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Alvarion demonstrates ultra-dense small cell platform to push towards gigabit networks at affordable cost
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Open Compute Keynote de Philippe Dewost a USI 2015 Unexpected Sources of Inspiration - Philippe Dewost's light sources
L'édition 2015 de la Conference USI (Unexpected Sources of Inspiration) s'est tenue début Juillet au Carrousel du Louvre et a confirmé son statut de meilleure Conference Tech sur Paris, combinant un site exceptionnel, une audience de plus de 1200 participants très diverse et de très bon niveau, et une palette de speakers dans plusieurs disciplines délivrant une quarantaine d'interventions sur les deux jours. La Caisse des Dépôts était de nouveau partenaire de cette édition avec plus d'une cinquantaine de participants dans le cadre de son programme de transformation digitale.
François Hisquin, CEO d'Octo et Curateur de la conférence, m'avait demandé d'intervenir sur la thématique d'Open Compute, dont la contribution aux enjeux de la transition énergétique n'est toujours pas correctement appréciée en Europe alors même que nous hébergeons des entreprises extrêmement talentueuses dans ce domaine.
Philippe J DEWOST's insight:
Keynote en video et slideshare pour ceux qui n'ont pas le son
CHECy's curator insight, November 25, 2015 12:15 PM
Intervention de Philippe Dewost, Président d'honneur du CHECy, lors de la conférence USI 2015.
The latest Apple product unveiling, with its overly-reported Face ID glitch, reminds us that the demo isn't the product. That can be good or bad.
It's Full Moon over Cupertino. iPhone X specs leaks ahead of the official presentation and kommentariat inmates howl in their cages. This isn't new, we've long known how psychotoxic Apple products can be, but the phenomenon seems to be reaching a new paroxysm. A few choice examples, starting with the grand prize [no links, no feeding the master baiters]:
The iPhone X proves the Unabomber was right
Steve Jobs gave us President Trump
Apple's Face ID Could Be A Powerful Tool For Mass Spying
But let's not lament these and many similar howlers. For Apple, they have a positive side: They attest to the power of the brand, to the magnetism of its products. Well…most of them. I maintain a list of Apple products that remain unmagnetized and fantasize that someday I'll have a quiet conversation with the DRIs ("Direct Responsible Individual" in Apple's parlance) in charge of these warts.
But we'll leave the somber jeremiad for a different day.
The sun is out here in Paris; tomorrow I head to Vézelay and the start of a two day walk along the Camino de Santiago (the pélerinage de Compostelle as it's known here). So, let's have fun with Craig Federighi's iPhone X FaceID demo glitch and, more generally, with the Demo genre. (The full two-hour September 12th keynote video is here.)
Craig Federighi, Apple's Senior VP of Software Engineering — affectionately known as Hair Force One — is an infectiously happy, eager demo-meister. But the demo gods challenged Federighi's disposition and caused his first attempt to unlock the iPhone X with his face to fail, leaving him staring at the standard unlock code screen.
Fortunately, a back-up phone was at hand — a testament to Federighi's lack of faith in his own work, or to years of demo hiccups. The stand-in phone worked as expected, and the demo proceeded without further divine retribution.
Philippe J DEWOST's insight:
Key Notes on Apple Keynotes
A counterpoint by Jean-Louis Gassee to last week's Alphabet/Google/Waymo SD Car winner-take-all thesis. Instead of a moonshot, we'll see messy, helpful increments. It's natural selection at work.Last week, I "explained" how Google was set to become the Microsoft of Self Driving (SD) cars. Machine learning leadership, sophisticated simulations and a Central Valley test site, immense computational and financial resources…the Google/Waymo endeavor has secured an insuperable advantage. You're a car manufacturer: What choice do have but to pay a premium for a Google SD license? You could go with cheaper, less advanced technology…and say goodbye to your company after the first 'mistake' on the road.At $1,000 a car, the SD license will be Google's Mother Lode 2.0, the dream of any tech company looking for a second growth wave.I concluded the article by promising to temper my enthusiasm and to offer a counterpoint, starting with a Horace Dediu quote:"Those who predict the future we call futurists. Those who know when the future will happen we call billionaires."It's one thing to predict, as Gordon Moore did in 1965, that semiconductors would double their computing power every 18 months (Moore's Law, seemingly slower of late). It's something else to know to invest in Apple's 1980 IPO (+30,797%) or, even better, Microsoft's 1986 stock market launch (+73,293%).It feels good to predict the emergence of SD cars: It has to happen because it'd be cool if it did. But when? Betting your company on even an approximate estimate of "Level Five: Full Automation" is a risk that you don't want to take.
Philippe J DEWOST's insight:
Jean-Louis Gassée's (@jlg) view on #Level5 autonomous driving is refreshing. @WeAreLeonard think that smart infrastructure might help both accelerate and secure deployments.
Open Hardware is about to radically flip both server & data center markets with huge amounts of certified, refurbished facebook servers available here and now
Open Hardware is touted to propel 80% of Facebook Data Center infrastructure, saving them 2Bn$ in the process.
This market, triggered and until recently dominated by hyperscale customers, is growing 30% year on year while the OEM server market declines (-6% y/y).
As Facebook is about to upgrade thousands of OCP machines to keep up with their gigantic CPU power needs, they are expected to offload the previous generation on the market, with unbeatable price/quality ratios as these natively rugged machines will be refurbished, tested, certified before being delivered.
To keep costs at minimum, the sales process is performed 100% online, and the delivery operated by a long standing OCP partner : Horizon Computing Solutions is not only the only distributor of Open Hardware Technology ; they also completed the first Open IT Hardware Product with RuggedPOD, the most power efficent Data Center Worldwide with a PUE = 1.0
Want to test a 16 core Bi-Xeon server ? It will cost you less than $1000 and you can order here.
