ANML Learning to Continually Learn - talk by Jeff Clune (OpenAI)
ANML Learning to Continually Learn - talk by Jeff Clune (OpenAI)
Mobile phone industry explores worldwide tracking of users (Guardian)
The mobile phone industry has explored the creation of a global data-sharing system that could track individuals around the world, as part of an effort to curb the spread of Covid-19. The Guardian has learned that a senior official at GSMA, held discussions with at least one company that is capable of tracking individuals globally through their mobile devices, and discussed the possible creation of a global data-sharing system.
Rabies is a viral disease that causes inflammation of the brain in humans and other mammals. Early symptoms can include fever and tingling at the site of exposure. These symptoms are followed by one or more of the following symptoms: violent movements, uncontrolled excitement, fear of water, an inability to move parts of the body, confusion, and loss of consciousness. Once symptoms appear, the result is nearly always death. The time period between contracting the disease and the start of symptoms is usually one to three months, but can vary from less than one week to more than one year. The time depends on the distance the virus must travel along peripheral nerves to reach the central nervous system.
Corona virus COVID-19- hype and hysteria? Demystification of the nightmare - by Prof. Dr. med. Sucharit Bhakdi - Professor an der Johannes-Gutenberg-Universität in Mainz und war 22 Jahre lang Leiter des dortigen Instituts für Medizinische Mikrobiologie und Hygiene.
Am Telefon zur Corona-Virologie: Professor Karin Mölling, Virologin am Max-Planck-Institut für Molekulare Genetik in Berlin und hat einen Lehrstuhl am Institut für Medizinische Virologie an der Universität Zürich. (KenFM)
Corona Virus: Prof. Hornegger im Gespräch mit Prof. Christian Bogdan
Related: 12 Experts Questioning the Coronavirus Panic (off-guardian)
COVID-19 Pushes Up Internet Use 70 Percent, Streaming More Than 12 Percent (forbes)
The first internet streaming and usage figures are coming in as the coronavirus pandemic places a quarter of the world's population under lockdown. As millions of people go online for entertainment and more, total internet hits have surged by between 50% and 70%, according to preliminary statistics. Streaming has also jumped by at least 12%, estimates show. [Maria Rua Aguete of Omdia, the tech research arm of Informa Tech] said the annual figures are revealing: "Ecommerce will be the other sector that will see a revenue boost as a result of the pandemic, adding $175 billion in revenue in 2020, which represents a 5% increase."
Coronavirus: S'pore Government to make its contact-tracing app freely available to developers worldwide (straitstimes)
The Singapore Government will be making the software for its contact-tracing application TraceTogether, which has already been installed by more than 620,000 people, freely available to developers around the world. In a Facebook post on Monday (March 23), Minister-in-charge of the Smart Nation Initiative Vivian Balakrishnan said that the app, developed by the Government Technology Agency (GovTech) and the Ministry of Health, will be open-sourced.
#Comment: Once the biological virus is gone, rest assured that all these highly intrusive surveillance and social engineering tools will stay around and rapidly expand. Cybernetic totalitarianism might be the dominate game globally for years to come. The opportunity for systemic abuse and catastrophic failure is mindbogglingly giant.
The secret WHO chief is Bill Gates (Die Zeit, 2017 - DE Only)
The most important organization in world health, the WHO, has a problem: it is broke and therefore dependent on donations. Does it lose independence?
UK coronavirus mass home testing to be made available ‘within days’ (Guardian)
Thousands of 15-minute home tests for coronavirus will be delivered by Amazon to people self-isolating with symptoms or will go on sale on the high street within days, according to Public Health England (PHE), in a move that could restore many people’s lives to a semblance of pre-lockdown normality.
Amazon, Owned by World's Richest Man, Soliciting Public Donations To Pay Workers' Sick Leave (popular.info)
In response to the pandemic, Amazon said it would provide two weeks of sick leave to "all Amazon employees diagnosed with COVID-19 or placed into quarantine." Amazon's large contract workforce, which delivers packages and performs other critical tasks, is in even worse shape. Amazon is not providing any sick leave at all for these workers, even if they test positive for COVID-19. Instead, these workers must apply to the "Amazon Relief Fund" and apply for a grant to cover their sick leave.
The Second Golden Age of Blogging (otherlife)
Blogging was then diffused into social media, but now social media is so tribal and algo-regulated that anybody with a real message today needs their own property. At the same time, professional institutions are increasingly suffocated by older, rent-seeking incumbents and politically-correct upstarts using moralism as a career strategy. In such a context, blogging — if it is intelligent, courageous, and consistent — is currently one of the most reliable methods for intellectually sophisticated individuals to accrue social and cultural capital outside of institutions. (Youtube for the videographic, Instagram for the photographic, podcasting for the loquacious, but writing and therefore blogging for the most intellectually sophisticated.
