Business – Lifeboat News: The Blog

Chemists Are First in Line for Quantum Computing’s Benefits

Posted by Klaus Baldauf in business, computing, quantum physics

Mar 19
2017

Efforts to invent more practical superconductors and better batteries could be the first areas of business to get a quantum speed boost.

Big data adoption surges as Aussie businesses increase spending

Posted by Alireza Mokri in business, information science

Mar 17
2017

Big data budgets now rival CRM software.

Service Provider on Twitter

Posted by Alireza Mokri in business, internet

Mar 17
2017

Get ready for leaping toward next G of networking.

“5G-ready networks stand to reap billions in new business opportunities. Tweet #CiscoMWC to.

‘Bigger than the cloud’ … Xero makes first move towards automated accounting

Posted by Alireza Mokri in business, robotics/AI

Mar 15
2017

The chief executive of listed accounting software business Xero has claimed machine learning-based automation will be a bigger change than the advent of cloud computing, as it starts to offer options to automate accounting tasks.

Xero boss Rod Drury said the company would unveil a new feature to its software this week which would automate the coding of invoices and bank transactions for its small business customers, work that has been conducted personally by business owners or accountants until now.

The process was targeted for automation after Xero’s Find & Recode feature showed 3.1 million invoices had been incorrectly recorded by its 862,000 subscribers in the 18 months to September 2016. It is the first introduction of machine learning automation at Xero since it shifted its infrastructure to run on Amazon Web Services in 2016.

Artificial Intelligence Is Powerful Stuff, But Difficult To Scale To Real-Life Business

Posted by Alireza Mokri in business, robotics/AI

Mar 15
2017

AI and machine learning technology is ready, but simply imposing it on an existing organization without preparing your people and processes will not deliver the best results.

Solar Experiment Lets Neighbors Trade Energy Among Themselves

Posted by Klaus Baldauf in business, energy, habitats

Mar 14
2017

Dozens of homes and businesses in Brooklyn have been wired into a microgrid, which allows members to exchange excess-electricity credits.

A CEO explains why he doesn’t care about your résumé, your alma mater, or your last job when he’s looking to hire

Posted by Shailesh Prasad in business, education, finance

Mar 13
2017

For United Shore CEO Mat Ishbia, it’s not about what you know.

Ishbia says that specific skills, such as salesmanship, graphic design, or programming, can be taught. Those don’t guarantee whether or not a candidate will succeed at the Troy, Michigan-based financial services business.

“I don’t care about your résumé,” Ishbia says. “I don’t care about what school you went to. I don’t care about what you did at your last company.”

Data61 CEO Adrian Turner has a plan for the next jobs

Posted by Alireza Mokri in business, economics, employment, finance, government

Mar 9
2017

Forty per cent of Australia’s jobs will disappear in 10 years but the head of CSIRO’s data research unit has delivered an action plan for how they can be replaced.

“The fourth industrial revolution is under way and the winners will be so far ahead of the losers, Australia has no choice but to pivot to the new industries that will emerge,” Data61 chief executive Adrian Turner told The Australian Financial Review Business Summit on Wednesday.

Australia was already feeling the consequences of an economy whose greatest disruptors, such as Uber and Amazon, were mostly coming from elsewhere, Mr Turner said. He noted that GDP growth rates were below historic averages, government debt to GDP ratios were rising, wage growth was slowing and productivity plateauing.

Pie in the Sky? The Economics of Space Travel

Posted by Brett Gallie II in business, Elon Musk, space travel

Mar 7
2017

SpaceX hopes to take paying passengers into deep space next year. Is this a real business or an ego trip?

An awfully big adventure

Elon Musk announced on Monday (27 February) that his space company SpaceX has been contracted by two private citizens to circumnavigate the moon and return to Earth late in 2018. The mission will not land on the Moon but the two privileged individuals will get close. And they have already paid a substantial deposit.

IBM launches IBM Q initiative to create 50+ qubit universal quantum computer

Posted by Klaus Baldauf in biotech/medical, business, chemistry, quantum physics, robotics/AI

Mar 6
2017

IBM Q is an industry-first initiative to build a commercially available universal quantum computers for business and science. While technologies like AI can find patterns buried in vast amounts of existing data, quantum computers will deliver solutions to important problems where patterns cannot be seen and the number of possibilities that you need to explore to get to the answer are too enormous ever to be processed by classical computers.

IBM Q quantum systems and services will be delivered via the IBM Cloud platform and will be designed to tackle problems that are too complex and exponential in nature for classical computing systems to handle. One of the first and most promising applications for quantum computing will be in the area of chemistry and could lead to the discovery of new medicines and materials. IBM aims at constructing commercial IBM Q systems with ~50 qubits in the next few years to demonstrate capabilities beyond today’s classical systems, and plans to collaborate with key industry partners to develop applications that exploit the quantum speedup of the systems.

IBM also announced:

The release of a new API (Application Program Interface) for the IBM Quantum Experience that enables developers and programmers to begin building interfaces between its existing five quantum bit (qubit) cloud-based quantum computer and classical computers, without needing a deep background in quantum physics.