Douglas Adams – was an English author, humourist, and screenwriter, best known for The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
The Hitchhikers guide to the Galaxy
The Hitchhikers guide to the Galaxy is a comedy science fiction franchise created by Douglas Adams. It started as a radio comedy on BBC Radio 4 in 1978, and then it was adapted to other formats, such as novels, stage shows, comic books, a TV series, a text adventure game, and a feature film.
The franchise follows the adventures of Arthur Dent, a human who escapes the destruction of Earth with his alien friend Ford Prefect, who is a writer for the electronic travel guide ‘The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’.
‘We are stuck with technology when what we really want is just stuff that works’.
Along the way, they meet other characters such as Zaphod Beeblebrox, the eccentric President of the Galaxy, Trillian, another human who was taken from Earth before its demolition, and Marvin, a depressed robot. The franchise is known for its humour, satire, absurdity, and references to various topics such as philosophy, physics, mathematics, and literature.
Steve Jobs was one of the most influential and visionary entrepreneurs of the 21st century. He was the co-founder, chairman, and CEO of Apple Inc., the company that revolutionized personal computing, music, mobile phones, tablets, and digital animation. He was also the founder and CEO of NeXT, a computer and software company that was acquired by Apple in 1997, and the majority shareholder of Pixar, a computer animation studio that was acquired by Disney in 2006.
Steve Jobs was born on February 24, 1955 in San Francisco, California. He was adopted by Paul and Clara Jobs, who raised him in Mountain View, California. Jobs attended Reed College in Portland, Oregon, but dropped out after one semester. He then travelled to India in 1974 to seek spiritual enlightenment and became a follower of Zen Buddhism.
Apple
In 1976, he co-founded Apple Computer with his friend Steve Wozniak in his parents’ garage. They created the Apple I and Apple II, which were among the first successful personal computers. In 1984, they launched the Macintosh, which introduced the graphical user interface and the mouse to the mass market. In 1985, Jobs left Apple after a power struggle with the board of directors.
NeXt
In 1986, he founded NeXT, which developed innovative computers and software for the education and business markets. NeXT also created the NeXTSTEP operating system, which was later used as the basis for Mac OS X and iOS. In 1997, Apple bought NeXT for $429 million and brought Jobs back as an interim CEO.
Watercolour image and likeness of Apple Lisa computer
iMac
In 1998, Jobs led the turnaround of Apple with the launch of the iMac, a sleek and colorful all-in-one computer. He then introduced a series of groundbreaking products that changed the world of technology and entertainment, such as the iPod (2001), iTunes (2003), iPhone (2007), iPad (2010), and iCloud (2011). He also oversaw the development of software platforms such as Mac OS X, iOS, iTunes Store, App Store, and Safari.
Pixar
In 1986, he also acquired Pixar from George Lucas for $10 million. Pixar became one of the most successful animation studios in history, producing hit films such as Toy Story (1995), Finding Nemo (2003), The Incredibles (2004), Ratatouille (2007), WALL-E (2008), Up (2009), and Inside Out (2015). In 2006, Disney bought Pixar for $7.4 billion and made Jobs its largest shareholder.
Stay hungry, stay foolish
Steve Jobs was known for his charisma, creativity, innovation, and perfectionism. He had a vision to make products that were not only functional but also beautiful and intuitive.
His passion to create experiences that enriched people’s lives and inspired them to think differently. He had a motto to ‘stay hungry, stay foolish’.
Steve Jobs died on October 5, 2011 at the age of 56 after a long battle with pancreatic cancer. He left behind a legacy that will continue to shape the world for generations to come.
Amazon is one of the leading companies in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) and has been developing its own custom chips to power its AI applications and services.
Amazon’s AI chips are designed to perform tasks such as natural language processing, computer vision, speech recognition, and machine learning inference and training.
AI chips created by Amazon
AZ2: This is a processor built into the Echo Show 15 smart display and powers artificial intelligence tasks like understanding your voice commands and figuring out who is issuing those commands. The AZ2 chip also enables features such as visual ID, which can recognize faces and display personalized information on the screen.
Inferentia: This is a high-performance chip that Amazon launched to deliver low-cost and high-throughput inference for deep learning applications. Inferentia powers Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) Inf1 instances, which are optimized for running inference workloads on AWS. Inferentia also powers some of Amazon’s own services, such as Alexa, Rekognition, and SageMaker Neo.
Trainium: This is a chip that Amazon designed to provide high-performance and low-cost training for machine learning models. Trainium will power Amazon EC2 Inf2 instances, which are designed to train increasingly complex models, such as large language models and vision transformers. Trainium will also support scale-out distributed training with ultra-high-speed connectivity between accelerators.
Despite advancements is Amazon chasing to keep up?
Amazon is racing to catch up with Microsoft and Google in the field of generative AI, which is a branch of AI that can create new content or data from existing data. Generative AI can be used for applications such as natural language generation, image and video synthesis, text summarization, and personalization.
AI models from Amazon
Titan: This is a family of large language models (LLMs). Titan models can generate natural language texts for various domains and tasks, such as conversational agents, document summarization, product reviews, and more. Titan models are trained on a large and diverse corpus of text data from various sources, such as books, news articles, social media posts, and product descriptions.
Powerful chips for artificial intelligence (AI)
Bedrock: This is a service that Amazon created to help developers enhance their software using generative AI. Bedrock provides access to pre-trained Titan models and tools to customize them for specific use cases. Bedrock also allows developers to deploy their generative AI applications on AWS using Inferentia or Trainium chips.
Generative AI
Amazon’s CEO, Andy Jassy in the past said he thought of generative AI as having three macro layers: the compute, the models, and the applications. He said that Amazon is investing heavily in all three layers and that its custom chips are a key part of its strategy to provide high-performance and low-cost compute for generative AI. He also said that Amazon is not used to chasing markets but creating them, and that he believes Amazon has the best platform for generative AI in the world.
Inferentia and Trainium, offer AWS customers an alternative to training their large language models on Nvidia GPUs, which have been getting difficult and expensive to procure.
‘The entire world would like more chips for doing generative AI, whether that’s GPUs or whether that’s Amazon’s own chips that we’re designing’, Amazon Web Services CEO Adam Selipsky is reported to have said. ‘I think that we’re in a better position than anybody else on Earth to supply the capacity that our customers collectively are going to want’.
Fast actors
Yet others have acted faster, and invested more, to capture business from the generative AI boom. When OpenAI launched ChatGPT in November 2022, Microsoft gained widespread attention for hosting the chatbot, and investing a reportedly whopping $13 billion in OpenAI. It was quick to add the generative AI models to its own products, incorporating them into Bing in February 2023.
That same month, Google launched its own large language model, Bard, followed by a $300 million investment in OpenAI rival Anthropic.
AI Chat Bot robot
It wasn’t until April 2023 that Amazon announced its own family of large language models, called Titan, along with a service called Bedrock to help developers enhance software using generative AI.