If the First Golden Age of Blogging saw the blog as a public amplifier of creative, intellectual talent ensconced in professional careers, today we are living through a Second Golden Age of Blogging, where the blog is now a vehicle for starting and exiting careers.
Venezuela’s flagship communications satellite out of service and tumbling (SpaceNews)
Venezuela’s first and only state-owned communications satellite has been out of service since March 13 when a series of maneuvers left it tumbling in an unusable orbit. The VeneSat-1 satellite, built by China Great Wall Industry Corp. and launched in late 2008 on a 15-year mission to provide television and broadband services to Venezuela, has been stuck for 10 days in an elliptical orbit above the geostationary arc, according to telescopic observations from two U.S. companies that track satellites.
After series of cuts, India axes Bayer's GM cotton royalty (Reuters)
India has axed the royalties that local seed companies pay to German drugmaker Bayer AG for Monsanto’s genetically modified (GM) cotton, a government order said, after cutting them back since 2016.95% of cotton grown in India is by Monsanto; 75% debt of farmers is on account of input costs; over 3.2 lakh Farmer Suicides due to debt.
The Modern Supply Chain Is Snapping
The coronavirus exposes the fragility of an economy built on outsourcing and just-in-time inventory.
Generating music in the waveform domain - A comprehensive overview of the field
In November last year, I co-presented a tutorial on waveform-based music processing with deep learning with Jordi Pons and Jongpil Lee at ISMIR 2019. Jongpil and Jordi talked about music classification and source separation respectively, and I presented the last part of the tutorial, on music generation in the waveform domain.
"Small island of coherence in a sea of chaos have the capacity to shift the entire system to a higher order" - Illya Prigogine
Could Central Bank Digital Currencies Ever Replace Fiat Money? (Beincrypto)
Cryptocurrencies are defying the age-old monopoly of central banks on issuing currency. A central-bank digital currency is backed by a reserve bank and can be used as a means of payment and unit of account. Central banks have been waking up to the idea of CBDC now more than ever.
Digital Pound Could Present ‘Challenges’ for UK, Says Mark Carney (Coindesk)
The outgoing governor of the Bank of England (BoE) has highlighted the potential risks to monetary governance if a central bank digital currency were to be launched in the U.K.
Carney sees big challenges as BoE eyes 'digital banknotes' (Reuters)
LONDON (Reuters) - The Bank of England must tread carefully to avoid financial stability dangers if it creates a digital equivalent to its existing banknotes, Governor Mark Carney said on Thursday.
Mark Carney concerned about financial stability risks of introducing digital currency (thelogic)
The outgoing Bank of England governor said a government-backed digital coin would to be "very carefully designed" if it is introduced.
What China’s Cyber-Cash Advantage Means for the Global Economy (insead)
The rise of cryptocurrency could threaten the dominance of the US dollar and cost the United States trillions in increased debt financing charges.
China's central bank is one step closer to issuing its digital currency - report (The Block)
The People’s Bank of China is said to have moved one step closer to issuing digital yuan. A Global Times report on Tuesday, citing “industry insiders,” said the central bank appears to have completed the development of digital currency’s basic function. The PBoC is now reportedly drafting relevant laws to circulate its digital currency
Central Bank Digital Currency ‘Incredibly Rich Area’ Says IMF (bitcoinist)
Tao Zhang, Deputy Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has made a strong argument for the development of Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDCs). He asserts that as a new asset class they hold tremendous promise, notably for the developing world.
IMF Weighs the Pros and Cons of a Central Bank Digital Currency (cointelegraph)
In a recent keynote speech to the London School of Economics, International Monetary Fund (IMF) Deputy Managing Director, Tao Zhang, briefed the positives and negatives of a central bank digital currency (CBDC). Zhang pointed toward greater efficiency and lower costs associated with a CBDC. “In some countries, the cost of managing cash can be very high on account of geography, and access to the payments system may not be available to the unbanked, rural, or poorer population,” he said in the Feb. 28 speech, which hit the web on March 19.
Deputy Managing Director Tao Zhang’s Keynote Address on Central Bank Digital Currency (IMF)
This afternoon, we’re going to take up a topic that everybody seems to be talking about these days – namely, central bank digital currency (or “CBDC” for short). This is a “widely accessible, digital form of fiat money that can be legal tender,” and a recent BIS survey of central banks shows that 80 percent were exploring CBDC.