From mondaynote
How could Microsoft's Windows Phone licensing business model stand a chance against Google's Free and Open Android? None of the Redmond giant's complicated countermeasures worked, its smartphone platform is dead. And yet, inexplicably, Microsoft failed to use a very simple move, one we'll explore today.
Just back from three weeks in the Country of Good Sin's heartland, I see Microsoft's fresh and well-received Fourth Quarter Fiscal Year 2017 Results. The numbers acknowledge what was already notorious: Windows Phone is dead.
"Phone revenue was immaterial and declined $361M."
This doesn't come as a surprise. Despite Microsoft's strenuous efforts to breathe life into its smartphone platform and devices, Windows Phone had been on an inexorable downward slope for several years, confirming a Horace Dediu theorem[as always, edits and emphasis mine]:
"As far as I've been able to observe, any company in the mobile phone market that ended up losing money has never recovered its standing in terms of share or profit."
Let's recall that, in September 2010, Redmond employees held what CNET called a "tacky 'funeral'" for iPhone and Blackberry. One wonders how they'll memorialize Windows Phone.
The gross failure of what once was the most powerful and richest tech company on the planet led to a search for a platform killer. Detectives didn't think they had to go far to nab a suspect: Android. Microsoft's Windows Phone was murdered by Google's smartphone OS. How could Redmond's money-making software licensing business model survive against a free and open source platform? Case closed.
No so fast.
Microsoft's smartphone troubles started well before the birth of Android. In a reversal of the famous dictum Victory Has Many Fathers But Defeat Is An Orphan, Windows Phone's collapse seems to have had many progenitors deeply embedded in the company's decades-old culture.
But before we look at facts, let's engage in a bit of fiction, let's imagine Microsoft decides to fight Android on Google's turf. In this alternate reality, Microsoft easily kills Android with one simple headline:
Windows Phone Now Free
The rest of the pitch writes itself.
Philippe J DEWOST's insight:
"it's the culture, stupid" - Even if it is easier to explain the past than act in the present to shape or avoid a future, this excellent piece by JLG reminds us all of how blinding corporate culture can be. Remembering that, in 2007, Nokia was the star according to the famous MBA mantra known as the "BCG Matrix" (#1 with twice #2's market share in a 2-digit growing market), that everybody knew that handset design should be segmented, and that mobile handset manufacturing had required decades of mastership and could not be improvised by a consumer electronics newcomer...
From www
Avec, entre Jeff Bezos et Jean-Marie Messier :
Nous avons appris le départ de Philippe Dewost de la Caisse des Dépôts début septembre. Il occupait jusqu'à présent les fonctions de Directeur adjoint de la Mission «Programme d'Investissements d'Avenir» où il pilotait le secteur de l'économie numérique (enveloppe initiale de 4,25 milliards d'euros).
Philippe J DEWOST's insight:
Escape Velocity = vitesse de libération
From www
Le spécialiste de la robotisation des chariots de manutention a réussi son introduction en Bourse. Il a levé 39,8 millions d'euros et le titre cote déjà 28% au-dessus du prix d'introduction.
Les robots ont le vent en poupe. Le succès de l'introduction en Bourse de Balyo vient encore le confirmer. La petite société française a en effet développé une solution de robotisation visant à rendre autonome les chariots de manutention.
Alors que le groupe a enregistré un chiffre d'affaires de «seulement» 5,2 millions d'euros l'an dernier et que le seuil de rentabilité n'est pas attendu avant 2019, il vient de lever près de 40 millions d'euros en Bourse. Un montant qui pourrait même être porté à 45,8 millions d'euros en cas d'exercice intégral de l'option de surallocation.
L'offre a été sursouscrite près de sept fois, autorisant la société à fixer un prix d'introduction à 4,11 euros par action, tout en haut de la fourchette 3,05 - 4,11 euros proposée en amont. La «clause d'extension» a, évidemment, été exercée en totalité.
Près de dix fois le chiffre d'affaires
Et le plébiscite des investisseurs ne s'arrête pas là. Le titre a débuté sa cotation le 9 juin, uniquement sous la forme de «promesses d'actions», et, à 13h30, il cotait déjà 28% au-dessus du prix d'introduction. Le tout dans un volume de marché très important, dépassant le million de titres échangés.
Balyo est actuellement valorisé à 148 millions d'euros, soit 9,9 fois le chiffre d'affaires attendu cette année par les analystes d'ID Midcap. Ils attendent pourtant une véritable envolée des ventes en 2017, à 15 millions d'euros (5,15 millions en 2016).
Philippe J DEWOST's insight:
Une très belle sortie pour le Fonds Ambition Numérique, souscrit par la Caisse Des Dépôts et géré par sa principale filiale Bpifrance dans le cadre du Programme des Investissements d'Avenir.
Avec ce démarrage en trombe de la cotation, tout commence (bien) désormais ... Bravo à Fabien Bardinet et à toute son équipe !
From techcrunch
French startup Algolia just raised a $53 million Series B round led by Accel, a couple of years after raising $18.3 million with… Accel also leading the round. So it looks like it's a love story between the VC firm and the software-as-a-service startup.
The reason is quite simple. Algolia is still growing like crazy, with its annual recurring revenue doubling every year. Algolia's goal hasn't changed — the startup wants to provide the best search experience to everyone building websites and apps out there.
Jason Lemkin's SaaStr fund, Jyoti Bansal, Clark Valberg and Des Traynor are also participating in today's round, as well as existing investors Alven Capital, Point Nine Capital and Storm Ventures.
Just like Twilio is handling calls and text messages for you so you don't have to, Algolia can also take care of the search box on your website. In just a few lines of code, you can replace your search feature with Algolia's search.