Amazon is not used to chasing markets. Amazon is used to creating markets. And for the first time for some time, they find themselves on the back foot and working to play catch up.
And Meta?
Meta also recently released its own LLM, Llama 2. The open-source ChatGPT rival is now available for people to test on Microsoft’s Azure public cloud.
The Voyager 2 spacecraft is a remarkable feat of human exploration and discovery. It was launched in 1977, along with its twin Voyager 1, to explore the outer planets of our solar system. It is the only spacecraft to have visited Uranus and Neptune, and it is now the second most distant human-made object in space, after Voyager 1.
Deep space
However, communicating with such a faraway spacecraft is not easy. It requires a powerful radio antenna that can send and receive signals across billions of miles. NASA uses its Deep Space Network (DSN), a network of giant radio dishes around the world, to keep in touch with Voyager 2 and other deep space missions.
Unfortunately, sometimes things can go wrong. On July 21, 2023, NASA accidentally sent a wrong command to Voyager 2 that caused it to tilt its antenna away from Earth. This meant that the spacecraft could not receive any more commands or send back any data. NASA lost contact with Voyager 2 for nearly two weeks.
Keep talking
But NASA did not give up. The engineers tried to send a corrective command to Voyager 2 using the DSN, hoping that the spacecraft would somehow pick it up and respond.
Imaginary watercolour image of Deep Space
On August 1, 2023, NASA finally received a signal from Voyager 2. It was a faint ‘heartbeat‘ that confirmed that the spacecraft was still alive and broadcasting. NASA was overjoyed and relieved to hear from its old friend.
On August 4, 2023, NASA announced that it had successfully restored full contact with Voyager 2. The engineers had managed to send an ‘interstellar shout’ to the spacecraft, a powerful command that instructed it to point its antenna back to Earth. It took 37 hours for the command to reach Voyager 2 and another 37 hours for the confirmation to come back. It worked! Voyager 2 was back online and ready to resume its mission.
Amazing
Voyager 2 is an amazing example of human ingenuity and perseverance. It has been exploring space for nearly half a century, and it is still going strong. It has taught us so much about our solar system and beyond, and it continues to send us valuable data from the interstellar space. We are lucky to have such a faithful companion in our cosmic journey
Voyager 1 is an amazing spacecraft that has been exploring the outer solar system and beyond for over 45 years. It is currently the most distant human-made object from Earth, and it is still sending us valuable data from interstellar space.
According to the latest information from NASA, as of April 7, 2023, Voyager 1 is about 14,803,648,909 miles(23,837,577,852 kilometers) away from Earth. That is equivalent to 160.154936 astronomical units (AU), which is the average distance between the Earth and the Sun.
To put that in perspective, it would take light about 22 hours and 4 minutes to travel from Voyager 1 to Earth. That means that we are receiving signals from Voyager 1 that were sent almost a day ago! It takes approximately 8 minutes for light to travel from the Sun to planet Earth
Voyager 1 is also moving away from Earth at a speed of about 38,026.77 miles per hour (or 61,198.15 kilometers per hour) relative to the Sun. That means that it is getting farther and farther away from us every second. At this rate, it will take Voyager 1 about 40,000 years to reach the nearest star system to our Sun, which is Alpha Centauri.
A vision of futuristc space travel
Voyager 1 is a testament to human curiosity and ingenuity. It has taught us so much about our solar system and beyond, and it continues to inspire us to explore the unknown.
Nice one Voyager 1
Explore
NASA’s StarChild: This is a website that offers information and activities for children about stars and other astronomical topics.
Stellarium: This is a free software that simulates the sky in 3D and allows you to explore the stars and constellations from any location and time.
StarDate: This is a website that provides daily updates on the sky events, such as star sightings, eclipses, meteor showers, and planetary alignments.
The U.S. cyber hacker challenge is a new initiative launched by the Biden administration in August 2023 to use artificial intelligence (AI) to protect critical U.S. infrastructure from cybersecurity risks.
The challenge will offer $20 million in prize money and includes collaboration from leading AI companies Anthropic, Google, Microsoft and OpenAI, who will make their technology available for the competition. The challenge was announced at the Black Hat USA hacking conference in Las Vegas.
The competition will consist of three stages
Qualifying event in the spring of 2024
Semifinal at DEF CON 2024
Final at DEF CON 2025
The competitors will be asked to use AI to secure vital software and open source their systems so that their solutions can be used widely (does that create a risk in itsellf)? The top three teams will be eligible for additional prizes, including a top prize of $4 million for the team that best secures vital software.
The challenge aims to explore what’s possible when experts in cybersecurity and AI have access to a suite of cross-company resources. The U.S. government hopes that the promise of AI can help further secure critical U.S. systems and protect Americans from future cyber attacks!
Limitations and risks using AI for security
However, there are flaws and drawbacks of using AI for cybersecurity, both for the attackers and the defenders.
Lack of transparency and explainability: AI systems are often complex and opaque, making it difficult to understand how they make decisions or what factors influence their outputs. This can lead to trust issues, ethical dilemmas, and legal liabilities.
Overreliance on AI: AI systems are not infallible and may make mistakes or produce false positives or negatives. Relying too much on AI, without human oversight or verification can result in missed threats, erroneous actions, or unintended consequences.
Bias and discrimination: AI systems may inherit or amplify human biases or prejudices that are present in the data, algorithms, or design of the systems. This can result in unfair or discriminatory outcomes, such as excluding certain groups of people from access to services or opportunities, or targeting them for malicious attacks.
Vulnerability to attacks: AI systems may be susceptible to adversarial attacks, such as data poisoning, model stealing, evasion, or exploitation. These attacks can compromise the integrity, availability, or confidentiality of the systems, or manipulate them to produce malicious outputs.
High cost: Developing and maintaining AI systems for cybersecurity requires a lot of resources, such as computing power, memory, data, and skilled personnel. These resources may not be easily accessible or affordable for many organizations or individual.
‘Well, what do you think of AI and cybersecurity sharing resources’? ‘Ha! playing right into our hands’.
These are some of the flaws of using AI for cybersecurity, but they are not insurmountable. With proper research, regulation, education, and collaboration, AI can be a powerful ally in enhancing cybersecurity and protecting against cyber threats – that is until it takes over, but that will never happen… will it?
The U.S. will ban American investment in some areas of China’s high-tech sector, including artificial intelligence, adding to strained relations between the two superpowers.
U.S. firms will also be invited to disclose what investments they make in China in high-tech sectors.The much-anticipated move gives the U.S. government new power to screen foreign dealings by private companies. The U.S. said the measure would be narrowly targeted. However, it is poised to further chill economic relations between the world’s two largest economies. China has reportedly said it was ‘very disappointed‘. The U.S. ‘has continuously escalated suppression and restrictions on China‘. He added that White House claims that the US was not seeking to hurt China’s economy or separate the two countries did not match its actions. ‘We urge the US side to honour its words‘.
