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BitPay, the world’s largest payment processor for virtual currencies, announces that it now offers translations into 10 languages plus English for their entire checkout experience. Merchants servicing international customers can now present bitcoin payment instructions in the buyer’s native language, allowing merchants to more easily conduct business in emerging markets.
Recently at the European Bitcoin Conference in Amsterdam, BitPay co-founder and CEO Tony Gallippi announced that the company is actively hiring sales engineers, a director of marketing, and software developers for its new offices in Amsterdam and Montreal.
“The European market for bitcoin adoption is very large, perhaps larger than in the United States,” says Gallippi. “Nearly every European business can already deal in multiple currencies, a prerequisite which is rarely seen in the U.S. Many small businesses in Europe have frequent cross-border transactions to Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa where a borderless payment system like bitcoin has great potential.”
In addition to the translations, the company has expanded its list of currencies in which merchants can set prices for their sales. The new additions include the Argentine Peso (ARS), and Gold and Silver troy ounce (XAU and XAG). For example, if a gold dealer wants to sell one ounce of gold at 5% over spot, they can set the price to 1.05 XAU and BitPay will calculate the checkout in bitcoins at the up-to-the-minute rate.
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Scientists, academics, artists, architects, urbanists, engineers, practitioners, activists, inventors and water drinkers are invited to submit projects and papers (25-minute presentations), performances (up to 20 minutes), panels and workshops (3 hours maximum and panels must include at least 45 minutes of discussion), on the theme “Water Views: Caring and Daring”.
As an element, water embodies extremes and contrasts: oceanic depth or shallow rivulet, transparent or opaque, flowing or still. Water cycles through the living systems of the planet: water bodies, life forms, atmosphere. Climate change has produced global water extremes in terms of sea level rise, polar ice disappearance, floods, droughts and desertification. Is water a shared resource or a commodity that is bought, sold, owned and wasted? While we might not all share the same perception of water, exploring deeper connections to it may facilitate a greater understanding of how our collective views have influenced actions and decisions about water. 3WDS14 will explore questions about how we are living, and will continue to live, with water and its contrasts. There is a demand for new perceptions and approaches to water management, urban planning, and cooperation, as well as for a renewed respect for water as a vital resource and shared heritage.
The symposium encourages transdisciplinary approaches that include the following sub-themes:
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The first week of October brings the National Day holiday in China, marking the anniversary of Mao Zedong’s founding of the People’s Republic in 1949. It’s a day of government-organized celebrations with military parades, musical concerts, and fireworks. But even though it’s a major holiday in a country called the People’s Republic, there’s one thing that will almost certainly not happen in the country: big events organized by the people themselves.
It’s no secret that the Chinese government dislikes mass protests. But a fascinating pair of studies led by political scientist Gary King uses rigorously observed patterns of censorship on Chinese social media to show just how systematically the Community Party works to avoid grassroots gatherings of any kind.
King believes Internet censorship in China is the “most extensive effort to selectively censor human expression ever implemented.” The government’s Internet police force employs an estimated 50,000 people who collaborate with an additional 300,000 Community Party members—and that’s not counting the employees that private firms must hire to review the content on their own sites. Over the phone, King told me that the effort is so large that “it’s like an elephant walking through a room.” Together with colleagues Jennifer Pan and Margaret Roberts, King was able to track and measure its footprints, gaining new insights into the Chinese Leviathan.
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Orçun M. Özalp, Head of Emerging Business/Strategic Marketing, Turkcell is speaking in the Virtualisation & Cloud track on Day Three of the Broadband World Forum, taking place on the 22nd – 24th October 2013 at the RAI Exhibition and Convention Centre, Amsterdam.
Ahead of the show we talk to him about the unique advantages that telcos can bring to the managed cloud services market.
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Over the last 200 years, the world has experienced several waves of innovation, which successful companies learned to navigate. The Industrial Revolution brought machines and factories that powered economies of scale and scope, making a profound impact on society and the culture of the world. With the Internet Revolution we have seen the rise of computing power, information sharing and data networks, fundamentally changing the way we connect (on whatever device).
