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The second phase of the CBDC pilot would test real-world functionalities such as cross-border remittance, retail payments and offline payments. The bank stated:

“We will confirm the possibility of operating various functions, such as offline settlements, and the application of new technologies, such as one intended to strengthen privacy protection during the second phase of the test.”

Bank of Korea (BOK) is also looking to onboard financial institutions for the second phase, quite similar to what China is currently doing with its digital yuan. However, unlike China, BOK-issued digital currency would also focus on user privacy.

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The world’s richest men have lost billions of dollars in the past week, as cryptocurrency markets and tech stocks plummet. #9News

The richest men in the world have lost billions of dollars in the past week as cryptocurrency markets and technology stocks plummet.

According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, in the last 24 hours Elon Musk lost US$12.5 billion ($17.41 billion), Jeff Bezos lost US$9.17 billion ($12.78 billion) and Facebook – now Meta – CEO Mark Zuckerberg lost US$4.86 billion ($6.77 billion).

Changpeng Zhao, CEO of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange Binance, lost an eye-watering US$13.3 billion ($18.53 billion) in one day.

Continue reading “World’s richest men lose billions as cryptocurrency, tech stocks tank” | >

Stroke is the world’s second-leading cause of death. Survivors may suffer brain damage that causes severe impairments in motor, language or other abilities. Japanese doctors have spent years developing a treatment that regenerates the brain using the patient’s own cells. Clinical trials are underway. A participant who had complete paralysis on one side of her body can now walk. The treatment takes stem cells from the patient’s bone marrow and injects it directly into the brain.

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Will your next camper van be an EV? Thor industries think so and their latest all-electric camper van could show us the very future of EV travel. Welcome to the Thor Vision Vehicle, an electric camper van ready to take your entire family on a camping adventure without the use of any fossil fuels. Does this EV concept have what it takes to beat out its gas-powered competition?

Much like the car and truck market, the camper van space is seeing a large shift towards electric power. Last week Winnebago unveiled their electric RV concept, and Airstream recently revealed their eStream electric trailer at the Tampa RV Show. Thor Industries is the parent company of Airstream further showing the brand’s commitment to the electric vehicle space. Based on what we know so far, the new Thor Vision Vehicle may be the best of the breed.

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Circa 2019

The race to engineer the next-generation banana is on. The Colombian government confirmed last month that a banana-killing fungus has invaded the Americas — the source of much of the world’s banana supply. The invasion has given new urgency to efforts to create fruit that can withstand the scourge.

Scientists are using a mix of approaches to save the banana. A team in Australia has inserted a gene from wild bananas into the top commercial variety — known as the Cavendish — and are currently testing these modified bananas in field trials. Researchers are also turning to the powerful, precise gene-editing tool CRISPR to boost the Cavendish’s resilience against the fungus, known as Fusarium wilt tropical race 4 (TR4).

Breeding TR4 resistance into the Cavendish using conventional methods isn’t possible because the variety is sterile and propagated by cloning. So the only way to save the Cavendish may be to tweak its genome, says Randy Ploetz, a plant pathologist at the University of Florida in Homestead. The variety accounts for 99% of global banana shipments.

Continue reading “CRISPR might be the banana’s only hope against a deadly fungus” | >

Circa 2016

90% of people who try to learn guitar quit in the first year. So when Brian Fan wanted to start strumming out lullabies for his baby daughter, he reinvented the instrument itself. Suddenly, a single finger on a button could replace four on different strings, and anyone could learn to play popular songs in a few minutes.

Meet the Magic Instruments Rhythm guitar. It might look like a toy video game controller from Guitar Hero, but it can play real music through its built-in speaker. And with the accompanying app, you’ll get instructions for how play tons of popular songs by big name artists from The Beatles to Bob Marley.

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https://youtube.com/watch?v=E1AxVXt2Gv4&feature=share

Marcus Hutter is a senior research scientist at DeepMind and professor at Australian National University. Throughout his career of research, including with Jürgen Schmidhuber and Shane Legg, he has proposed a lot of interesting ideas in and around the field of artificial general intelligence, including the development of the AIXI model which is a mathematical approach to AGI that incorporates ideas of Kolmogorov complexity, Solomonoff induction, and reinforcement learning.

This episode is presented by Cash App. Download it & use code “LexPodcast”:
Cash App (App Store): https://apple.co/2sPrUHe.
Cash App (Google Play): https://bit.ly/2MlvP5w.

PODCAST INFO:
Podcast website:

Lex Fridman Podcast


Apple Podcasts:
https://apple.co/2lwqZIr.
Spotify:
https://spoti.fi/2nEwCF8
RSS:
https://lexfridman.com/feed/podcast/
Full episodes playlist:

Clips playlist:

EPISODE LINKS:
Hutter Prize: http://prize.hutter1.net.
Marcus web: http://www.hutter1.net.
Books mentioned:
- Universal AI: https://amzn.to/2waIAuw.
- AI: A Modern Approach: https://amzn.to/3camxnY
- Reinforcement Learning: https://amzn.to/2PoANj9
- Theory of Knowledge: https://amzn.to/3a6Vp7x.

OUTLINE:

Continue reading “Marcus Hutter: Universal Artificial Intelligence, AIXI, and AGI” | >