Biden order
The order by U.S. President Biden formally kicks off the push to introduce rules to restrict, even prevent American businesses from investing in firms from ‘countries of concern‘ that are active in advanced semiconductors, quantum computing and certain areas of artificial intelligence.
The government will also require U.S. firms to notify the Treasury Department of investments in firms working on a wider range of artificial intelligence and semiconductor technology.
U.S. restriction on AI related tech knowledge to China
The rules are not expected to apply to ‘portfolio’ investments, in which firms invest passively in companies via the stock market, but are focused on active investments made by private equity and venture capital businesses. They will now enter a public ‘reflection’ period, which is expected to further clarify what kinds of investments are off-limits. The rules are not expected to go into effect for sometime yet. This new ‘order’ is quite a big deal.
In a briefing with reporters, senior administration officials said the measure was a ‘national security action, not an economic one‘. They said the U.S. remained committed to open investment.
Investment control
Controls on outbound investment are rare among advanced economies, currently present only in Japan and Korea, according to a 2022 report.
In the U.S., prior restrictions on China trade have relied on limiting sales of sensitive technology by U.S. firms and screening Chinese investments in American companies. The Trump administration had also barred investments in firms tied to China’s military.
The latest measure has widespread support in Washington, where it is seen as fixing a regulatory gap concerning financial flows that risks allowing American money and know-how to to flow into China.
International support
The U.S. has been trying to build international support for the investment curbs with some signs of success.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak in May 2023 said the UK government would consider curbs on outbound investment; the European Commission put forward a proposal focused on investments in sensitive technologies earlier this summer. It is not clear how significantly the order would affect flows of investment.
China was the number two destination for foreign investment in 2022, behind the U.S., but many reports suggest money flowing into the country from the U.S. and elsewhere has dropped sharply as geopolitical relations sour. In the UK, a recent survey by the Institute of Directors found that one in five UK importers had already switched investments away from the country due to geopolitical tensions.
Gallium and Germanium considered critical elements required in the production of microchips
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, who visited China in July 2023 in an attempt to ease tensions, said last month she did not think the coming curbs would have a fundamental impact on the investment climate in the country.
Will these measures likely damage the U.S. in the future by escalating issues and restricting the U.S. from other shared advancements in technology – only time will tell.
Tech’ rivalry
U.S. and China are two of the world’s leading powers in artificial intelligence (AI) and semiconductors, which are essential components for many AI applications such as self-driving cars, smart phones, and cloud computing. However, the two countries have also been engaged in a fierce competition and rivalry over these technologies, as they seek to gain an edge in innovation, security, and economic growth. Some of the issues that have caused tensions between U.S. and China include trade disputes, intellectual property theft, cyberattacks, human rights violations, and military expansion.
AI chips
AI semiconductors are designed to perform complex calculations and tasks that require high levels of intelligence, such as natural language processing, computer vision, and machine learning.
These chips can be classified into two types: general-purpose chips that can run various AI algorithms, and specialized chips that are optimized for specific AI functions or domains.
The UK’s elections watchdog has revealed it has been the victim of a complex cyber-attack potentially affecting millions of voters.
The Electoral Commission said unspecified ‘hostile actors‘ had managed to gain access to copies of the electoral registers, from August 2021. Note the word ‘unspecified’ is used – do they even know?
Hackers also broke into its emails and “control systems” but the attack was not discovered until October last year. The watchdog has warned people to watch out for unauthorised use of their data.
The commission said hackers accessed copies of the registers it was holding for research purposes, and for conducting checks on political donors. The commission knew which of its systems were accessible to the hackers, but could not ‘conclusively‘ identify which files may have been accessed.
‘Very sophisticated’ attack
The personal data held on the registers – name and address – did not itself present a ‘high risk‘ to individuals, it added, although it is possible it could be combined with other public information to ‘identify and profile individuals’.
It has not said when the hackers’ access to its systems was stopped, but said they were secured as soon as possible after the attack was identified in October 2022. Why was it left so long to be made public and how long did it take to make systems secure again?
Explaining why it had not made the attack public before now, the commission said it first needed to stop the hackers’ access, examine the extent of the incident and put additional security measures in place.Defending the delay, commission chair John Pullinger said: “If you go public on a vulnerability before you have sealed it off, then you are risking more vulnerabilities.” He is reported to have said the ‘very sophisticated attack involved using software to try and get in and evade our systems’. Well, that clearly worked then.
The world of digital data
He reportedly said that the hackers were not able to alter or delete any information on the electoral registers themselves, which are maintained by registration officers around the country. Information about donations and loans to political parties and registered campaigners is held in a system that is not affected by this incident, the notice added. He understood public concern, and would like to apologise to those affected.
Steps
The commission added that it had taken steps to secure its systems against future attacks, including by updating its login requirements, alert system and firewall policies. The Information Commissioner’s Office, which is responsible for data protection in the UK, said it was urgently investigating.
Labour’s deputy leader Angela Rayner reportedly said: ‘This serious incident must be fully and thoroughly investigated so lessons can be learned‘. Why wouldn’t it be investigated? I dislike it immensely when clueless politicians roll out this ‘standard remark’ as an attempt to demonstrate they ‘know what’s going on’.
Then what? It happens again and we have to… learn more lessons…?
This quote is attributed to Nikola Tesla, a Serbian-American inventor, engineer and physicist who is best known for his contributions to the development of alternating current electricity, wireless communication and radio.
I don’t care that they stole my idea . . I care that they don’t have any of their own
China has been leading the global electric vehicle (EV) market for years, thanks to its large domestic demand, generous government subsidies, and well-established battery and electronics industry. However, the west is not giving up on the race to electrify the transport sector and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Europe reportedly surpassed China in terms of new EV registrations in 2020, driven by stricter emission regulations, higher consumer awareness, and more diverse and affordable models. The United States also saw a growth in EV sales, despite the Covid-19 pandemic and lower fuel prices. How are western countries and companies now competing with China in the EV market?
Global automakers such are using advanced tech such as driver-assist software to compete in the world’s largest EV market – China. ‘China’s domestic brands are leading the market in the development and implementation of advanced assisted driving systems, capitalizing on their early-entry advantages in the electric and intelligent vehicle sector‘, a recent report suggests.
BofA reportedly said it expects China to still be the world’s largest EV market in 2025, standing at 40%-45% market share.
Strategy
One of the strategies is to invest more in research and development, innovation, and collaboration. Western automakers are trying to improve the performance, efficiency, and cost of their EVs by developing new technologies and designs, such as advanced batteries, smart and autonomous features, and sustainable materials. They are also partnering with other players in the EV ecosystem, such as battery suppliers, charging network operators, software developers, and regulators, to create synergies and overcome challenges.