You'll need to feed Algolia with your search data and customize it to your needs, as well. After that, every time a user starts typing a letter, it'll query one of Algolia's servers and return results in no time. It's quite remarkable to see how quickly and accurately it works.
And chances are that you've been using Algolia without realizing it. The company is managing the search feature on Medium, DigitalOcean, Twitch, Stripe, Periscope, Crunchbase and many others.
The company now has 3,000 customers and handles 25 billion searches every month. Recently, the startup launched a fallback version of Algolia called Algolia Offline that you can use if you're in airplane mode or don't have a strong signal. Algolia also optimized its search feature for places.
With today's funding round, Algolia is going to open another office in London after Paris, San Francisco, New York City and Atlanta. And of course, the company wants to get new customers, build new features and maybe one day become the Stripe of search.
Philippe J DEWOST's insight:
La French Tech at its best !
Kudos to the Algolia team and Accel for this nice Series B
From finance
On an ordinary work day in mid-2016, a handful of Facebook engineers were sitting on the couches in a corner of the company's Menlo Park, California, headquarters when one of them tossed out a wacky idea.He suggested doing something that had never been done before and could potentially upend the $350 billion telecom market."It can't be so difficult to build our own system," the engineer said, referring to the telecom equipment that sends data across cables and wireless networks, and which the engineer suspected could be made to operate faster and cheaper than the pricey equipment sold by big vendors like Nortel, Huawei, Ericsson, Cisco or Juniper Networks.The engineer was suggesting building the telecom industry's first "white box" transponder, made with off-the-shelf parts such as chips from Broadcom and Acacia Communications, optical equipment from Lumentum, and software from one of the many new networking startups cropping up these days.Facebook's director of engineering Hans-Juergen Schmidtke, who was among those on the couch that day, was at first a naysayer."I was a little bit skeptical about it at the time," he recounted to Business Insider. As a former engineer at Juniper Networks, Schmidtke knew from experience that building telecom equipment systems was an expensive undertaking that involved hiring teams of specially trained engineers and sizeable R&D budgets. "Building a system ten years ago was like building a new company," Schmidtke said. Still, Schmidtke agreed to help this tiny group hack together a white box system at one of Facebook's famous hackathons. Three months later they had a working prototype. Six months later, on November 1, they announced it to the world as a real product called Voyager. The product's unveiling sent shockwaves through the telecom industry, putting gear makers on notice that the lucrative market they controlled for decades was about to get turned upside down — and not necessarily to their advantage.While the effort is essentially a side-project for Facebook, a social networking company whose bread-and-butter business is online advertising, the stakes could not be higher for the telecom equipment companies which risk seeing their specialized products reduced to interchangeable commodities and their influence diminished. For the industry's established companies, there's unease about Facebook's growing clout and its ultimate intentions. But in a sign of how serious Facebook's foray is being taken, there's already a recognition by some that the repercussions could be even more painful it they don't adapt.Voyager has already been tested by Facebook and European telecom company Telia over Telia's thousand-kilometer-telecom network. Plus, German telecom equipment maker ADVA Optical Networking is manufacturing the device and, as of a few weeks ago had nine customers trying it out for their telecom needs, a mix of big telecom companies and enterprises, it said. And Paris based telecom provider, Orange is also testing the device, working with Equinix and African telecom company MTN."We pulled it off essentially showing that when a few engineers can build a system within six months, the world has changed," Schmidtke said.One person told us that Schmidtke, who is insanely proud of Voyager, has become a star in his own corner of the tech world. When he and his team "go to conferences, they treat him like a tech celebrity, like a rock band," that person said.
Philippe J DEWOST's insight:
Fantastic read for any telecom engineer who wants to understand how a handful of determined engineers, when properly managed, can turn tables in a few months and displace a complete industry.Open Hardware is no longer a weak signal and has morphed into a powerful trend about to become a shockwave.To achieve such irony, very few people have realized that this game changer may be a fantastic opportunity for Europe, and that some core TIP players are totally unknown and unrespected French companies...
Intelligence artificielle : un logiciel abat en 1s le travail que des avocats font en 360.000 heures
Intelligence artificielle : un logiciel abat en 1s le travail que des avocats font en 360.000 heuresLa toute nouvelle intelligence artificielle de JPMorgan est l'employé du mois : elle peut résoudre en une seconde des arbitrages financiers qui prennent normalement quelques 360.000 heures de travail (soit une année) aux avocats de la firme. Le travail de cette machine artificielle, baptisée COIN, est d'interpréter les accords de prêts commerciaux. Et fait en prime nettement moins d'erreurs que les humains.
En s'emparant des activités de R&D dans le logiciel embarqué basées en France d'Intel, leader mondial des semi-conducteurs, la marque au Losange réalise le doublé. Le constructeur accélère clairement dans la voiture connectée, et redore son blason dans son pays d'origine où il vient sauver des emplois.
Philippe J DEWOST's insight:
Le retour de la Deep Tech dans le viseur des Corporates !
