Lifeboat Foundation

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.

Continue reading “‘Bigger than the cloud’ … Xero makes first move towards automated accounting” »

Since appointing the former Microsoft executive Lu Qi as the new Chief Operating Officer and Vice Chairman, Baidu has reshuffled its senior management team and company structure to focus more on artificial intelligence.

The self-made billionaire sees tremendous opportunity in machine learning.

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.

Words and promises of action in some far off future election will not save the once great natural wonder of the Great Barrier Reef from death.

If most of the world’s coral reefs die, as scientists fear is increasingly likely, some of the richest and most colorful life in the ocean could be lost, along with huge sums from reef tourism. In poorer countries, lives are at stake: Hundreds of millions of people get their protein primarily from reef fish, and the loss of that food supply could become a humanitarian crisis.

Researchers at ETH Zurich and IBM Research Zurich have built a tiny redox flow battery. This means that future computer chip stacks — in which individual chips are stacked like pancakes to save space and energy — could be supplied with electrical power and cooled at the same time by such integrated flow batteries (Energy & Environmental Science, “3D-printed fluidic networks for high-power-density heat-managing miniaturized redox flow batteries”).

In a flow battery, an electrochemical reaction is used to produce electricity out of two liquid electrolytes, which are pumped to the battery cell from outside via a closed electrolyte loop.

The World Economic Forum has posted an article that hints at something that I have also suggested. (I am not taking credit. Others have suggested the idea too…But advancing tech and credible, continued visibility may help us to finally be taken seriously!)

I am not referring to purchasing and retiring carbon credits. I like that idea too. But here is a blockchain idea that can enable fleets of autonomous, shared, electric vehicles. Benefits to individuals and to society are numerous.

The future is just around the corner. Non-coin applications of the blockchain will support many great things. Goodbye car ownership. Hello clean air! The future of personal transportation.

Continue reading “Blockchain can dramatically reduce pollution and traffic jams” »

“Two Tesla Motors veterans want to build a European counterpart to Elon Musk’s “gigafactory”, in an effort to stake out a dominant position in the fast-evolving supply chain for makers of electric vehicles.”

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Say hello to the fireworks of tomorrow.