EV
Another strategy is to adapt to local market conditions and consumer preferences. Western automakers are aware that China is not a homogeneous market, but rather a complex and dynamic one with different regional characteristics, customer segments, and competitive landscapes. They are tailoring their products and services to meet the specific needs and expectations of Chinese consumers, such as offering more connectivity options, longer driving ranges, and lower prices. They are also leveraging their global brand reputation, quality standards, and customer loyalty to differentiate themselves from local competitors.
Niche markets
A third strategy is to diversify their portfolio and target niche markets. Western automakers are not only focusing on passenger cars, but also exploring other types of EVs, such as commercial vehicles, motorcycles, scooters, and buses. They are also targeting niche markets that have high growth potential or specific demands, such as luxury cars, sports cars, or green cars. By doing so, they can tap into new customer segments and create more opportunities.
The EV market is expected to grow rapidly in the coming years, as more countries and regions adopt policies and measures to support the transition to low-carbon mobility. China will remain a dominant player in the global EV scene, but the west will not lag behind.
How do EV’s compare to traditional vehicles?
Electric vehicles (EVs) are becoming more popular and competitive with traditional cars in terms of performance and cost. Here are some of the main differences and similarities between EVs and traditional cars:
Performance: EVs have a faster acceleration and are more efficient than traditional cars. They can reach high speeds in a short time, thanks to their instant torque rovided by the electric motor. They also have a smoother and quieter ride, as they do not have gears or transmissions. However, traditional cars perform better at high speeds and have a longer driving range than EVs. They can also handle different terrains and weather conditions better than EVs, as they have more power and stability.
Cost: EVs have a higher retail price than traditional cars, on average. But EVs may be a better financial deal for consumers over the long term. That’s because maintenance, repair and fuel costs tend to be lower than those for fossil fuel cars. EVs have fewer moving parts and fluids, which means they require less servicing and repairs. They also run on electricity, which is cheaper and cleaner than fossil derived fuels. However, traditional cars have lower upfront costs and more financing options than EVs. They also have a higher resale value and more availability than EVs, as they are more common and therefore familiar to buyers.
Environmental impact: EVs are more environmentally friendly than traditional cars, as they do not emit greenhouse gases or pollutants that contribute to air quality problems. They can also use renewable energy sources, such as solar or wind power, to charge their batteries and use fossil derived energy too.
However, EVs are not completely carbon-neutral, as they still depend on the electricity grid, which still uses fossil fuels to generate power. They also produce emissions during their manufacture and disposal processes.
Traditional cars, on the other hand, are a major source of carbon emissions and environmental damage, as they burn fossil fuels and release harmful substances into the atmosphere such as carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide. They also consume natural resources and create waste during their production and operation.
Fossil fuels generate power for the electric vehicle
As the EV population grows, so too will the energy requirement – and it will most likely be met moreso by fossil fuels in the short term as well as by renewables.
According to various sources, electric cars are generally cheaper to run than petrol cars in terms of fuel, road tax, maintenance, and insurance. However, the initial purchase price of electric cars is usually higher than petrol cars, so the overall cost of ownership may depend on how long you plan to keep the car and how much you drive it.
Running cost examples of electric cars vs petrol cars – (Spring 2023 data)
According to British Gas – fully charging a typical 60kW electric car at home costs £15.10 and gives you a 200-mile range, whereas filling up a petrol car with a similar range costs over £104. Electric cars also pay zero road tax, while petrol cars pay between £30 to £2,365 per year depending on their CO2 emissions. Electric cars also tend to have lower maintenance and insurance costs than petrol cars.
According to Regit – charging an electric car like the Vauxhall Corsa-E costs roughly £9.50 in electricity for a 200-mile range, while fuelling a petrol car with a similar range costs £41.63 in petrol. Electric cars also save money on road tax, maintenance, and congestion charges compared to petrol cars.
According to Which? – the electric Mini Cooper SE costs £8,000 more to buy than the petrol Mini One, but it costs £2,591 less to run over three years, mainly due to fuel savings. The electric car also pays no road tax or congestion charges, while the petrol car pays £155 and £11.50 per day respectively.
According to Auto Express – the annual running costs of an electric car are 21% less than those of a petrol car, excluding the purchase price. The average annual running cost for an electric car is £1,742, compared to £2,205 for a petrol car.
According to RAC – the annual running costs of an electric car like the Nissan Leaf are £1,233 less than those of a petrol car like the Ford Focus, excluding the purchase price. The electric car costs £1,062 per year to run, while the petrol car costs £2,295
Conclusion
There are many factors that affect the running costs of electric cars vs petrol cars, and different sources may have different assumptions and methods of calculation. However, the general trend is that electric cars are cheaper to run than petrol cars in most cases.
Hydrogen and hybrids are fast becoming future contenders. Watch this space…
No, nor me – never heard of them, but they are extremely important elements needed in microchip manufacturing and China is the world’s largest producer.
Germanium and gallium are two elements that are used in the production of semiconductor chips, which are essential for various electronic devices and technologies. They have different properties and applications, and they are both considered critical materials.
Germanium
Germanium is a metalloid, which means it has properties of both metals and non-metals. It is a shiny, hard, gray-white element that is brittle and can be cut easily with a knife. It has a high melting point of 938°C and a low boiling point of 2830°C. It is mainly obtained as a by-product of zinc production, but it can also be extracted from coal.
Germanium is used in, solar cells, fibre optic cables, infrared lenses light-emitting diodes (LEDs), and transistors. It is also used in some alloys to improve their strength and hardness. Germanium is essential for the defence and renewable energy sectors, as well as for space technologies. It can resist cosmic radiation better than silicon, and it can enhance the performance and efficiency of some semiconductors.
Gallium
Gallium is a metal that has a very low melting point of 29.8°C, which means it can melt in your hand. It is a soft, silvery-white element that can be easily cut with a knife. It has a high boiling point of 2403°C. It is mainly obtained as a by-product of processing bauxite and zinc ores.
Gallium and Germanium considered critical elements required in the production of microchips
Gallium is used in the electronics industry to produce heat-resistant semiconductor wafers that can operate at higher frequencies than silicon-based ones. It is also used in LEDs, solar panels, microwave devices, sensors, and lasers. Gallium is important for the development of new technologies such as electric vehicles, high-end radio communications, and Blu-Ray players. It can also improve the power consumption and reliability of some semiconductors.
China the largest producer
China is the largest producer and exporter of both germanium and gallium, accounting for about 60% and 80% of the global supply. However, China has recently announced new export restrictions on these two elements, requiring special licences for exporters. This move is seen as a response to the western sanctions on China’s access to advanced microchip technology.
The export curbs could affect the global supply chain of semiconductor chips and have implications for various industries and markets
Banks may use XRP Ripple as a payment system to replace SWIFT
XRP Ripple is a payment settlement system and currency exchange network that can process transactions globally. It is designed to facilitate cross-border payments by using XRP, a cryptocurrency, as a bridge currency between different fiat currencies.