And now we are at the cusp of another metamorphic change that will spawn new business models, new jobs and new operational efficiencies: The industrial internet, the convergence of contextual data, people and brilliant machines.
Whether we’re discussing the consumer internet or the industrial internet, a new challenge arises with the seemingly endless proliferation of connected devices and intelligent machines: Big data. Consider that 90 percent of the data in the world today was created within the last two years. And according to IDC’s Digital Universe study, between now and 2020 the amount of digital data is expected to double every two years – much of which will be ‘dark’ data that won’t ever be used.
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We've noted before attempts to inflate the importance of copyright, patents and trademarks by including a bunch of other sectors that are only tangentially related to them when it comes to totting up their economic impact.
For example, last year Mike wrote about a joint Department of Commerce/US Patent and Trademark Office "study" that included 2.5 million grocery store jobs in its definition of "IP-intensive" industries.
Now the Europeans are getting in on the act. The European Patent Office and the Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market, responsible for trademarks and designs in Europe, have come out with a very similar study, which uses exactly the same technique as the earlier USPTO/Department of Commerce work, as James Love explains:
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To the east of Hull's city center lies a new footbridge connecting the English city's Old Town conservation area to an industrial space currently undergoing redevelopment. While most footbridges probably wouldn't warrant mention on Gizmag's pages, this particular footbridge, designed by architects McDowell+Benedetti, features a novel mechanical system that enables people to "ride" across the River Hull as the bridge slowly rotates to make way for water-based traffic.
The result of an international design competition originally held in 2005, the River Hull Footbridge consists of two main elements: a large circular hub allowing access from the west side, and a steel spine which cantilevers 35 m (114 ft) over the water of the River Hull. The steel spine supports both a long and gradual walkway, and a shorter, steeper walkway.
The bridge arches, thus allowing smaller river traffic to pass beneath without issue. However, when larger vessels require access, an electrical drive mechanism rotates the walkway section of the footbridge out of the way.
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Kim Dotcom, the colorful and controversial Megaupload founder, has one more accomplishment to add to his already pretty unique resume: Dotcom made an appearance in a new ad for New Zealand-based ISP Orcon, decrying broadband caps with the memorable line: “It’s called capping — and it’s not cool.”
The ad is part of a push by Orcon to promote uncapped broadband and lower the price of internet access in New Zealand. Check it out below:
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Last month's awarding of the 2020 Olympic Games to Tokyo could be great news for technology.
Pushed by a desire to showcase their expertise to the world, some of the country's biggest companies are now targeting 2020 for the deployment of new technologies that could revolutionize mobile telecommunications, consumer electronics, automobiles and even the way people watch the Olympic Games on television.
In a series of presentations at the Ceatec 2013 electronics expo in Japan this week, companies outlined their plans for cell phones that transmit data 100 times faster than today, TV pictures with 16 times as much detail as current high-definition and cars that drive themselves.
They might sound like fanciful dreams, but consider what happened last time Japan hosted the Olympic Games.
In 1964, the country undertook a massive infrastructure program that included building the famous Shinkansen bullet train, numerous subway lines in Tokyo, an expressway system through the city and hotels and facilities for visitors. Back then, technology wasn't nearly as pervasive as it is today, but the 1964 games were notable as the first to be broadcast overseas via satellite and in color.
And so again in 2020, the Olympic Games might serve to push forward television technology.
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October 3, 2013 11:48 AM
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Leading ICT journalist Jennifer Baker is joined by Marietje Schaake MEP (ALDE), to discuss dual-use technologies and growing concerns surrounding ‘digital arms’ proliferation.
Ms Schaake warns about the danger of technologies with both civil and military applications. The MEP is not looking to add legislative control over exports of a electronics. Instead, Schaake points out that Europe should pay closer attention to the countries they reach. Such an approach aims at protecting European citizens and those of third countries, where humanitarian concerns may be present, including a possible ‘black list’ approach to the issue. By raising these issues, Schaake aims to end the exports of digital arms, as well as addressing much greater challenges such as cyber security.
