Menu

Blog

Archive for the ‘finance’ category: Page 90

Aug 27, 2019

IRS Impersonation Attacks Spread Malware Nationwide

Posted by in categories: cybercrime/malcode, finance

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is warning taxpayers about a snowballing email attack that uses messages pretending to be legitimate IRS communications. The end game for the effort is malware being installed on unsuspecting users’ machines; imposters may gain control of the taxpayer’s computer or secretly download software that tracks every keystroke, eventually giving them passwords to sensitive accounts, such as financial accounts.

The gambit starts with messages to taxpayers from email addresses that spoof legitimate IRS addresses. The emails contain a link to a spoofed IRS.gov website that displays fake details about the targeted recipient’s tax refund, return or account.

The fake emails have subject lines like “Automatic Income Tax Reminder” or “Electronic Tax Return Reminder.” They claim to contain a “temporary password” or “one-time password” to access the files purportedly needed to submit a request for a refund or for information. However, those files are actually just malware in disguise.

Aug 25, 2019

SwRI and GE design and operate the highest temperature sCO2 turbine in the world

Posted by in categories: finance, military, solar power, sustainability

SAN ANTONIO — April 8, 2019 — A team of Southwest Research Institute and General Electric (GE) engineers have designed, built and tested the highest temperature supercritical carbon dioxide (sCO2) turbine in the world. The turbine was developed with $6.8 million of funding from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Solar Energy Technologies Office (SETO), in addition to $3 million from commercial partners GE Research, Thar Energy, Electric Power Research Institute, Aramco Services Company and Navy Nuclear Laboratory. Additionally, the DOE’s Advanced Research Projects Agency — Energy (ARPA-E) Full-Spectrum Optimized Conversion and Utilization of Sunlight (FOCUS) program provided financial support and extended the test program to validate advanced thermal seals.


Copyright © 2019 by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)

Aug 23, 2019

UNICEF Innovation Fund Call for Frontier Technologies

Posted by in categories: bitcoin, employment, finance, robotics/AI

UNICEF is looking for startups applying #datascience, #machinelearning, #blockchain or #XR to prepare young people for the jobs of tomorrow.


The UNICEF Innovation Fund is looking to make up to 100K equity-free investments to provide early stage (seed) finance to for-profit technology start-ups that have the potential to benefit humanity.

If you’ve got a start-up using machine learning (ML), artificial intelligence (AI), blockchain or extended reality, registered in one of UNICEF’s programme countries, and have a working, open source prototype (or you are willing to make it open-source) showing promising results, the UNICEF Innovation Fund is looking for you.

Aug 20, 2019

Immortality through mind uploading

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, finance, law, life extension, robotics/AI, sustainability

In the 2015 movie “Chappie”, which is set in the near future, automated robots comprise a mechanised police force. An encounter between two rival criminal gangs severely damages the law enforcing robot (Agent 22). His creator Deon recommends dismantling and recycling the damaged police droids. However, criminals kidnap Deon and force him to upload human consciousness into the damaged robot to train it to rob banks. Chappie becomes the first robot with the human mind who can think and feel like a human. Later, in the movie when his creator Deon is dying, it’s Chappie’s turn to upload Deon’s consciousness into a spare robot through a neural helmet. Similarly, in the “Avatar” a 2009 Hollywood science fiction, a character in the film by name Grace connects with Eiwa, the collective consciousness of the planet and transfers her mind to her Avatar body, while another character Jake transfers his mind to his Avatar body rendering his human body lifeless.

Mind uploading is a process by which we relocate the mind, an assemblage of memories, personality, and attributes of a specific individual, from its original biological brain to an artificial computational substrate. Mind uploading is a central conceptual feature of many science fiction novels and films. For instance, Hanson’s book titled “The Age of Em: Work, Love and Life when Robots Rule the Earth” is a 2016 nonfiction book which explores the implications of a future world when researchers have learned to copy humans onto computers, creating “ems,” or emulated people, who quickly come to outnumber the real ones.

Aug 20, 2019

Fraud Detection Using Random Forest, Neural Autoencoder, and Isolation Forest Techniques

Posted by in categories: finance, information science, robotics/AI

  • Fraud detection techniques mostly stem from the anomaly detection branch of data science.
  • If the dataset has sufficient number of fraud examples, supervised machine learning algorithms for classification like random forest, logistic regression can be used for fraud detection.
  • If the dataset has no fraud examples, we can use either the outlier detection approach using isolation forest technique or anomaly detection using the neural autoencoder.
  • After the machine learning model has been trained, it’s evaluated on the test set using metrics such as sensitivity and specificity, or Cohen’s Kappa.