XRP advantage is cost and speed
XRP Ripple claims to offer several advantages over SWIFT, the system most financial institutions use for international money transfers. XRP transactions can be completed in as little as 3 to 5 seconds and transaction fees are just 0.0001 XRP. SWIFT, on the other hand, can take up to 5 business days and charge higher fees.
Not so Swift
However, despite XRP Ripple’s efforts to disrupt the industry, SWIFT has not been idle. The interbank payments network has recently launched SWIFT Go, a new service that enables businesses and consumers to send low-value cross-border payments anywhere in the world in seconds with full transparency and security.
SWIFT has also reportedly completed a successful cross-border payment from Australia to Singapore in only 13 seconds in a trial.
Adoption?
Therefore, it is not clear whether banks will adopt XRP Ripple as a payment system to replace SWIFT, or whether they will stick with the incumbent network that has been improving its speed and efficiency. The outcome may depend on factors such as regulation, customer demand, and market competition.
Fast International money transfers via the XRP Ripple system could be adopted by banks
It may also depend on costs and speed guarantees – banks will love to save money on money transfers.
Now that an international money transfer can be completed in seconds and not days – what will the client be charged?
Summary
Ripple is confident U.S. banks will start wanting to use XRP for cross-border transactions after a judge gave the firm a partial victory in its fight against the SEC.
A judge ruled that XRP cryptocurrency Ripple is closely associated with, but was not in itself necessarily a security, in a development with major implications for the digital asset industry.
Fast International money transfers via XRP Ripple
It wasn’t a total victory for Ripple, however – the judge also ruled that sales of XRP by Ripple to institutional buyers do count as unregistered sales of securities.
Nintendo Co. has reported a new high for its first-quarter profit, thanks to the blockbuster launch of its latest Legend of Zelda game.
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, released in May 2023, sold more than 18.5 million copies in the first quarter and received universal acclaim. The game features an open-world adventure with stunning graphics and gameplay, and is considered one of the best titles on the Switch platform. Interestingly, the game is played offline.
Outstanding game
The outstanding performance of Zelda has helped Nintendo prop up flagging sales of its Switch console, which is now in its seventh year on the market and faces competition from rival console makers Sony Group Corp. and Microsoft Corp. Nintendo has not announced any major games for the rest of the fiscal year, nor has it revealed any plans for a successor to its flagship console.
Success of the Nintendo Zelda Story
Nintendo maintained its full-year forecast for the console of 15 million units, which would be an impressive feat at this stage of the console’s lifecycle. The company also has a strong pipeline of titles for the year-end shopping season, including Detective Pikachu Returns and Super Mario Bros. Wonder.
Super Mario Bros Movie Boost
Nintendo saw a boost from the ‘The Super Mario Bros. Movie‘, based on the company’s best-known characters, which has generated more than $1 billion at the box office since its April release. The film was produced by Universal Studios.
The Buffet Indicator is a valuation multiple used to assess how expensive or cheap the aggregate stock market is at a given point in time. It was proposed by investor Warren Buffett in 2001, who called it ‘probably the best single measure of where valuations stand at any given moment‘ . It compares the total value of all publicly traded securities in the U.S. to the U.S. GDP .
The current value of the Buffet Indicator is 181%, (July 2023) – which suggests that the U.S. stock market is reportedly worth $48.37 trillion, while the U.S. GDP is $26.74 trillion.
This ratio is 50.50% above the historical trend line, suggesting that the stock market is overvalued relative to GDP. Buffett warned that if the ratio approaches 200%, ‘you are playing with fire‘.
Buffett Indicator: $48.85T ÷ $26.91T = 182%
Does it Matter?
The Buffett Indicator expresses the value of the U.S. stock market in terms of the size of the U.S. economy. If the stock market value is growing much faster than the actual economy, then it may be in a bubble.
Buffet Indicator Movement Above and Below Trend Line
In July 2023, Elon Musk rebranded Twitter to X – another step in his master plan to emulate Chinese super app WeChat.
Mr Musk has long said that he wants to transform his social media firm, which he bought last year for $44 billion, into a much larger platform.
He has previously praised WeChat – a so-called ‘everything app‘ that combines chat, dating, payments and social media – and has said creating something “even close to that with Twitter… would be an immense success”.
In a post on X this week, Mr Musk said that over the coming months, ‘we will add comprehensive communications and the ability to conduct your entire financial world’.
He will hope that growing X will lead to a revenue recovery – the company has lost almost half its advertising revenue since Mr Musk bought it, and it is struggling under a heavy debt load.
Established businesses
He has successfully disrupted several industries with his ventures such as Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink, and The Boring Company. He may be able to bring some fresh ideas and solutions to the social media space with X. It will be interesting to see if he adopts an existing digital payment system or develops his own. XRP, for instance – could be a good fit.
What is WeChat?
WeChat is a ‘super-app’ that combines messaging, social media, payments, e-commerce, entertainment, news, and more. It is owned by Tencent, one of China’s largest tech companies, and has over 1.2 billion monthly active users, mostly in mainland China.
Everything App
WeChat users can do almost anything within the app, from ordering food to booking tickets to paying bills, without leaving the app. WeChat also hosts millions of mini-apps that are created by third-party developers and businesses to offer various services and functions to users. It is like WhatsApp, Facebook, Apple Pay, Uber, Amazon, Tinder and a whole lot more rolled into one. Launched by technology giant Tencent in 2011. WeChat is now used by almost all of China’s 1.4 billion pupulation (1.2 billion users seems to be the latest concensus).
Will it work in the West?
WeChat’s huge success in China is arguably down to two major factors. For one, most people in China access WeChat on smartphones, rather than desktop computers, due to the relatively late development of the internet in the country. And two, China’s lack of competition regulation – which contrasts with most Western countries – allows an app like WeChat to potentially effectively block rival platforms.
Could Mr Musk make a similar app work outside China? We may be finding out soon – and experts believe it may all depend on digital payments and his ‘system’ to implement this everyday task.
A major difference between China and the West is the widespread adoption of digital payment technology.
While shops in China are legally obliged to accept cash, in practice, digital payments are far more common.
This difference, may be an obstacle to Mr Musk’s ambitions. It will take the Western world longer to implement a truly cashless or credit card free society.
Why does Musk want to emulate WeChat?
Elon Musk has been an admirer of WeChat for a long time. He once said that WeChat is ‘so usable and helpful to daily life‘ in China, and that he wanted to achieve something similar with Twitter, no X. He also said that buying Twitter was an ‘accelerant’ to creating X, the everything app.
X The company likely to bring you the ‘Super’ App or the ‘Everything’ App
Mr Musk has hinted that he plans to add more features and functionalities to Twitter, such as video, communications, and financial services. He also said that the Twitter name did not make sense in the new context, so he decided to rename it as X, a brand that he has used before for his online banking business that later became PayPal.