‘It is a bit hypocritical to talk about the NSA revaluations with concern to stress the importance of cyber security, which is also a very popular topic nowadays, without addressing the fact that it’s EU based companies that are making and producing these digital arms.’
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With Ofcom having initially announced its intention for a pilot of ‘white space’ technology in April 2013, the UK telecom regulator has now unveiled the identities of those companies that will take part in the project. Over the course of the next six months Ofcom has confirmed that around 20 public and private organisations will be participating in the pilot by running trials to test a variety of innovative applications – ranging from sensors that monitor the behaviour of cities, to dynamic information for road users and rural broadband in hard to reach places.
Among the more notable companies taking part in the pilot, British fixed line incumbent BT will work with technology specialist Neul2 and the Department for Transport to test the potential enhancement of traffic information, using white spaces to transmit data on traffic congestion and varying traffic conditions to as part of a wider project along the A14 between Felixstowe and Cambridge.
Microsoft, meanwhile, is planning to test how white spaces can provide people with access to free Wi-Fi in Glasgow, which is said to have the lowest level of broadband take-up of all UK cities. Also highlighted by Ofcom, internet service provider (ISP) Click4internet will work with technology partners KTS and SineCom to use white spaces to test rural broadband in locations obscured by thick foliage or challenging topography; it will carry out its tests in Hampshire, West Sussex, Dorset and the Isle of Wight.
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Jennifer Baker is joined by Neil Corlett, spokesperson for the ALDE Group, to discuss the PRISM scandal, involving the US National Security Agency (NSA) collecting data on European civilians and the SWIFT scandal, regarding bank account information monitoring.
Mr Corlett states that “we cannot brush this under the carpet any more”, sharing his shock that the United States is using their intelligence agency to spy on their allies. In regards to the SWIFT scandal, involving personal bank transfer data, he warns that the Terrorist Finance Tracking program is not set up to allow the NSA to spy on private citizens, going over their privacy rights. The ALDE spokesperson shares that ”the EU needs its own clear rules on data privacy” to guide all future negotiations with third countries.
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French energy giant EDF Renewable Energy, owners of a portfolio containing over 5 GW of developed projects and 2.4 GW of installed capacity, have inaugurated their latest project, the 143 MW Catalina Solar project located near Kern County in California, US, the company’s largest utility-scale solar PV project currently installed. Construction of the project began in May of last year, and was fully completed in June, 2013. Official dedication for the project was on the 27th of September, celebrating the completion of what Bloomberg New Energy Finance is reporting to be the world’s 8th largest photovoltaic plant.
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Katharina Fabricius plunged from a dive boat into the Pacific Ocean of tomorrow.
She kicked through blue water until she spotted a ceramic tile attached to the bottom of a reef.
A year earlier, the ecologist from the Australian Institute of Marine Science had placed this small square near a fissure in the sea floor where gas bubbles up from the earth. She hoped the next generation of baby corals would settle on it and take root.
Fabricius yanked a knife from her ankle holster, unscrewed the plate and pulled it close. Even underwater the problem was clear. Tiles from healthy reefs nearby were covered with budding coral colonies in starbursts of red, yellow, pink and blue. This plate was coated with a filthy film of algae and fringed with hairy sprigs of seaweed.
Instead of a brilliant new coral reef, what sprouted here resembled a slimy lake bottom.
Isolating the cause was easy. Only one thing separated this spot from the lush tropical reefs a few hundred yards away.
Carbon dioxide.
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Hong Kong-based conglomerate Hutchison Whampoa, which already owns Irish 3G-only mobile operator 3 Ireland, has asked European Union (EU) competition regulators to give the thumbs up to its planned takeover of another mobile operator, O2 Ireland, from Spain’s Telefonica.
If ratified, the enlarged entity will be the second largest cellular services provider in the Republic. In a web site posting, the European Commission (EC) has said it will rule on the EUR780 million (USD1.1 billion) deal by 6 November. Reuters notes that in order to push the deal through, Hutch’s 3 Ireland subsidiary may have to make some concessions to EU regulators, given that the takeover will reduce the number of players in the domestic mobile market by one, to three.