From www
La start-up Ector, qui propose un service de voiturier à la demande dans les gares et les aéroports, a bouclé un tour de table de 2 millions d'euros. Le fonds Ville de Demain, géré par Bpifrance dans le cadre du Programme d'investissements d'avenir (PIA), 123 Investment Managers, ainsi que Via-ID, un fonds de développement de Mobivia Groupe (Norauto, Midas…), et Day One Entrepreneurs & Partners ont participé à l'opération. En décembre 2015, la jeune pousse avait bouclé un premier tour de table de 500 000 euros.Le marchéFondée en 2013 par Manoël Roy, Jonathan Grandperrin, Charles Raymond et Thomas de Longvilliers sous la marque Smart Park, Ector a développé un service de prise en charge des véhicules dans les aéroports et les gares. Les utilisateurs réservent la prestation en ligne sur la plateforme Web ou l'application mobile. A leur arrivée au dépose-minute de la gare ou l'aéroport, un voiturier récupère la voiture pour la stationner dans un parking de proximité, où elle peut bénéficier de services d'entretien (nettoyage, plein d'essence, contrôle technique…). Au retour du voyageur, la voiture est restituée au dépose-minute pour gagner du temps. Lancé fin 2015 à Orly et Roissy Charles-de-Gaulle, le service dessert désormais 13 hubs (8 aéroports et 5 gares) en France et en Europe. Sur son segment d'activité, Ector doit faire face à des acteurs comme Drivy, TravelerCar et OuiCar, qui proposent la location de voitures entre particuliers, ou encore Stanley Robotics, qui a conçu un robot-voiturier capable de garer des voitures dans les parkings.Les objectifsCe nouvel investissement doit permettre à la start-up parisienne de consolider sa position sur le marché français et de mettre les voiles à l'international. Dans ce sens, elle prévoit de renforcer ses effectifs avec des profils commerciaux, techniques et opérationnels. Prochainement, la société lancera son service dans de nouvelles villes, à commencer par Marseille et Bordeaux.
Philippe J DEWOST's insight:
Un nouvel investissement du Fonds "Ville de Demain" souscrit par la Caisse Des Dépôts et géré par sa filiale Bpifrance dans le cadre du Programme d'Investissements d'Avenir.Ravi pour eux à la fois comme client et comme souscripteur du Fonds !
From www
This year, people are expected to spend more than half their day reading e-mail, articles, or posts on social media, and it's only going to get worse. To help solve this problem, researchers at Salesforce have developed an algorithm that uses machine learning to produce "surprisingly coherent and accurate" summaries according to MIT Technology Review.
Automatic summarization would be a particularly useful technology for Salesforce, which produces a variety of customer-service focused products. The company notes that the resulting summaries could be used by sales or customer service representatives to quickly digest e-mails and information, which would allow them to spend more time focused on their customers.
To that end, Salesforce is turning to machine learning to find ways to summarize longer blocks of texts, which it could eventually incorporate into its products. The company announced that it made two breakthroughs in natural language processing, introducing a new, "contextual word generation model," and a "new way of training summarization models." Together, the two advances allow researchers to automatically create summaries of longer texts that are accurate and readable. The company acquired a deep learning outfit MetaMind last year, which was behind the research.
Automatic text summarization works in two ways: extraction or abstraction
The researchers explain that automatic text summarization works in two ways: extraction or abstraction. With extraction, computer can draw from pre-existing wording in a text, but it's not very flexible. Abstraction allows the computer to introduce new words, but the system has to understand the original article enough to be able to introduce the right words.
This is where deep learning neural networks come into play. They processing numerous examples of sentences and words to spit out new representations of each phrase, which allow the system to interpret texts and introduce its own words. The researchers let their model to look back at the text it's working off of for additional context. It also looks back at earlier generated examples, to ensure that it's not repeating itself.
Salesforce's approach uses two teaching methods: teacher forced and reinforcement learning
The other breakthrough concerns how the researchers train the system to learn and improve itself. They used two approaches: teacher forcing and reinforcement learning. Reinforcement learning is a method that draws inspiration from how animals learn, and been used to teach Google's DeepMind how to play video games. In this instance, the model is allowed to generate a sequence of words, and the result is then scored with an automated evaluation metric known as ROUGE (Recall-Oriented Understudy for Gisting Evaluation). The algorithm updates itself with higher scores, leading to better outcomes with future summaries. Teacher forcing is when the results are scored word by word off of an established reference, which provide "very decent results," but which doesn't allow for much flexibility.
Researchers found that "ROUGE-optimized RL helps improve recall...and word level learning supervision ensures good language flow, making the summary more coherent and readable." Scored against this system, they found that their joint model scored higher than other approaches, and Richard Socher, Salesforce's chief scientist, noted that he didn't think that he'd ever seen "such a large improvement in any [natural-language-processing] task."
The results are pretty astonishing: the researchers provided several examples, showing the original article, a human-generated summary, and a summary generated by their own model, and in each case, the summaries are considerably shorter than the original text, but contain the essentials in a readable form. Despite their advances, there's still considerable work to be done in this field: MIT Technology Review spoke with Kristian Hammond, a professor at Northwestern University, who noted that the advance "shows the limits of relying purely on statistical machine learning," but that it's a step in the right direction.
Philippe J DEWOST's insight:
In 2 words : really impressive
Google has announced it's acquiring a $1.1bn chunk of HTC's smartphone business, and with it providing the once leading Taiwanese phone brand a much needed lifeline. But what does Google want with part of a smartphone business?Google isn't buying the whole of HTC, just a relatively large part of the Taipei-based company's smartphone business and not its Vive virtual reality headset business. Google gains half of HTC's research and development team – about 2,000 people – and a non-exclusive license for HTC's intellectual property, allowing it to take advantage of some of HTC's advances in smartphone technology.HTC gets a cash injection, which will help it survive in some very competitive markets, and Google gets to continue its "big bet on hardware" according to Rick Osterloh, the company's senior vice president for hardware.It's "a business decision to have access to one of the best R&D teams", said Neil Shah, research director at Counterpoint Technology Market Research. But it's also "a sort of emotional decision to save its close partners".Little history of hardwareWhile Google is the creator of the Android operating system, which is now used on more than 2bn devices a month, or 89% of mobile devices according to IDC, it has only dabbled with making its own smartphones and tablets. It routinely partnered with firms such as HTC, LG and Huawei to make the Nexus series of a devices, which sold in low volumes and acted as showcases for each new version of Android.Google bought Motorola in 2011 for $12.5bn (£9.24bn), and while it ran it as a separate company selling smartphones aimed at the low end, the acquisition was really about a large stock of important patents."Its main reasoning was to acquire Moto's patent portfolio so as to protect against Apple (and Microsoft) while also providing stiffer competition to Samsung (although Google would never admit this)," said David McQueen, research director at ABI Research.Google sold Motorola to China's Lenovo in 2014 for $2.9bn without the collection of patents.