Dystopia or Utopia – A dark sideor a force for good?
Is the Super App a natural progression and development for good or yet another infringement on our freedom, liberty and privacy. Is it even necessary?
In China, we have witnessed a level of state control interference over the internet that has reportedly made it extremely dangerous for people to speak out against the government on WeChat.
It is not unusual for dissenting voices to have their accounts suspended for days or weeks for something they have said in Chats or on Moments.
Even people sharing seemingly uncontroversial information have found themselves on the wrong side of government censors and had their accounts and chat groups shut down.
Digital life footprint
Everything Everywhere – a super ‘system’ monitoring what you do, what you buy, where you go, when, how, who you talk to, what you say – all your movements, comments, discussions and activity will be known by someone else, somewhere, even your private discussions, holiday activity and medical details will be visible in the ‘system’.
Some may say this has happened already, but this ‘super-app’ will be a massive step closer to ‘life without privacy’.
Apple shares previously failed to close at levels that would have given the company a market cap of $3 trillion, despite a promising intra-day move in January 2022.
Milestone
Apple has become the first publicly traded company ever to be worth $3 trillion. The company’s market valuation reached this milestone on January 3rd, 2022. Apple’s stock briefly eclipsed $182.86 a share before closing at $182.01. The milestone is mostly symbolic but it represents investor recognition of Apple’s success over the past few years as the company has reported several record-breaking quarters of big growth in all of its product lines.
Apple is not just a hardware player – it has an even bigger slice of the tech’ consumer pie than you may imagine, especially in the cloud computing arena.
Second time lucky
Apple has regained its $3 trillion valuation to become the first-listed company, in modern times, to reach the $3 trillion milestone again. It acheived this on 30th June 2023. Shares climbed more than 2% to hit a record $193.97. However, by direct comparison and by todays valuation, the East India Trading Company beat Apple to this accolade long-a-go in the 17th Century having acheived a higher value equivalent to $7 trillion in todays money.
Arthur C. Clarke, in full Sir Arthur Charles Clarke, (born 1917, Minehead, Somerset, England – died 2008 ). English writer, notable for both his science fiction and his nonfiction. His best known works are the script he wrote with American film director Stanley Kubrick for 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and the novel of that film.
Threads is a new app, owned by Meta (Facebook), and built by theInstagram team, for sharing public conversations akin to Twitter. You log in using your Instagram account and posts can be up to 500 characters long and include links, photos, and videos with a 5 minute limit. Threads is Meta’s first app envisioned to be compatible with an open social networking protocol
Threads is seen by many as a direct competitor toTwitter, the social media platform owned by billionaire Elon Musk. Threads has been setting records for user growth since its launch on July 5, 2023, with politicians, celebrities, news creators and users joining the platform. Threads surpassed 100 million user ‘sign-ups’ within five days of launch according to information from Meta.
Projected to create revenue of $8 billion by 2025
Threads is projected to contribute a staggering$8 billion to Meta’s annual revenue by 2025. The report further highlights that Threads has already garnered 1 million sign-ups and is on track to reach an impressive milestone of 1 billion users in the near future.
User drop-off to be expected?
However, some recent news reports suggest that Threads has encountered challenges in retaining its users and competing with Twitter. Threads ‘daily active users’ is reporteded to have fallen from 49 million two days after its launch, to 23.6 million users about three weeks later in July 2023, according to reports. The app’s average usage time also fell from 21 minutes to 6 minutes over the same timeframe.
XRP, the native token of the blockchain company Ripple, soared more than 60% on Thursday after a U.S. judge delivered a major victory to the firm in its legal battle with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
The SEC had sued Ripple in December 2020, alleging that it had raised over $1.3 billion through the sale of XRP in an unregistered securities offering. The SEC claimed that XRP was an investment contract that gave buyers the expectation of profits based on Ripple’s efforts.
However, the Judge ruled that XRP was not a security “on its face” and that some aspects of its sale did not violate the federal securities laws.
Digital coin
The judge drew a distinction between the sales of XRP to institutional investors, which she said could constitute investment contracts, and the sales of XRP to the general public on exchanges, which did not.
Argument
The judge also denied Ripple’s argument that the SEC lacked jurisdiction over XRP transactions because they were not domestic, and agreed with the SEC that the Howey test, a four-pronged criteria to determine whether an asset is a security, applied to cryptocurrency transactions.
The ruling was welcomed by Ripple and its supporters, who argued that XRP was a utility token that facilitated cross-border payments and did not depend on Ripple’s efforts for its value.
Ripple’s chief legal officer, reportedly tweeted: “A huge win today – as a matter of law – XRP is not a security. Also, a matter of law – sales on exchanges are not securities. Sales by executives are not securities. Other XRP distributions – to developers, charities, and employees- are not securities.”
A lawyer representing over 19,000 XRP holders who intervened in the case, reportedly called on U.S. exchanges to relist XRP in solidarity with the decision.
Crypyo boost
The ruling also boosted the sentiment in the broader crypto market, as it suggested that the SEC did not have unlimited authority over digital assets and that some tokens could escape the securities classification.
‘Have you seen the news? Crypto might possibly could be going manstream.’ ‘Oh WOW! – What’s crypto?’
Crypto-related stocks such as Coinbase and crypto-coins such as ADA, HBAR, BITCOIN & ETH surged following the news.
More to come?
However, the case is not quite over yet, as the SEC said it would continue to review the decision and pursue its claims against Ripple for the sales of XRP to institutional investors.
The SEC also responded to the judge’s ruling by saying that it did not change its position that XRP was a security and that it would seek to prove that Ripple violated the securities laws in certain circumstances.
The outcome of the case could have significant implications for the crypto industry, as it could set a precedent for how other tokens are regulated and how other lawsuits are resolved.
Twitter rebrands as X and kills off blue bird logo
Twitter, the social media platform, has undergone a major rebranding, changing its name to X and replacing its iconic blue bird logo with a simple black-and-white X. The move was announced by the company’s owner, Elon Musk, who reportedly said he wanted to create a “super app” that would transform the global ‘town square’.
New Logo
Musk and Twitter’s chief executive, Linda Yaccarino, posted pictures of the new logo projected on the side of Twitter’s headquarters in San Francisco, California. They also changed profile pictures and bios to reflect the new brand identity. The desktop version of the app has already switched to the new logo, while the mobile version is expected to follow soon.
My last tweet – says the BLUE bird
Musk is reported to have said he was looking to change Twitter’s logo because he wanted to “embody the imperfections in us all that make us unique”. He also said he had a personal affinity for the letter X, which he also used for his other ventures, such as SpaceX and X.com. Yaccarino said the rebrand was an exciting new opportunity to make a fresh “big impression” and go further than Twitter.