With global credit card fraud loss on the rise, it is important for banks, as well as e-commerce companies, to be able to detect fraudulent transactions (before they are completed).

According to the Nilson Report, a publication covering the card and mobile payment industry, global card fraud losses amounted to $22.8 billion in 2016, an increase of 4.4% over 2015. This confirms the importance of the early detection of fraud in credit card transactions.

Aug 19, 2019

Quantum Secure Communication Market Expected to Witness High Growth over the Forecast Period 2019 – 2025 – Financial Newspaper

Posted by in categories: finance, quantum physics

Global Quantum Secure Communication market analysis mainly introduces the changing market dynamics in terms of covering all details inside analysis and opinion, volume and value market share by players, by regions, by product type, by consumers and their price change details, cost/revenue structure. Additionally, the analysis of Global Quantum Secure Communication offers a detailed breakdown of key market growth drivers and limitation along with impact analysis of the same.

The Quantum Secure Communication market research report provides an in-depth analysis of the business space in question, alongside a brief gist of the industry segmentation. A highly viable evaluation of the current industry scenario has been presented in the study, and the Quantum Secure Communication market size with regards to the remuneration and volume has also been mentioned. The research report, in its entirety, is a basic collection of significant data with reference to the competitive terrain of this industry and the numerous regions where the business space has successfully established its position.

Request a sample Report of Quantum Secure Communication Market at: https://www.marketstudyreport.com/request-a-sample/2075428?u…ium=Deepak

Aug 19, 2019

‘Youngest Bitcoin Millionaire’ Willing to Stake it All on Metal Pay

Posted by in categories: bitcoin, cryptocurrencies, finance

Metallicus, the startup behind the peer-to-peer payments platform Metal Pay, received an undisclosed angel investment from the youngest bitcoin millionaire, Erik Finman.

In partnership with Metal Pay CEO Marshall Hayner, the two look to develop the first “all-in-one” cryptocurrency banking platform, which includes a 17 digital asset exchange, a digital bank and a payments application with social features similar to Venmo.

Founded in September, Metal Pay has processed approximately $11 million in total payments from nearly 130,000 registered users across 38 states. On a monthly basis, the company processes $1 million in crypto or fiat for around 30,000 active users, according to Hayner.

Aug 18, 2019

How Cheap Must Batteries Get for Renewables to Compete With Fossil Fuels?

Posted by in categories: climatology, finance, sustainability

While solar and wind power are rapidly becoming cost-competitive with fossil fuels in areas with lots of sun and wind, they still can’t provide the 24/7 power we’ve become used to. At present, that’s not big a problem because the grid still features plenty of fossil fuel plants that can provide constant baseload or ramp up to meet surges in demand.

But there’s broad agreement that we need to dramatically decarbonize our energy supplies if we’re going to avoid irreversible damage to the climate. That will mean getting rid of the bulk of on-demand, carbon-intensive power plants we currently rely on to manage our grid.

Alternatives include expanding transmission infrastructure to shuttle power from areas where the wind is blowing to areas where it isn’t, or managing demand using financial incentive to get people to use less energy during peak hours. But most promising is pairing renewable energy with energy storage to build up reserves for when the sun stops shining.

Aug 18, 2019

Tesla launches solar rental service, can get a solar panel system for $50 per month

Posted by in categories: finance, sustainability

Tesla is launching today a solar rental service – a brand new way to get a solar panel system on your roof for as little as $50 per month without any long-term contract.

SolarCity pioneered new models to sell solar power systems with no upfront cost by leasing them to homeowners and selling them the electricity it generates, like a regular electric utility.

Continue reading “Tesla launches solar rental service, can get a solar panel system for $50 per month” »

Aug 17, 2019

#DEFCON: Hackers Can Use Netflix Account to Steal Banking Info

Posted by in categories: finance, security

In a session at the Crypto and Privacy Village within the DEF CON 27 conference in Las Vegas, Cat Murdock, security analyst at GuidePoint Security, outlined a nightmare scenario seemingly straight out of an episode of Black Mirror (the session, coincidentally, was titled Black Mirror: You Are Your Own Privacy Nightmare – The Hidden Threat of Paying For Subscription Services).

Murdock detailed how simply having a Netflix account could potentially be the key that enables an attacker to gain access to a user’s banking information. She noted that approximately 60% of the adult population pays for some form of online subscription service, be it Netflix, Spotify or something else. She also noted that everyone with an online subscription has a bank account.

One way a financial institution verifies an account holder when they try to gain access is to verify a recent transaction, which is where subscription services come into play. Murdock observed that there are only so many plans that a subscription service offers and the payments typically recur at the same time every month.

Page 90 of 148First8788899091929394Last