In other markets such a reduction in the level of competition has fuelled competition concerns: indeed, the Hong Kong firm – which is controlled by Asia’s richest man Li Ka Shing – had to relinquish mobile spectrum and promise rivals access to its network when its Austrian unit acquired Orange Austria recently.
Microsoft today said it will ship eight security updates next week to patch critical vulnerabilities in Windows and Internet Explorer (IE), with the one aimed at IE plugging the hole attackers have been exploiting for months.
"The Critical update for Internet Explorer will be a cumulative update which will address the publicly disclosed issue described in Security Advisory 2887505," confirmed Dustin Childs on the Microsoft Security Response Center (MSRC) blog today.
Security experts identified the IE update as the one to deploy first, citing the fact that one of the vulnerabilities has been used by cyber criminals in targeted attacks against users in Japan and Taiwan. "IE is always top of the list," said Andrew Storms, director of DevOps at cloud security vendor CloudPassage, in an interview today.
On Sept. 17, Microsoft confirmed that hackers were exploiting a critical unpatched vulnerability in Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) and Internet Explorer 9 (IE9). The bug, however, existed in all versions of the browser, including the 12-year-old IE6 and the newest IE11.
Over the next two weeks, security companies reported that attacks had been aimed at Japanese and Taiwanese organizations since July. And earlier this week, exploit code went public as a working module was added to the open-source Metasploit penetration framework. Researchers predicted that the Metasploit appearance would result in an increase in attacks as less-capable hackers copied the code and added it to their weaponized toolkits.
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For much of the human population, “long term” means “what am I going to eat for dinner tonight?” For others, “long term” might mean the next quarter or year. But looking 10, 25 or 50 years into the future and making predictions is usually reserved for researchers, think tanks, government agencies or futurists.
Indeed, larger organizations like multinational companies who deliver products and services to people worldwide need long lead times to obtain resources, improve designs and manufacture and transport products. One such company is Cisco, which provides network devices and management, IOS and NX-OS software, optical networking, storage area networks, security systems, data centers and more.
Cisco’s Dave Evans, the company’s Chief Futurist, made some long term projections in his 2009 “Point of View” report, “Top 25 Technology Predictions.” Even four years in, we’re already seeing some of the gaugeable predictions are on track to meet or exceed his expectations:
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While it makes sense that manufacturing products en masse would be more efficient than manufacturing them one by one, Michigan Technological University researchers found that 3D printing saves on energy because it cuts out shipping and allows users to make objects with less material.
Overall, they found that 3D printing cuts down on energy use by 41 to 64 percent. ”The bottom line is, we can get substantial reductions in energy and CO2 emissions from making things at home,” associate professor Joshua Pearce said in a release.
Finnish icebreaker company Arctia Shipping Ltd has moved its headquarters closer to the waters, so close in fact that its new office building floats in the Helsinki harbor. Designed by K2S Architects, the 950 square meter (10,225 sq ft) floating office was built in a shipping yard in the west of Finland before being towed to its new home at Meriksarmi Pier.
The choice to create a floating HQ was based on Arctia's need to have its management team and ground personnel as close as possible to its ships. Starting out with the original plan to build on the pier, K2S quickly came up with the idea of creating a floating building, which meant it had more room to get creative. The decision to be build a floating structure also meant that the architects didn't need to clear land or impact the local landscape during or after the construction process.
"There was not enough space on ground and this solution also allows the company to move the office building into another location if necessary," K2S architect Mikko Summanen tells Gizmag. "The whole structure was built in the dock yards in controlled climate conditions, which is a great benefit in a Nordic climate."
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At first glance, a merry-go-round that generates electricity appears to be a charming idea. But Empower Playgrounds President, Ben Markham, came up with the idea in 2006 during an 18-month stint volunteering in Ghana. There he was struck by the lack of lighting in rural schools and dwellings, as well as the paucity of playground equipment. A charming idea it remains, but it's a serious one, too.