Rebranding
The rebranding of Twitter marks the biggest change to the platform since Musk began his tumultuous tenure. Among the changes have been sacking thousands of staff, locking verification checkmarks behind a paywall, reinstating banned accounts like those of Andrew Tate and Donald Trump, and applying reading limits.
The reaction from users and marketers has been mixed, with some praising the bold move and others criticising it as unnecessary and confusing. Some have also questioned whether the new logo infringes on the trademarks of other companies that use similar designs, such as Tesla and Xbox.
The company has not yet revealed whether other aspects of the platform, such as tweets, hashtags, and handles, will also be changed to match the new brand name.
Elon Musk, the billionaire entrepreneur behind Tesla, SpaceX and Neuralink, has revealed his latest venture: xAI, a new artificial intelligence company that aims to “understand the true nature of the universe”.
Musk announced the formation of xAI on Wednesday on Twitter and on the company’s official website, which features a minimalist design and a brief introduction.
“Today we announce the formation of xAI,” the website states. “The goal of xAI is to understand the true nature of the universe.”
AI
The website also lists 12 members of the xAI team, including Musk himself as the director. The team consists of researchers and engineers who have worked at leading AI firms such as Google’s DeepMind, OpenAI, Microsoft Research and Tesla.
Power
It was reported that xAI was incorporated in Nevada in June 2023 and Musk has purchased thousands of graphic processing units (GPUs) to power his AI vision. The company also has a Twitter account, @xAI, which has gained over 300,000 followers in less than a day.
Musk invited the public to ask questions about xAI on a Twitter Space – this was scheduled for 1h. July 2023. He has not provided any further details about the company’s mission, vision or products.
However, based on Musk’s previous comments and involvement in AI, it is likely that xAI will focus on developing artificial general intelligence (AGI), or human-level intelligence that can perform any task across any domain.
AI Critic
Musk has been a vocal critic of OpenAI, the AI research organization that he co-founded in 2015 but left in 2018. He has accused OpenAI of becoming too secretive, too commercial and too “woke”, especially after the launch of its popular chatbot ChatGPT.
Musk has also expressed his concerns about the potential dangers of AI, warning that it could pose an existential threat to humanity if not aligned with human values and goals. He has advocated for ethical and responsible development of AI, as well as global cooperation and regulation.
With xAI, Musk may be trying to create an alternative to OpenAI that is more aligned with his vision and values. He may also be aiming to achieve breakthroughs in AI that could benefit his other ventures, such as Tesla’s self-driving cars, SpaceX’s reusable rockets and Neuralink’s brain-computer interfaces.
AI Robots at a bar
However, xAI will also face many challenges and uncertainties in its quest to understand reality. AI is a complex and rapidly evolving field that requires massive amounts of data, computing power and talent. It also raises many ethical, social and philosophical questions that are not easy to answer.
Moreover, xAI will have to compete with other established and emerging players in the AI space, such as Google, Facebook, Amazon, IBM, Microsoft and Meta. These companies have invested billions of dollars in AI research and development and have access to vast amounts of data and resources.
It remains to be seen whether xAI will be able to achieve its ambitious goal and how it will impact the AI industry and society at large.
Baidu said its AI system called Ernie 3.5 outperformed OpenAI’s ChatGPT and GPT4 in several key areas.
The Chat Bot was revealed in March 2023 and has since been publicly testing it in China. The chatbot is based on Baidu’s foundational AI model called ERNIE.
Baidu’s advancements underscore the intense competition taking place in the area of generative AI with technology giants in the US and China rapidly advancing their AI models.
ERNIE – Enhanced Language RepresentatioN with Informative Entities
US and China AI Bots go head to head
Ernie was first introduced in 2019, and since then, Baidu has been improving and upgrading it with new versions. The latest version, Ernie 3.5, was announced in June 2023, and it claims to outperform OpenAI’s ChatGPT and GPT 4 in several key areas
Baidu’s Ernie is an artificial intelligence (AI) model that powers the company’s chatbot service, Ernie Bot. Ernie stands for Enhanced Language RepresentatioN with Informative Entities, and it is a natural language processing (NLP) deep-learning model that can understand and generate natural language.
Trained on large data sets
Ernie 3.5 is based on Baidu’s foundational AI model, which is trained on huge amounts of data from various domains, such as news, social media, encyclopedias, books, and more. Ernie 3.5 can handle various NLP tasks, such as question answering, dialogue generation, text summarization, sentiment analysis, and more.
According to a test by the China Science Daily journal, Ernie 3.5 surpassed ChatGPT and GPT 4 in general abilities and outperformed the more advanced GPT 4 on several Chinese-language capabilities.
ERNIE version 3.5 boosted its training and efficiency, making it faster and cheaper to upgrade to future versions. Baidu hopes that ERNIE Bot will become the next must-have app in China’s internet market, attracting users because of its natural and engaging conversations.
Intergration
Baidu has been integrating ERNIE Bot across multiple business applications, ranging from cloud computing to smart speakers.
AI Chatbot
ERNIE Bot is one of the examples of how Baidu is investing in AI technology and competing with other tech giants in the US and China. Baidu’s founder Robin Li, reportedly said that ‘foundation models are an engine driving global economic growth and represent a major strategic opportunity that cannot be missed‘.
The major BIG players, Alphabet (Google), Microsoft & META all have their own versions of AI. Hopefully it will be used ‘intelligently’.
AI stands for Artificial Intelligence, which is the ability of machines to perform tasks that normally require human intelligence. AI can involve various aspects of cognition, such as perceiving, reasoning, learning, problem-solving, and even creativity.
Types of AI
AI can be classified into different types based on the level of intelligence and the scope of tasks that machines can perform. One common way to categorise AI is by using the following four types:
Narrow AI: This is the most common and basic type of AI, which refers to machines that can perform specific tasks very well, but cannot generalize to other domains or situations. Examples of narrow AI include speech recognition, face recognition, web search engines, recommendation systems, self-driving cars, and chess-playing programs.
General AI: This is the type of AI that aims to achieve human-like intelligence across a wide range of domains and tasks. General AI would be able to understand and learn from any kind of data, reason and solve problems, communicate and interact with humans, and exhibit common sense and creativity. However, general AI does not exist yet, and it is considered a long-term goal of AI research.
Super AI: This is the type of AI that would surpass human intelligence in all aspects, including speed, memory, knowledge, creativity, and wisdom. Super AI would be able to outperform humans in any task and domain, and potentially pose existential risks to humanity. Super AI is also a hypothetical concept that has not been achieved or proven yet.
Artificial neural networks: This is a type of AI that mimics the structure and function of biological neural networks, which are the basis of human brain activity. Artificial neural networks consist of layers of interconnected nodes that process information and learn from data. Artificial neural networks are widely used for various applications of AI, such as computer vision, natural language processing, machine learning, and deep learning.
Applications of AI
AI has many applications in various fields and industries, such as:
Healthcare: AI can help diagnose diseases, analyze medical images, design drugs, assist surgeries, monitor patients, and provide personalized care.