G7 Working Group on Stablecoins - Investigating the impact of global stablecoins (BIS)
Stablecoins have many of the features of cryptoassets but seek to stabilise the price of the “coin” by linking its value to that of a pool of assets. Therefore, stablecoins might be more capable of serving as a means of payment and store of value, and they could potentially contribute to the development of global payment arrangements that are faster, cheaper and more inclusive than present arrangements. That said, stablecoins are just one of many initiatives that seek to address existing challenges in the payment system and, being a nascent technology, they are largely untested.
4 Reasons Central Banks Should Launch Retail Digital Currencies (Coindesk)
Financial stability is about preventing the financial system from becoming unstable and thus causing financial distress for consumers. Unlike cash and reserves, a retail CBDC will allow a central bank to become the lender of last resort for households and small businesses rather than for billionaires and banks. In a financial crisis, this will allow the central bank to bail out consumers instead of corporations, which in turn will reduce the incentives for mega corporations to borrow too much. That, in turn, will reduce aggregate national debt and improve financial stability.
A central bank will issue a consumer-ready digital currency within five years (omfif)
73% of central bank survey respondents would require retail CBDCs to be available under all circumstances and for all types of payments where cash is currently used.
Coronavirus: SF businesses decline cash, fearing it could spread the virus (sfchronicle)
More and more businesses are turning away from cash, fearing that the virus could be sitting on banknotes and coins, as it changes hands from person to person in everyday transactions. “Looking at the situation with COVID-19 getting worse, we decided to switch,” said Eileen Rinaldo, owner of Ritual Coffee. “Cash is notoriously covered with germs, and it’s a matter of eliminating that point of contact.”
Softbank Looking to Cut Alibaba, Sprint Share Stakes (Variety)
Softbank, the giant Japanese investment group that has made huge bets on the sharing economy, is looking to cut its stake in Alibaba, according to reports. And possibly in Sprint too. On Monday, Masayoshi Son, founder and CEO of the heavily indebted Softbank, said that he would raise or monetize $41 billion of assets, in order to put the group on a sounder financial footing.
On Tuesday, Bloomberg reported that more than a third of the total would be raised by selling a $14 billion tranche of shares in Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba. That would represent about 3% of Alibaba’s total equity capital, which is traded in New York in ADR form and, in a secondary listing, as shares in Hong Kong. Softbank has long been an ally of Alibaba and has made vast paper profits on its 25% Alibaba holding. But the dire performance of Softbank’s other investments has depressed Softbank’s share price so much that at one point recently its holding in Alibaba was more valued more highly than the entire Tokyo-traded Softbank group.
SoftBank’s Son Still Betting on Himself After Go-Private Talks (Bloomberg)
SoftBank Group Corp.’s Masayoshi Son is continuing to bet on himself, even after he reportedly considered and then abandoned the idea of taking his conglomerate private. Son discussed the idea with investors including Elliott Management and the Abu Dhabi sovereign-wealth fund Mubadala in the past week, the Financial Times reported, before moving ahead with a plan to sell assets instead.
Arab nations sound alarm over oil tanker moored off Yemen (thenational)
Six Arab countries are urging the UN Security Council to exercise “maximum efforts” to persuade Yemen’s Houthi rebels to allow the United Nations to inspect a tanker moored in the Red Sea while loaded with over a million barrels to prevent “widespread environmental damage, a humanitarian disaster and the disruption of maritime commerce”. In a letter to the council circulated on Thursday, they warned that in the event of an explosion or leak “the possibility of a spill of 181 million litres of oil in the Red Sea would be four times worse than the oil disaster of the Exxon Valdez Exxon, which took place in Alaska in 1989”.
Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP)
An electromagnetic pulse (EMP), also sometimes called a transient electromagnetic disturbance, is a short burst of electromagnetic energy. Such a pulse's origin may be a natural occurrence or man-made and can occur as a radiated, electric, or magnetic field or a conducted electric current, depending on the source. EMP interference is generally disruptive or damaging to electronic equipment, and at higher energy levels a powerful EMP event such as a lightning strike can damage physical objects such as buildings and aircraft structures. The management of EMP effects is an important branch of electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) engineering. Weapons have been developed to deliver the damaging effects of high-energy EMP.
Elite Hackers Target WHO As Coronavirus Cyberattacks Spike (reuters)
According to Reuters, elite hackers tried to break into the World Health Organization earlier this month. While the effort was unsuccessful, the agency said there's been a more than two-fold increase in cyberattacks as they battle to contain the coronavirus. WHO Chief Information Security Officer Flavio Aggio said the identity of the hackers was unclear and the effort was unsuccessful. But he warned that hacking attempts against the agency and its partners have soared as they battle to contain the coronavirus, which has killed more than 15,000 worldwide.