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May 18, 2020

What is China’s cryptocurrency alternative sovereign digital currency?

Posted by in category: cryptocurrencies

Many economists, however, are sceptical whether the impact of the digital yuan would significantly spread beyond its borders without official reforms to relax the yuan’s exchange rate convertibility.


China’s sovereign digital currency could be launched later this year, with the likes of Alibaba’s Alipay and Tencent’s WeChat Pay already popular payment methods.

May 18, 2020

Israel’s Argaman Technologies develops a cotton that kills germs and viruses on contact

Posted by in category: biotech/medical

The constantly intensifying battle against viruses and antibiotic-resistant “superbugs” isn’t only about finding stronger drugs against infection. The focus is moving to preventing infections in the first place.

That’s why large companies such as Carrefour and a Far East luxury hotel chain are looking at unique germ-vanquishing textiles invented by Jerusalem’s Argaman Technologies and manufactured inside its custom-built factory.

Carrefour Group, a French-based superstore chain with 12,000 retail stores in 30 countries, is testing Argaman’s CottonX — billed as the world’s first bio-inhibitive 100 percent cotton – in a line of uniforms dubbed “The Uniform that Cares.”

May 17, 2020

“Hacking Bitcoin” Called Super Computers to Crypto Mining

Posted by in categories: bitcoin, cybercrime/malcode, supercomputing

Several supercomputers in Europe have been hacked in the past few days. Attackers are thought to use these supercomputers for mining Monero (XMR).

A massive attack was carried out on some supercomputers based in Germany, the UK and Switzerland. These events first surfaced with the announcement of the University of Edinburgh on Monday. University of Edinburgh; He explained that the supercomputer known as ARCHER has detected a “vulnerability in the input nodes” and the system has been disabled. Authorities had to reset their SSH password to prevent the attack.

The attacks were not limited to this. An organization called bwHPC in Germany also made a statement on Monday, and five different supercomputers in Germany; It announced that it was closed due to “vulnerabilities” similar to those in the UK.

May 17, 2020

Chinese Official Confirms That China Ordered Labs To Destroy Coronavirus Samples

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, government, health

A senior Chinese government official confirmed Friday that authorities ordered laboratories to destroy samples of coronavirus in early January.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had accused Chinese officials of ordering the samples’ destruction as part of the regime’s cover-up of the coronavirus outbreak in its early stages.

Pompeo said on April 22 that China “censored those who tried to warn the world, it ordered a halt to testing of new samples, and it destroyed existing samples.” He offered more specificity on May 6, stating that China’s National Health Commission [NHC] ordered virus samples destroyed on Jan. 3.

May 17, 2020

CloudWalk raises $250M and plans IPO as biometrics firms flourish in China during pandemic response

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, privacy, robotics/AI

CloudWalk has raised RMB 1.8 billion (US$254 million) in funding from a group of provincial and municipal funds in China to become the fourth most well-funded biometric facial recognition company in the country, according to a report in Chinese-language publication 36Kr covered by its English-language affiliate KrAsia.

CloudWalk intends to launch an IPO on Shanghai’s Star Market by the end of 2020, according to the report. The company has raised a total of RMB 2.8 billion ($400 million) so far.

CloudWalk provides facial recognition for numerous public agencies, including the Bank of China, Shanghai Pudong Airport, and China Mobile’s brick and mortar stores.

May 17, 2020

Will microchip implants be the next big thing in Europe?

Posted by in categories: computing, mobile phones

may 2020


Thousands of Swedes have been pioneering the use of futuristic microchips that are implanted under the skin of the hand.

The technology is used for everyday tasks like accessing your smartphone, opening the front door or setting an alarm.

Continue reading “Will microchip implants be the next big thing in Europe?” »

May 17, 2020

Exclusive: Tesla’s secret new ‘million mile’ battery claims to slash cost of electric cars

Posted by in categories: Elon Musk, sustainability, transportation

Electric car maker Tesla Inc plans to introduce a new low-cost, long-life battery in its Model 3 sedan in China later this year or early next that it expects will bring the cost of electric vehicles in line with gasoline models, and allow EV batteries to have second and third lives in the electric power grid.

For months, Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk has been teasing investors, and rivals, with promises to reveal significant advances in battery technology during a “Battery Day” in late May.

New, low-cost batteries designed to last for a million miles of use and enable electric Teslas to sell profitably for the same price or less than a gasoline vehicle are just part of Musk’s agenda, people familiar with the plans told Reuters.

May 17, 2020

DARPA Kicks Off Program to Advance Quantum Computing

Posted by in categories: computing, quantum physics

DARPA has selected seven university and industry teams for the first phase of the Optimization with Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum devices (ONISQ) program. Phase 1 of the program began in March and will last 18 months.

ONISQ aims to exploit quantum information processing before universal fault-tolerant quantum computers are realized, which isn’t expected for many years. The program is pursuing a hybrid concept that combines intermediate-sized quantum devices (hundreds to thousands of quantum bits, or qubits) with classical computing systems to solve a particularly challenging set of problems known as combinatorial optimization.

ONISQ seeks to demonstrate a quantitative advantage of quantum information processing by leapfrogging the performance of classical-only systems in solving optimization challenges. If successful, ONISQ could be applied to optimization problems of interest to defense and commercial industry, such as global logistics management, electronics manufacturing, and protein-folding.

May 17, 2020

Animation: The James Webb Space Telescope is folded to fit into its rocket

Posted by in category: space

How do you fold up the largest, most complex space science telescope ever built and fit it inside a rocket for launch? With testing and practice.

For the first time, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope was successfully folded and stowed into the same configuration it’ll have for liftoff: https://go.nasa.gov/2LFqe9v

May 17, 2020

Jetson Nano Brings AI Computing to Everyone

Posted by in category: robotics/AI

NVIDIA announced the Jetson Nano Developer Kit at the 2019 NVIDIA GPU Technology Conference (GTC), a $99 computer available now for embedded designers, researchers, and DIY makers, delivering the power of modern AI in a compact, easy-to-use platform with full software programmability. Jetson Nano delivers 472 GFLOPS of compute performance with a quad-core 64-bit ARM CPU and a 128-core integrated NVIDIA GPU. It also includes 4GB LPDDR4 memory in an efficient, low-power package with 5W/10W power modes and 5V DC input, as shown in figure 1.