Philippe J DEWOST's insight:
Hardware Is Not Dead. Talent is what matters.
Earlier this week, Tesla remotely upgraded select Florida Tesla owners' cars to expand their mileage capacity in an effort to ease and assist with Hurricane Irmaevacuation efforts. The move was praiseworthy and appropriate, but at the root of the gesture lies a terrifying prospect of our automotive future.
Tesla briefly sold a 60 and 60D trim level of its Model S and Model X vehicles. These models had 75 kWh battery packs installed, but were software limited to have less range to artificially create a more affordable entry-level tier for buyers. Buyers still had the option to upgrade to the full capacity for a charge if they changed their minds, and Tesla would "unlock" the capability via an over-the-air software update.
With category four Hurricane Irma headed straight for Florida, Tesla unlocked the full capacity of 60 and 60D model owners in Florida to give them about a 30 mile range boost while evacuating. It was genuinely helpful and an extremely savvy public relations move for the company.
But what it also previewed is our imminent future of unprecedented corporate control over how we drive and what we drive. I briefly mentioned it in the article yesterday, but it's not hard to imagine a worst case scenario where a company or corporation becomes a critical decision maker in disaster scenarios, like with Hurricane Irma, out of consumer and government control in a critical moment.
Now, I've never been one to play into the fears of autonomous driving or ridiculous theories of car hacking, though I recognize vehicle computer security as one of the most important developments in the automotive industry going forward. But this issue is concerned with the relationship between the company and the company's product.
What would happen if Tesla didn't unlock the range of those cars? It's not likely that any of the owners would become stranded, as Electrek reported most of Tesla's charging network was still functional at the time. But that could have easily been the scenario, and then we face a situation where people were physically capable of evacuating sooner but limited by an option box they didn't check. We now face a reality where we know our vehicles may hold more potential than we have access to, and that gets complicated in life or death scenarios
Philippe J DEWOST's insight:
Interesting story reminding us that, like a Patek Philippe, you don't fully own a Tesla ; unlike a Patek Philippe however, there are software upgrades in a Tesla and they are not only triggered with an extra payment...
Emmanuel HAVET's curator insight, September 13, 8:16 AM
Cette mise à jour automatique de la part de Tesla met en lumière ce qu'il se passe déjà avec d'autres acteurs qui eux n'ont d'accès qu'à nos données. Et là, c'est la douche froide...
VINCI : Philippe Dewost appointed director of Leonard, the VINCI innovation and foresight platform - NASDAQ.com
Philippe Dewost has been appointed director of Leonard, VINCI's new Group-wide innovation and foresight platform. He took up his duties on 1 September and reports to Pierre Coppey, Executive Vice-President of VINCI.
Philippe Dewost, a graduate of the École Normale Supérieure (Ulm), is a Corps des Mines engineer and holds an MBA from the Collège des Ingénieurs.
He is a co-founder of Internet service provider Wanadoo and notably re-launched Orange France Telecom's home devices business.
He also served as CEO of imSense ltd, a British startup based in Cambridge. The company, which was acquired by Apple in 2010, developed and patented one-of-a-kind imaging technologies that are now used more than 500 million times a day across most Apple products.
Starting in 2011, Philippe Dewost headed the Digital Economy section of the Investments of the Future Programme at Groupe Caisse des Dépôts (CDC). At the end of 2015, Philippe Dewost also launched LaBChain, a CDC Blockchain initiative.
Philippe Dewost was the prime mover behind La French Tech, the government's French startup ecosystem initiative, and is also Honorary President of the Centre des Hautes Etudes du Cyberespace (CHECy).
"Philippe has more than 20 years of experience in Internet and mobile ecosystems within large tech and telecoms groups and startups. This expertise will be of invaluable help in developing Leonard, the new VINCI open laboratory focused on the future of cities and infrastructure," said Pierre Coppey, Executive Vice-President of VINCI.
"With Leonard, VINCI is offering me a chance to contribute to the digital transformation of durable structures and move from bytes to concrete. I am honoured and proud to have this opportunity to work with them over the long term to write the digital record of the builders," said Philippe Dewost in taking up his new position.
Philippe J DEWOST's insight:
With Leonard, VINCI is offering me a chance to contribute to the digital transformation of durable structures and move from bytes to concrete. I am honoured and proud to have this opportunity to work with them over the long term in order to pave the digital trace of builders #BuildTech #ConcreteTech
From www
When a magazine challenged a technology company to use AI to pick 50 unheard of companies that were set to flourish, the experiment yielded dramatic results.
In 2009, Ira Sager of Businessweek magazine set a challenge for Quid AI's CEO Bob Goodson: programme a computer to pick 50 unheard of companies that are set to rock the world.
The domain of picking "start-up winners" was - and largely still is - dominated by a belief held by the venture capital (VC) industry that machines do not play a role in the identification of winners. Ironically, the VC world, having fuelled the creation of computing, is one of the last areas of business to introduce computing to decision-making.
Nearly eight years later, the magazine revisited the list to see how "Goodson plus the machine" had performed. The results surprised even Goodson: Evernote, Spotify, Etsy, Zynga, Palantir, Cloudera, OPOWER – the list goes on. The list featured not only names widely known to the public and leaders of industries, but also high performers such as Ibibo, which had eight employees in 2009 when selected and now has $2 billion annual sales as the top hotel booking site in India. Twenty percent of the companies chosen had reached billion-dollar valuations.
To contextualize these results, Bloomberg Businessweek turned to one of the leading "fund of funds" in the US, which has been investing in VC funds since the 1980s and has one of the richest data sets available on actual company performance and for benchmarking VC portfolio performance.
