Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog

Category: business – Page 188

SpaceX to explore ways to provide weather data to U.S. military

SpaceX won a $2 million contract from the SpEC consortium to study ways to provide weather data to the U.S. Space Force.

WASHINGTON — SpaceX is looking at ways it could provide weather data to the U.S. military. The company is working under a $2 million six-month study contract from the U.S. Space Force’s Space and Missile Systems Center.

Charlotte Gerhart, chief of the Space and Missile Systems Center Production Corps Low Earth Orbit Division, said in a statement to SpaceNews that SpaceX received the contract in July from SMC’s Space Enterprise Consortium.

The contract is to “assess the feasibility and long term viability of a ‘weather data as a service business model,’” said Gerhart.

From Essays to Coding, This New A.I. Can Write Anything

Elons fears are real about AI.

Sign up to Morning Brew for free today here: http://cen.yt/morningbrewcoldfusion2

— About ColdFusion –
ColdFusion is an Australian based online media company independently run by Dagogo Altraide since 2009. Topics cover anything in science, technology, history and business in a calm and relaxed environment. GPT-3 certainly is something.

ColdFusion Merch:
INTERNATIONAL: https://store.coldfusioncollective.com/
AUSTRALIA: https://shop.coldfusioncollective.com/

If you enjoy my content, please consider subscribing!

Continue reading “From Essays to Coding, This New A.I. Can Write Anything” | >

Ant Group and fintech come of age

If the surge in digital finance is universal, the business models behind it are not. In Latin America look out for digital banks and e-commerce pioneers such as Nubank and MercadoLibre, owner of Mercado Pago. In South-East Asia Grab and Gojek, two ride-hailing services, are becoming “super-apps” with financial arms. Fintech firms now provide the majority of consumer loans in Sweden. In America credit-card firms such as Visa (the world’s most valuable financial firm), digital-finance giants such as PayPal (the sixth) and the big banks both co-operate and compete. Tech giants such as Apple and Alphabet are dipping their toes in, tempted by the financial industry’s $1.5trn global pool of profits.

A blockbuster listing shows how fintech is revolutionising finance.

IBM finally gets rid of some business to focus on the one that matters

International Business Machines, still the legal name of century-plus-old IBM, has managed over the years to pull off a dubious feat. Despite selling goods and services in one of the most dynamic industries in the world, the IT sector the company helped create, it has managed to avoid growing.

The company that was synonymous with mainframes, that dominated the early days of the personal computer (a “PC” once meant a device that ran software built to IBM’s technical standards), and that reinvented itself as a tech-consulting goliath, lagged while upstarts and a few of its old competitors zoomed past it.

What IBM excelled at more often was marketing a version of its aspirational self. Its consultants would advise urban planners on how to create “smart cities.” Its command of artificial intelligence, packaged into a software offering whose name evoked its founding family, would cure cancer. Its CEO would wow the Davos set with cleverly articulated visions of how corporations could help fix the ills of society.

What IBM did not do was grow or participate sufficiently in the biggest trend in business-focused IT, cloud computing. Now, in the words of veteran tech analyst Toni Sacconaghi of research shop Bernstein, new IBM CEO Arvind Krishna is pursuing a strategy of “growth through subtraction.” The company is spinning off its IT outsourcing business, a low-growth, low-margin portion of its services business that rings up $19 billion in annual sales. Krishna told Aaron and Fortune writer Jonathan Vanian that he plans to bulk back up after the spinoff via acquisitions. “We’re open for business,” he said.

The move is bold, if risky. The reason it took so long, and presumably a new leader, to jettison the outsourcing business is that it was meant to drive sales of IBM hardware and other services. But Krishna, promoted for his association with IBM’s nascent cloud-computing effort—just as Microsoft Satya Nadella ran his company’s cloud arm before taking the top job—recognizes that only by discarding a moribund business can IBM focus and invest properly in the one that matters.

IBM CEO Arvind Krishna is spinning off IBM’s IT outsourcing services unit to focus on cloud and quantum computing.

Continue reading “IBM finally gets rid of some business to focus on the one that matters” | >

The US Military Developed AR Goggles For Dogs

The US Army is developing augmented reality goggles for dogs to help protect their human guardians.

The BBC reports that the project, funded by the Small Business Innovation Research program, aims to allow soldiers to give dogs specific directional commands while they’re not in direct line of sight.

“Augmented reality works differently for dogs than for humans,” Stephen Lee, an Army Research Laboratory senior scientist, explained in a statement. “AR will be used to provide dogs with commands and cues; it’s not for the dog to interact with it like a human does.”

UK completes fusion research facility

Harworth Group plc has announced the completion of the UK Atomic Energy Authority’s (UKAEA’s) new nuclear fusion technology research facility at the Advanced Manufacturing Park in Rotherham, South Yorkshire. When it opens later this year, the 2500-square-metre facility will develop and test joining technologies for fusion materials and components, including novel metals and ceramics.

Property developer Harworth said completion of the GBP22 million (USD28 million) Fusion Technology facility triggers UKAEA’s 20-year lease with Harworth at a rent in line with other manufacturers at the Advanced Manufacturing Park. UKAEA will now prepare the building prior to taking formal occupation of it later this year.

The new facility is being funded as part of the government’s Nuclear Sector Deal delivered through the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. An additional GBP2 million of investment came from Sheffield City Region’s Local Growth Fund.

SkyWatch and Picterra combine imagery access with AI tools

SkyWatch Space Applications, the Canadian startup whose EarthCache platform helps software developers embed geospatial data and imagery in applications, announced a partnership Oct. 5 with Picterra, a Swiss startup with a self-service platform to help customers autonomously extract information from aerial and satellite imagery.

“One of the things that has been very difficult to achieve is this ability to easily and affordably access satellite data in a way that is fast but also in a way in which you can derive the insights you need for your particular business,” James Slifierz, SkyWatch CEO told SpaceNews. “What if you can merge both the accessibility of this data with an ease of developing and applying intelligence to the data so that any company in the world could have the tools to derive insights?”

SkyWatch’s EarthCache platform is designed to ease access to aerial and satellite imagery. However, SkyWatch doesn’t provide data analysis.

Picterra is not a data provider. Instead, the company helps customers build their own machine-learning algorithms to detect things like building footprints in imagery customers either upload or find in Picterra’s library of open-source imagery.

New York court readies OneWeb to start services next year

Paris, 4 October 2020. – A New York court has confirmed OneWeb’s rescue plan and put it back on track to launch its services in 2021, the London-based LEO operator announced.

The U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York confirmed OneWeb’s Chapter 11 reorganization plan, ensuring that the company remains on target to resume business operations and deploy the initial 650 LEO satellite constellation under its new ownership, OneWeb said.

“The transactions outlined in the Plan will be implemented following receipt of customary regulatory approvals, which are expected by the end of 2020. In the meantime, OneWeb is resuming operations and readying its commercial services which are planned to start next year.”

/* */