Like any merry-go-round, Empower Playgrounds' is designed for children to take turns riding and pushing. But in this case, the deck of the merry-go-round sits on top of a hub bearing with a drive shaft connected to a helical gearbox to ramp up the revolutions in the gearing. This turns a windmill generator, producing electricity with over 70-percent efficiency, according to the company. A buried cable transmits the current to a DC converter so that electrical energy can be stored in a deep cycle battery with management technology to maximize the battery's life. A solar panel is installed with the power enclosure to keep the battery topped up during school holidays.
The Energizer Battery Corporation, a sponsor of Empower Playgrounds, has designed an LED lantern which provides 40 hours of light from a single charge. These can be donated to rural communities in Ghana from Empower Playgrounds' website. A lantern for a group of schoolchildren for US$50.
According to Fast Company, the "lantern groups" are organized according to where they live. But because many families can afford to send only some of their children to school, and because, alas, those children tend to be boys, Empower Playgrounds is encouraging change by making girls "lantern leaders."
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Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Associated British Foods and other global food and beverage companies are being urged to establish a zero-tolerance policy on land grabs.
In its report, Sugar Rush, published on Wednesday, Oxfam said sugar, along with soy and palm oil, was driving large-scale land acquisitions and land conflicts at the expense of small-scale food producers and their families.
"This is the first time we have focused on land, and targeted food and beverage companies using the lens of sugar," Erinch Sahan, the charity's private-sector policy adviser, said. "They have a huge amount of power and the three biggest players are a critical group."
Sugar is a key ingredient for food and drinks companies: 51% of sugar produced ends up in processed foods including soft drinks, sweets and ice-cream. It uses the most land for food production – sugar is grown on 31m hectares, an area the size of Italy. There have been 100 recorded large-scale land deals for sugar production occupying at least 4m hectares of land since 2000.
Demand for sugar is expected to rise by 25% by 2020. The industry is dominated by a handful of traders, with Bunge, Cargill, Czarnikow, ED&F, Louis Dreyfus, and Sucden accounting for about two-thirds of the world trade.
In 2011, the global trade in raw sugar was worth $47bn (£29bn). Of that $33.5bn-worth of exports came from developing countries. Yet in spite of the risks of land conflicts associated with sugar, soy and palm oil production, a lack of transparency by food and beverage giants makes it difficult for the public to hold companies accountable, Oxfam says.
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Another day, another radioactive-water spill. The operator of the meltdown-plagued Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant says at least 430 liters (110 gallons) spilled when workers overfilled a storage tank without a gauge that could have warned them of the danger.
The amount is tiny compared to the untold thousands of tons of radioactive water that have leaked, much of it into the Pacific Ocean, since a massive earthquake and tsunami wrecked the plant in 2011. But the error is one of many the operator has committed as it struggles to manage a seemingly endless, tainted flow.
Plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. said Thursday workers detected the water spilling from the top of one large tank when they were patrolling the site the night before. The tank is one of about 1,000 erected on the grounds around the plant to hold water used to cool the melted nuclear fuel in the broken reactors.
TEPCO said the water then spilled out of a concrete barrier surrounding the tank and believed that most of it reached the sea via a ditch next to the river. The company later said, however, radiation levels in sea water samples taken just off the plant’s coast remained below detectable levels.
The new leak is sure to add to public concern and criticism of TEPCO and the government for their handling of the nuclear crisis. In August, the utility reported a 300-ton leak from another storage tank, one of a string of leaks in recent months.
That came after the utility and the government acknowledged that contaminated groundwater was seeping into ocean at a rate of 300 tons a day for some time.
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October 3, 2013 11:46 AM
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Leading ICT journalist Jennifer Baker is joined by Marietje Schaake MEP (ALDE) in an exclusive interview to discuss the growing concerns surrounding Net Neutrality in the newly introduced European Commission plans for a single telecoms market in the European Union.
