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Category: government – Page 112

The quiet shift in strategy, which brings the Vision Fund’s approach closer to that of a traditional venture capital investor, may ease concerns over big, bold bets going sour, a factor that has left a major gap between SoftBank’s market capitalization and the sum of its investments.

TOKYO — SoftBank Group’s Vision Fund is turning to a new strategy as a global pandemic and government stimulus distort tech valuations: Invest smaller in hopes for bigger returns.

After raising nearly $100 billion and investing $85 billion in high-profile companies like Uber Technologies, WeWork and ByteDance over three years, the Vision Fund is now focusing on making smaller bets in early-stage startups.

Among the investments it has led are $100 million in Zhangmen, a Chinese online education startup; $150 million in Unacademy, an Indian peer; and $100 million in Biofourmis, a U.S. startup that tracks health data using wearable devices. In total, it has approved 19 investments worth $3.5 billion for “Vision Fund 2” — a vehicle currently funded entirely by SoftBank.

Continue reading “SoftBank eyes smaller bets, bigger returns in Vision Fund rethink” | >

Solar power stations in space that beam ‘emission-free electricity’ down to Earth could soon be a reality thanks to a UK government funded project.

Above the Earth there are no clouds and no day or night that could obstruct the sun’s ray – making a space solar station a constant zero carbon power source.

The UK government commissioned new research into the concept of space-based solar power (SBSP) stations as a way to meet the Earth’s growing energy needs.

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“I mean, I suspect we could have an army of 120,000, of which 30,000 might be robots, who knows?” Carter said, although he stressed he was not setting any particular target in terms of future numbers.

Investment in robot warfare was to be at the heart of the planned integrated five-year defence review, whose future was thrown into doubt after the chancellor, Rishi Sunak, postponed the cross-government spending review to which it had been linked last month.

Carter said negotiations with Downing Street and the Treasury about salvaging the multi-year defence funding settlement were “going on in a very constructive way” – as he lobbied in public for a long-term financial deal.

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Remember to like, comment, share and subscribe to support this vidcast.

Sources cited in this episode include the following:

The November 3rd, 2020 Globe and Mail post, “Broadcasting bill targets online streaming services” at https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-ottawa-says…lion-from/

The November 3rd, 2020 TVOntario post, “The pandemic is killing government transparency” at https://www.tvo.org/article/the-pandemic-is-killing-government-transparency.

Continue reading “Four Quick Stories on Press Freedoms and Venture Funding: Age of Ingenuity” | >

This revolution has already started, with wealthy citizens building their own space programs and entrepreneurs building spacecraft on relatively tiny budgets.

This time it must be about people, not governments. Rather than a centrally controlled quasi-military government race to space by two superpowers, we must enable the people themselves to go where they want to go, to do there what they want. If governments decide to return to the Moon — as seems to be the case — it must be to build villages, not bases, and to do it as rapidly as possible, as it needs to be an immediate challenge, not a distant dream. And if some want to go to Mars or mine asteroids, they need to be seen as part of a new frontier community. Thus, with both public and private players doing what they do best where they want to do it, we can make it happen far faster than many might believe.

After all, wherever we go between here and Mars, the challenge this time is not as daunting as going from the Earth to the Moon was in 1961, when we went from knowing almost nothing about space to walking on the Moon in eight years. Since then we have 50 years of experience operating in space. And while we foundered for many years in the waters just off shore in Earth orbit, we’ve learned a lot, developed a vast tool kit and honed our ability to get there, keep people alive and get them back. Opening the new worlds of space is not a technological challenge, so much as it is psychological. It is a matter of decision.

Continue reading “It is time to return to the Moon, open Free Space and go to Mars” | >

Another argument for government to bring AI into its quantum computing program is the fact that the United States is a world leader in the development of computer intelligence. Congress is close to passing the AI in Government Act, which would encourage all federal agencies to identify areas where artificial intelligences could be deployed. And government partners like Google are making some amazing strides in AI, even creating a computer intelligence that can easily pass a Turing test over the phone by seeming like a normal human, no matter who it’s talking with. It would probably be relatively easy for Google to merge some of its AI development with its quantum efforts.

The other aspect that makes merging quantum computing with AI so interesting is that the AI could probably help to reduce some of the so-called noise of the quantum results. I’ve always said that the way forward for quantum computing right now is by pairing a quantum machine with a traditional supercomputer. The quantum computer could return results like it always does, with the correct outcome muddled in with a lot of wrong answers, and then humans would program a traditional supercomputer to help eliminate the erroneous results. The problem with that approach is that it’s fairly labor intensive, and you still have the bottleneck of having to run results through a normal computing infrastructure. It would be a lot faster than giving the entire problem to the supercomputer because you are only fact-checking a limited number of results paired down by the quantum machine, but it would still have to work on each of them one at a time.

But imagine if we could simply train an AI to look at the data coming from the quantum machine, figure out what makes sense and what is probably wrong without human intervention. If that AI were driven by a quantum computer too, the results could be returned without any hardware-based delays. And if we also employed machine learning, then the AI could get better over time. The more problems being fed to it, the more accurate it would get.

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In the last few years, countless cyber-attacks were reported globally that were linked to the People’s Republic of China. The Chinese cyber-hackers, who target the foreign networks and websites are sponsored by the Chinese government. They are highly trained and have acquired abilities not only to exploit common vulnerabilities but also to discover and even create new vulnerabilities.

The US National Security Agency’s in-depth report of 23rd October points out that one of the greatest threats to the US National Security Systems, Defence Industrial Base and Department of Defence information networks is the “Chinese state sponsored malicious cyber activity”. The report underlines that the Chinese hackers exploit “computer networks of interest that hold sensitive intellectual property, economic, political, and military information.”

In July 2020, US had ordered the closure of the Chinese consulate in Huston, when it discovered that the Chinese officials there were involved in the intellectual property theft and indicted two Chinese nationals for allegedly hacking hundreds of companies and crucially had attempted to steal coronavirus vaccine research. The United States Department of Justice has charged five Chinese national for their involvement in hacking targets not only in the US governments but also the networks of the Indian and Vietnam government. They also carried out attacks on the UK government network unsuccessfully.

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New research[1] presented at the 29th EADV Congress, EADV Virtual, shows that socks coated in zinc oxide nanoparticles (ZnO-NPs) can prevent bromodosis (foot odor) and pitted keratolysis (bacterial infection causing smelly feet), reducing the negative impact this embarrassing condition has on quality of life.[2]

Developed by the Royal Thai Airforce, the ZnO-NP-coated socks were trialed in a real-life setting by researchers at Siriraj Hospital, Mahidol University in Thailand. They found that the antibacterial efficacy of ZnO-NPs, along with its safety and compatibility with human skin, makes it the perfect compound to incorporate into textiles, including socks, to prevent unpleasant foot odor.

The double-blinded, randomized, controlled trial was conducted with 148 cadets at the Thai Naval Rating School. Bromodosis and pitted keratolysis are a common complaint in military personnel, with foot lesions, including pitted keratosis, occurring in over a third of naval cadets in Thailand (38.5%).[2]

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