The fund of funds was not named for compliance reasons, but its research showed that, had the 50 companies been a VC portfolio, it would have been the second-best-performing fund of all time. Only one fund has ever chosen better, which did most of its investments in the late 1990s and rode the dotcom bubble successfully. Of course, in this hypothetical portfolio, one could choose any company, whereas VCs often need to compete to invest.
Recently, Bloomberg asked Goodson to repeat the feat. Here, we'll take an in-depth look at the methodology behind the new list, and also broader trends set to flourish in the market.
Philippe J DEWOST's insight:
Rage against the machine. I suggest a close look to the list closing this post as one never knows...
From n26
We've been busy the past few weeks. First, we announced we would be bringing Apple Pay to Italy, and shortly after we announced we would bring it to Spain. Our customers in France started to raise some eyebrows. Our comments section was flooded with questions and requests, as it always is, which is why we're excited to break the next piece of news.
Later this year, N26 will bring Apple Pay, which is transforming mobile payments with an easy, secure and private way to pay that's fast and convenient, to customers in France. N26 is proud to bring Apple Pay to France. Supporting Apple Pay is another example of the innovation for which N26 is so well known.
Philippe J DEWOST's insight:
Another reason to consider N26 as one of the best #neobanks out there...
Le plan radical de Nexedi pour couvrir les zones blanches en Très Haut Débit pour 200 M€ et en 12 mois seulement
From www
Communiqué de presse
Paris, le 16 juin 2017.
Nexedi offre à l'Etat de couvrir la France en très haut débit en moins de 12 mois pour 200 millions d'euros et sur la base de technologies exclusivement françaises dont l'ensemble du code source est libre ou souverain.
Comme le rapporte Numerama, un rapport de la Cour des comptes consacré au plan « France Très Haut Débit » a jugé très sévèrement la stratégie actuelle. Il considère notamment que les évaluations faites par le gouvernement Hollande pour raccorder la totalité des Français ne sont absolument pas réalistes. Ce n'est pas 20 milliards d'euros que le plan coûtera à la nation mais 34,9 milliards, soit 75 % de plus.
Le Président de la République considère que le plan Très Haut Débit actuel n'est pas réaliste en l'état. Si on veut raccorder tout le pays d'ici 2022, il faut réduire le rôle de la fibre optique et mettre davantage l'accent sur d'autres solutions, comme la 4G. Pour raccorder tout le territoire en fibre, à supposer que cela en vaille la peine, « il faudra des années, parfois des décennies », a-t-il prophétisé. Et comme le rapporte Nextinpact, le président de la République a déclaré qu'« il ne faut pas mentir aux gens ». La fibre ne sera pas rapidement déployée « jusqu'au dernier kilomètre, dans le dernier hameau », du moins pas avant des décennies.
Nexedi souscrit à cette analyse et propose de la mettre en pratique sous 12 mois avec du matériel et du logiciel "Made in France". Ce matériel déjà déployé par l'armée française et la SNCF permet d'obtenir un résultat meilleur pour un coût dix fois inférieur aux solutions d'infrastructure "Made in China" généralement utilisées par les opérateurs.
Il repose sur les produits d'un consortium de sociétés françaises (Air-Lynx, Amarisoft, AW2S, BJT Partners, Horizon Computing et Nexedi) qui constitue l'unique constructeur français d'infrastructures LTE (4G/future 5G) suite au rachat d'Alcatel et qui fait déjà l'objet d'un soutien de BPI France dans le cadre de son programme "Grands Défis du Numérique".
L'offre de Nexedi permet de réaliser un réseau 4G autonome à 300 Mbps ou 1 Gbps pour un investissement de 5000€ par site ou village et un coût récurrent annuel de moins de 500€ par site ou village. L'enveloppe de 200 M€ permet de couvrir de l'ordre de 20.000 sites et de les relier par une combinaison de liaisons radio ou satellitaires aux grandes infrastructures fibrées déjà en place ou à venir, tout en fournissant à l'armée une solution de communication résiliente (PMR).
Nexedi a démontré depuis 10 ans sa capacité à réaliser des infrastructures fiables à bas coût dans des domaines où les grands opérateurs nationaux échouent. Ainsi, Cloudwatt et Numergy ont bénéficié d'aides publiques considérables sans parvenir pour autant à livrer un cloud souverain compétitif. Au contraire, Nexedi a développé pour un coût 100 fois inférieur le logiciel de Edge Cloud "SlapOS" qui est désormais au coeur du succès du projet Teralab (hébergement Big Data souverain utilisé par de nombreux acteurs du CAC40).
L'absence de couverture des zones blanches conduit à positionner la France entre l'Iran et le Kazakhstan en termes de pénétration de la 4G. L'absence de progrès dans le domaine du haut débit depuis 15 ans relève de blocages comportementaux des grands opérateurs qui préfèrent les infrastructures "Made in China" aux solutions sur base Amarisoft pour la couverture LTE, comme ils préfèrent pour leur business cloud les solutions "Made in China" à SlapOS, quitte à dépenser 10 à 100 fois plus qu'avec des technologies souveraines issues de PME françaises et déjà exportées.
L'offre de Nexedi est valable jusqu'au 14 juillet 2017.
Philippe J DEWOST's insight:
Une approche radicale, non-conventionnelle, très "deep tech" de la couverture Très Haut Débit et utilisant des solutions 100% françaises, à mon avis cela se regarde et se teste !