With the European Commission’s plans for a ‘connected continent’ seeing the light of day, MEP Schaake shares her concerns in regards to the lack of explicit means of securing net neutrality. One of the serious issues she points out is with service providers, allowing for more bandwidth to be given over to larger corporations, leaving slower and lower-quality service for smaller businesses and public organizations. Therefore, this may lead to unfair competition, which would stifle innovation. This prompts the MEP to state that this is not actual net neutrality. Marietje Schaake also points out that due to the upcoming elections, the late unveiling of this proposal means that the window of opportunity is already closing too fast in order for the European Parliament to catch up with amendments.
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The FBI arrested the proprietor of Silk Road, the industry-leading online black market for buying and selling drugs, in San Francisco yesterday, according to several reports.
An FBI criminal complaint [PDF] alleges that Ross William Ulbricht, whose listed aliases include “Dread Pirate Roberts” and “Silk Road,” violated federal law by delivering, distributing and dispensing controlled substances “by means of the Internet.” Heroin, cocaine, LSD, and methamphetamine are listed specifically, although Silk Road offered access to a much broader variety of drugs. Ulbricht is charged with operating the website, as well as soliciting “a Silk Road user to execute a murder-for-hire of another Silk Road user, who was threatening to release the identities of thousands of users of the site,” according to the FBI document.
Time Newsfeed reporter Jessica Roy reports that Department of Justice documents show that the FBI also seized $3.6 million worth of Bitcoin. In the report, FBI agent Christopher Tarbell describes Silk Road as “the most sophisticated and extensive criminal marketplace on the Internet today.”
Tarbell claims several thousand drug dealers had used Silk Road to move hundreds of kilograms of drugs to “well over a hundred thousand buyers,” and estimates that the site generated $1.2 billion in sales and $80 million in commissions.
Information gleaned from the FBI’s investigation into the servers hosting the website showed that Silk Road had more than 957,000 accounts as of July. Between February 2011, when the FBI began its investigation, and July of this year, more than 1.2 million transactions were completed.
In addition to drugs, Silk Road was also used to solicit a variety of other illegal services, including hacking social networking accounts for identity theft, hacking ATM machines, and connections to real-world services for counterfeit money, stolen credit card information, firearms and ammunition, and hit men in more than 10 countries, the report claims. The site used the Tor network to help maintain anonymity.
“The site has sought to make conducting illegal transactions on the Internet as easy and frictionless as shopping online at mainstream ecommerce websites,” the report says.
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Already dependent on federal government jobs, New Mexico's junior Senator Martin Heinrich is supporting a plan to replace White Sands Missile Range jobs with renewable energy jobs. Most of these would be temporary construction jobs and would not be in Dona Ana County, but would be in the northern part of the state. Worse yet, the impact of the SunZia high power transmission line project could be the beginning of the end of White Sands Missile Range (WSMR) with its annual economic impact of $834 million to southern New Mexico.
Our County Commission and a City Council have been very prompt in issuing statements and passing resolutions in favor of protecting the wilderness or in support of gay marriage, but have failed to pass any resolution to protect WSMR and its $2.3 million per day impact to the local economy. Nor have they taken overt actions to try to avoid the economic impact of potential job losses for the more than 11,000 workers on WSMR each day if the SunZia project is approved. These workers buy houses, support the local economy and pay taxes (including GRT) and their loss would be catastrophic to our local economy.
According to John Conger, assistant secretary of defense, testing is absolutely necessary and it should be clearly understood that no other location exists in the United States where it is possible to conduct flight tests with the footprint requirements these weapons systems present. Approval of the SunZia power line would preclude WSMR from testing air and missile defense weapons systems vital to our national defense and would have a devastating impact on national security.
Senator Tom Udall, Congressman Steve Pearce, and Governor Susana Martinez all recognize the significance and importance of WSMR to our national defense and to the state of New Mexico and oppose the location of this project. They are all concerned about any loss of its capabilities and the economic impact it would have on this state. They are concerned that renewable energy projects sponsored by private corporations or public-private partnerships may diminish the role of WSMR.
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