on Thursday.

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Automobiles, Big Problems, government, Science & Technology News

Major cities are introducing noise radars that automatically issue fines to loud vehicles to combat noise pollution

September 13, 2019

The measuring devices will be able to precisely measure and locate sounds from moving vehicles, as well as register their licence plates.

Noise pollution is one of the leading health problems in cities after environmental pollution.

In France, a noise radar has been installed to fine the noisiest vehicles, according to Reuters.

The radar isn’t actually the first of its kind in Europe; earlier this year, Switzerland also began installing the first of its own noise radars.

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AI, Artificial Intelligence, government, Science & Technology News, Weapons

Coming soon to a battlefield: Robots that can kill

September 12, 2019

Tomorrow’s wars will be faster, more high-tech, and less human than ever before. Welcome to a new era of machine-driven warfare.

Wallops island—a remote, marshy spit of land along the eastern shore of Virginia, near a famed national refuge for horses—is mostly known as a launch site for government and private rockets. But it also makes for a perfect, quiet spot to test a revolutionary weapons technology.

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Bitcoin, government, Money Talk, Science & Technology News

Bitcoin And Cryptocurrencies are a hedge for bad government

September 5, 2019

World leaders and delegates depart a family photo session at the Group of 20 (G-20) summit in Osaka, Japan, on Friday, June 28, 2019.

There’s been a lot of news recently, especially with the advent of a news cycle focused on a potential recession, on the role of bitcoin and cryptocurrencies from a short-term investment perspective. Some have placed bitcoin and cryptocurrencies in the category of hedges, a form of digital gold or silver that can be used to store value through inflation and the debasement of fiat currency.

Yet that misses the forest for the trees. Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies at scale are not just a hedge for inflation and an ever-expanding monetary supply — they are a fundamental hedge against bad governance and bad governments. In this respect, it may be easier to evaluate them along a longer-term horizon than just a short-term store of value.

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government, military drones, Record Breaker, Science & Technology News, Space Flight

The U.S. Air Force’s shadowy X-37B space plane has broken a space flight record

September 3, 2019

At 6:43 am US eastern time today, the Air Force’s mysterious X-37B space plane broke a new spaceflight record, surpassing the 717 days, 20 hours and 42 minutes its predecessor spent in orbit just a couple years prior.

The X-37B, explained: The Air Force is notoriously tightlipped about the X-37B program. The space plane itself, built by Boeing, is 29 feet long and 9.6 feet tall, boasting a wingspan of nearly 15 feet. It’s launched vertically aboard a rocket and lands horizontally on a runway. The current X-37B mission is the fifth of its kind (Orbital Test Vehicle 5 – OTV-5) and was launched in September 2017 by a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.

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Fashion, government, privacy, Science & Technology News

The fashion line designed to trick surveillance cameras

August 26, 2019

Adversarial Fashion garments are covered in license plates, aimed at bamboozling a device’s databases

An Adversarial Fashion dress, modeled by the designer, Kate Rose.

Automatic license plate readers, which use networked surveillance cameras and simple image recognition to track the movements of cars around a city, may have met their match, in the form of a T-shirt. Or a dress. Or a hoodie.

The anti-surveillance garments were revealed at the DefCon cybersecurity conference in Las Vegas on Saturday by the hacker and fashion designer Kate Rose, who presented the inaugural collection of her Adversarial Fashion line.

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Automobiles, Electric Automobile, Electric Vehicles, government, Science & Technology News

Automakers run into collision with Centre’s electric vehicle plan

August 15, 2019

Two- and three-wheeler manufacturers are stoutly resisting the government’s e-mobility plan. The government wants to ban internal combustion engine (ICE)-powered three- and two-wheelers (with an engine capacity of less than 150cc) by 2023 and 2025, respectively, and replace them with electric vehicles (EVs).

With the meeting between the NITI Aayog and auto industry executives ending in a stalemate on Friday, the two sides may continue to spar over the road map for e-mobility in one of the world’s most polluted countries..

Via Wap Business Standard

Bitcoin, government, Money Talk, Science & Technology News

IRS says it’s sending warning letter to US cryptocurrency owners

August 11, 2019

The U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS) announced Friday that it has begun sending letters to taxpayers who own cryptocurrency, advising them to pay any back taxes they may owe or to file amended tax returns regarding their holdings.

In a news bulletin, the agency said that it began mailing what it called “educational letters” last week. According to the statement, there are three variations of the letter that were sent.

The IRS further said that it will have sent such letters to “more than 10,000 taxpayers” by the end of this month,” adding that “the names of these taxpayers were obtained through various ongoing IRS compliance efforts.”

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