AARP Defines Bitcoin for Its 38 Million Members as a ‘Bunch of Computer Code’ for Criminals

AARP, a US-based interest group that advocates for social change, just shared its definition of Bitcoin: “A bunch of computer code that a bunch of criminals, idealists and speculators agree is worth ‘real’ money. Sadly, its real-money value swings widely, making it impractical except for criminals, idealists and speculators.” Formerly known as the American Association […]

Google Bows Out Of Pentagon’s $10 Billion Cloud-Computing Race

Google will not compete for a $10 billion opportunity to build the Defense Department’s cloud-computing infrastructure, the company said Tuesday, saying the project could conflict with its corporate values regarding the use of artificial intelligence. The contract, known as the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure, or JEDI for short, calls for a massive cloud-computing system that […]

Ultrafast optical fiber-based electron gun to reveal atomic motions

One of the most enduring “Holy Grail” experiments in science has been attempts to directly observe atomic motions during structural changes. This prospect underpins the entire field of chemistry because a chemical process occurs during a transition state—the point of no return separating the reactant configuration from the product configuration. What does that transition state […]

Google will not bid for the Pentagon’s $10B cloud computing contract, citing its “AI Principles”

Google has dropped out of the running for JEDI, the massive Defense Department cloud computing contract potentially worth $10 billion. In a statement to Bloomberg, Google said that it decided not to participate in the bidding process, which ends this week, because the contract may not align with the company’s principles for how artificial intelligence […]

Microsoft invests in Grab to bring AI and big data to on-demand services

Microsoft has made a strategic investment in ride-hailing and on-demand services company Grab as part of a deal that includes collaborating on big data and AI projects. Under the agreement, Singapore-based Grab will adopt Microsoft Azure as its preferred cloud platformAzure cloud computing service. Microsoft and Grab didn’t disclose financial terms. The idea behind the […]