From techcrunch
Here's a surprise turn of events: Softbank — maker of the friendly Pepper robot and a major M&A player in the tech world — has just announced that it is acquiring two more robotics companies from Google owner Alphabet as part of its own deeper move into the field: it is buying Big Dog developer Boston Dynamics and the secretive bipedal robotics firm Schaft.A spokesperson for Softbank has confirmed to us that the terms of the deal are not being disclosed, but we will try to find out. In case you are wondering (we were), we have double checked and these are the only two of Alphabet's robotics companies getting acquired by Softbank.There had been lots of murmurs about Google (and then Alphabet) wanting to offload Boston Dynamics for over a year now. Most recently, Toyota was apparently eyeing up an acquisition of the two businesses.But robots are huge across all of Japan, with some of the biggest innovations, investments, and motivations for developing them coming out of the country; and so, in the end, it looks like another titan of Japanese industry beat Toyota to the punch."Today, there are many issues we still cannot solve by ourselves with human capabilities," said Masayoshi Son, Chairman & CEO of SoftBank Group Corp., in a statement. "Smart robotics are going to be a key driver of the next stage of the Information Revolution, and Marc and his team at Boston Dynamics are the clear technology leaders in advanced dynamic robots. I am thrilled to welcome them to the SoftBank family and look forward to supporting them as they continue to advance the field of robotics and explore applications that can help make life easier, safer and more fulfilling."While Softbank has been hard at work doubling down on big bets in areas that it believes will be at the center of the future of computing — other acquisitions have included its $24 billion acquisition of chip maker ARM Holdings — for Alphabet, this is part of the company's bigger efforts to rationalise some of its many acquisitions and strategic bets over the years that have not panned out as great fits with the wider business.It looks like the whole team is coming over with the deal. "We at Boston Dynamics are excited to be part of SoftBank's bold vision and its position creating the next technology revolution, and we share SoftBank's belief that advances in technology should be for the benefit of humanity," said Marc Raibert, CEO and founder of Boston Dynamics, in a statement."We look forward to working with SoftBank in our mission to push the boundaries of what advanced robots can do and to create useful applications in a smarter and more connected world."When Alphabet (still called Google at the time) acquired Shaft and Boston Dynamics in 2013 (Shaft was purchased as one of a group of seven acquisitions), the company did not disclose the terms of the deals.While Boston Dynamics has been pretty public in posting (sometimes terrifying) videos and generally talking about of its advances in making animal-like robots that can trek across all terrains and get up instantly when knocked over, Schaft has been a fairly quiet presence.Schaft revealed its first big prototypes only about two years after the acquisition. The company has been around since 2012, after being incubated in the JSK Robotics Laboratory at the University of Tokyo by co-founders Yuto Nakanishi, Junichi Urata, Narito Suzuki and Koichi Nishiwaki. It remains a secretive company: an attempted visit to its website today was blocked.
Philippe J DEWOST's insight:
Impressed with Softbank acquisition spree ; now completing their consumer robotics stake (France's Aldebaran Robotics) with a military arm , after snapping (mobile) chip design behemoth ARM ($24Bn). Vertical integration in sight ?
Orange and four venture capitalist partners have promised to invest up to €100 million ($113 million) in telecom infrastructure startups over the next three to four years.
The funding will support startups challenging equipment incumbents like Ericsson AB (Nasdaq: ERIC), Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. and Nokia Corp. (NYSE: NOK) as telcos embrace disruptive network technologies based on software, virtualization and open source code.
The news is the latest sign of Orange's desire to play a more influential role in the development of network technologies and reflects growing frustration with the traditional vendors.
It came as the French service provider said it would begin nurturing network startups for the first time in partnership with social media giant Facebook, which has also become more active in the networks sector over the past year.
The two companies already collaborate through the Telecom Infra Project, a Facebook-led initiative that was launched in early 2016 with a goal of more rapidly commercializing low-cost and innovative network technologies. (See Facebook: TIP Will Open Telecom Hardware.)
Four startups, chosen from a pool of 22 applicants, will receive support from Orange(NYSE: FTE) and Facebook and be invited to a TIP summit in California in November, where they will be able to meet operator members.
TIP now counts about 450 members including "all of the most important mobile operators" in the world, claimed Steve Jarrett, Facebook's head of infrastructure partnerships for Europe and the Middle East.
The winning startups are
Orange Fab, the division that looks after all startup activities for the French telco, has launched a new program called Telecom Track to look after the startups from the network and infrastructure sector.
Startups will also be eligible to receive financial support from Orange Digital Ventures, the French operator's investment fund, as well as venture capital partners Iris Capital, Innovacom, Cathay Innovation and Breega Capital, although funding for the Telecom Track players is not guaranteed.
"Those who grow fast and strike partnerships and scale internationally will get the money," said Julien-David Nitlech, a partner at Iris Capital.
While €100 million ($113 million) may seem like a relatively small amount in the context of the broader network equipment market, the sudden willingness of venture capitalists to support new infrastructure players may alarm the established vendors.
"The market has historically not had a lot of venture financing," said Jarrett. "We hope to change that."
Facebook colleague Min Jun added: "We thought the investor community would need more convincing and we have seen major traction. Investors are saying we believe in this and will commit funds."
Facebook will not make any direct equity investments but says it is "conceivable" that it could acquire startups in the accelerator program.
By helping to reduce network costs, and making it easier to deploy networks in areas that currently lack connectivity, the social networking giant hopes to get more people online and using its services, it is widely assumed.
For Orange, the ultimate goal is a complete overhaul of the way it has traditionally built networks.
"We cannot be dependent on long standardization processes anymore," said Etienne Moreau, an investment manager at Orange Digital Ventures. "If we want to have control of our technology and be a software company we need to get into new technologies like white boxes and get rid of the black boxes we have sourced from equipment vendors."
With white boxes, telcos would run network software on commercial, off-the-shelf servers, instead of relying on the "black boxes" that combine proprietary hardware and software.