Education: AI can help personalize learning, assess students’ progress, provide feedback, tutor students, grade assignments, and create educational content.
Business: AI can help optimize operations, enhance customer service, automate tasks, analyze data, generate insights, improve decision making, and increase productivity.
Entertainment: AI can help create music, art, games, movies, and other forms of entertainment.
AI can also help recommend content to users based on their preferences and behaviour.
Security: AI can help detect threats, prevent cyberattacks, enhance surveillance, identify frauds, enforce laws, and protect privacy.
Social: AI can help communicate with humans through natural language processing and speech synthesis. AI can also help understand human emotions and behavior through sentiment analysis and facial expression recognition.
Challenges and limitations of AI
AI also faces many challenges and limitations that need to be addressed by researchers and users. Some of these include:
Ethical: AI raises many ethical issues such as bias, fairness, accountability, transparency, privacy, human dignity, and social impact. How can we ensure that AI is aligned with human values and does not harm humans or society?
Technical: AI still faces many technical challenges such as scalability, robustness, explainability, interpretability, generalization, and adversarial attacks. How can we improve the performance, reliability, and security of AI systems?
Societal: AI also has many societal implications such as employment, education, regulation, governance, and collaboration. How can we adapt to the changes and opportunities that AI brings to our lives, work, and society?
AI is here to stay – it’s all about how we use it for the betterment of ‘humankind’. Please, let’s use it safely, responsibly and for the good!
Big tech companies heavily involved in the development of AI products
Crypto, short for cryptocurrency, is a digital or virtual currency that uses cryptography for security and operates independently of a central bank. Cryptocurrencies are decentralised currencies, meaning they’re neither issued nor governed by a central bank.
Some cryptocurrencies are issued by their developers, while others are generated by their respective network algorithms. They exist and operate on a public ledger called a blockchain, which records all crypto transactions. Blockchain encryption is designed to make all transactions safe and secure from tampering, counterfeit, and other forms of fraudulent transactions.
‘Do you know what crypto is? Nope, absolutely no idea, do I need to?’
Digital Wallet
Cryptocurrencies can be stored in a ‘digital wallet’ on a smartphone or computer, and owners can send them to people to buy things. Although we can’t see or touch cryptocurrencies, they do hold value. Cryptocurrencies are now being used to purchase many different products and services, and some people are even buying cars and houses with their digital assets. They’re not widely used at the moment, but many believe the use of cryptocurrencies could one day become a common way to trade.
Is there a future for a digital currency?
However, the future of cryptocurrency is uncertain and opinions are divided. Some predict that institutional money entering the market and the possibility of crypto being floated on the Nasdaq could add credibility to blockchain and its uses as an alternative to conventional currencies. Others predict that regulators around the world might come together on a global framework for crypto regulation, but this looks unlikely right now. It is impossible to predict the future of the crypto market with absolute certainty.
Despite a strong start to 2023, some analysts remain cautious on growth and predict pressure for digital assets. Cryptography and blockchains will continue to be integral parts of the modern economic toolkit.
In conclusion, while there is no consensus on whether crypto is the future of currency, it is clear that it has the potential to play a significant role in the future of finance.
Stop crypto?
There is evidence to suggest that the US, EU, UK and other nations are trying to regulate the crypto market. Some people in the crypto world believe that recent attempts to ring fence the crypto industry and cut off its connectivity to the banking system are reminiscent of a little-known Obama-era program called ‘Operation Choke Point’. This refers to a 2013 US government initiative that sought to cut off undesirable industries from banking services.
Meltdown
The sector was already under pressure, after prices of virtual currencies collapsed last year. Further damage came from the meltdown of several high-profile firms, including FTX, run by the so-called ‘Crypto King’ Sam Bankman-Fried, whom prosecutors have accused of conducting ‘one of the biggest financial frauds’ in US history. Jolted by the turmoil, US regulators stepped up their policing of the sector, which authorities say has been on notice since at least 2017 and that their activity runs afoul of US financial rules intended to protect US investors.
Crackdown?
The campaign has yielded a steady drumbeat of charges against crypto firms and executives, alleging violations ranging from failing to register properly with authorities and provide adequate disclosure of their activity to, in some cases, more damaging claims such as mishandling of consumer funds and fraud. The crackdown culminated this month in legal actions against two of the biggest platforms: Coinbase and Binance.
However, during a hearing on cryptocurrency and blockchain technology regulation, Senate Banking Committee Chairman Mike Crapo shared his belief that the United States would not be able to succeed in banning Bitcoin.
In conclusion, while there is evidence that the US is trying to regulate the crypto market, it is not clear if they are trying to stop it completely and there is also evidence that suggests that the US would not be able to succeed in banning Bitcoin.
What was operation choke point?
‘Operation Choke Point’ was allegedly an initiative of the United States Department of Justice that began in 2013 under the Obama administration. The program investigated banks in the United States and the business they did with firearm dealers, payday lenders, and other companies believed to be at a high risk for fraud and money laundering. It was an attempt by President Obama’s Department of Justice, the Federal Deposit Insurance Commission, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and other government agencies to cut off banking and financial services for small businesses and industries that they deemed to be illegal enterprises or otherwise undesirable.
It’s taken nearly 20 years, but Sir Richard Branson has finally begun commercial space flights with his Virgin Galactic rocket ship, Unity
On 29th. June 2023, Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic successfully launched its first commercial flight to the edge of space. The flight was carried out by the company’s SpaceShip Two space plane Unity with a special passenger on board: the company’s billionaire founder Richard Branson. Branson was accompanied by three crewmates and two pilots on the historic flight.
Virgin Galactic 1
The flight took off from New Mexico in the US after being carried into launch position by Virgin Galactic’s carrier plane, Eve. The rocket ship reached an altitude of 53.5 miles above Earth’s surface before gliding back down to land at Spaceport America .
The vehicle flew high over the New Mexico desert on Thursday to enable three Italian astronauts to conduct science experiments in weightless conditions. Sir Richard will now begin sending up the 800 or so space flight customers who’ve bought tickets to ride on Unity.
72 minute mission
The 72-minute mission took off from Spaceport America at 08:30 local time (14:30 GMT) and was livestreamed around the world.
Just under an hour into the mission, after reaching an altitude of 13,600m (44,500ft), the carrier plane, Eve, then released Unity to ignite its engine and boost up to the edge of space. At the top of its climb, the rocket ship was at an altitude of 279,00ft (85km), touching the edge of space.
Success
This successful launch marks a major milestone for Virgin Galactic and the space tourism industry as a whole. With this achievement, Virgin Galactic has joined a small club of companies that can ferry paying customers to space, including Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin.
Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic has made history with its successful rocket ship launch on June 29th, 2023. This achievement marks a significant milestone for the space tourism industry and opens up new possibilities for commercial space travel in the future.