Orange has previously flagged its interest in white boxes and noted the challenge they pose to equipment suppliers such as Cisco Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CSCO), which has come under pressure to adapt its own technology and business model accordingly. (See Orange Plots Mass Network-as-a-Service Rollout and Cisco Takes Bold Software Step to Counter White Box Threat – Report.)
Bertrand Rojat, the deputy vice president of Orange's Technocentre research-and-development unit, told Light Reading that, as well as forming a "commercial relationship" with startups, Orange was eager to make their technology available to some of its telco partners.
Besides other service providers involved with TIP, that could include the members of Go Ignite.
"That is an initiative between Orange, Deutsche Telekom, Telefónica and SingTel," he said. "If we have a startup that is good for one of us then it might be good for all of us."
Such moves could help the startup technologies to gain the scale they would need to be commercially viable in wide area networks.
Much like AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T) in the US, Orange appears to be stepping into roles that vendors have traditionally performed as it tries to seize control of network development and sever the ties that have previously bound it to a small number of big players.
Philippe J DEWOST's insight:
Extremely interesting post following Orange Fab's latest press release, as it delivers several key hints :
1/ It took Facebook and OCP (and then more recently TIP) for Telcos to finally realize that becoming a giant purchasing department and outsourcing infrastructure (and knowledge) to a handful of equipment vendors was not the only way. We are still very early but still, a few giants wake up.
2/ Open Source will redefine Hardware the same way it flipped Software ; only pending question is "Who will be the Red Hat of Open Hardware ?"
3/ #HardwareIsNotDead and Deep Tech is back with more and more VC's looking (back) into it !
Congratulations to Orange and Iris Capital for paving the way !
From www
The limits of silicon have not been reached quite yet.
Today, an IBM-led group of researchers have detailed a breakthrough transistor design, one that will enable processors to continue their Moore's Law march toward smaller, more affordable iterations. Better still? They achieved it not with carbon nanotubes or some other theoretical solution, but with an inventive new process that actually works, and should scale up to the demands of mass manufacturing within several years.
That should also, conveniently enough, be just in time to power the self-driving cars, on-board artificial intelligence, and 5G sensors that comprise the ambitions of nearly every major tech player today—which was no sure thing.
5nm Or Bust
For decades, the semiconductor industry has obsessed over smallness, and for good reason. The more transistors you can squeeze into a chip, the more speed and power efficiency gains you reap, at lower cost. The famed Moore's Law is simply the observation made by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore, in 1965, that the number of transistors had doubled every year. In 1975, Moore revised that estimate to every two years. While the industry has fallen off of that pace, it still regularly finds ways to shrink.
Doing so has required no shortage of inventiveness. The last major breakthrough came in 2009, when researchers detailed a new type of transistor design called FinFET. The first manufacturing of a FinFET transistor design in 2012 gave the industry a much-needed boost, enabling processors made on a 22-nanometer process. FinFET was a revolutionary step in its own right, and the first major shift in transistor structure in decades. Its key insight was to use a 3-D structure to control electric current, rather than the 2-D "planar" system of years past.
"Fundamentally, FinFET structure is a single rectangle, with the three sides of the structure covered in gates," says Mukesh Khare, vice president of semiconductor research for IBM Research. Think of the transistor as a switch; applying different voltages to the gate turns the transistor "on" or "off." Having three sides surrounded by gates maximizes the amount of current flowing in the "on" state, for performance gains, and minimizes the amount of leakage in the "off" state, which improves efficiency.
But just five years later, those gains already threaten to run dry. "The problem with FinFET is it's running out of steam," says Dan Hutcheson, CEO of VLSI Research, which focuses on semiconductor manufacturing. While FinFET underpins today's bleeding-edge 10nm process chips, and should be sufficient for 7nm as well, the fun stops there. "Around 5nm, in order to keep the scaling and transistor working, we need to move to a different structure," Hutcheson says.
Enter IBM. Rather than FinFET's vertical fin structure, the company—along with research partners GlobalFoundries and Samsung—has gone horizontal, layering silicon nanosheets in a way that effectively results in a fourth gate.
"You can imagine that FinFET is now turned sideways, and stacked on top of each other," says Khare. For a sense of scale, in this architecture electrical signals pass through a switch that's the width of two or three strands of DNA.
"It's a big development," says Hutcheson. "If I can make the transistor smaller, I get more transistors in the same area, which means I get more compute power in the same area." In this case, that number leaps from 20 billion transistors in a 7nm process to 30 billion on a 5nm process, fingernail-sized chip. IBM pegs the gains at either 40 percent better performance at the same power, or 75 percent reduction in power at the same efficiency.
Just in Time
The timing couldn't be better.
Actual processors built off of this new structure aren't expected to hit the market until 2019 at the earliest. But that roughly lines up with industry estimates for broader adoption of everything from self-driving cars to 5G, innovations that can't scale without a functional 5nm process in place.
"The world's sitting on this stuff, artificial intelligence, self-driving cars. They're all highly dependent on more efficient computing power. That only comes from this type of technology," says Hutcheson. "Without this, we stop."
Take self-driving cars as a specific example. They may work well enough today, but they also require tens of thousands of dollars worth of chips to function, an impractical added cost for a mainstream product. A 5nm process drives those expenses way down. Think, too, of always-on IoT sensors that will collect constant streams of data in a 5G world. Or more practically, think of smartphones that can last two or three days on a charge rather than one, with roughly the same-sized battery. And that's before you hit the categories that no one's even thought of yet.
"The economic value that Moore's Law generates is unquestionable. That's where innovations such as this one come into play, to extend scaling not by traditional ways but coming up with innovative structures," says Khare.
Widespread adoption of many of those technologies is still years away. And success in all of them will require a confluence of both technological and regulatory progress. At least when they get there, though, the tiny chips that make it all work will be right there waiting for them.
Philippe J DEWOST's insight:
"I'm not dead. I'm getting better" - Moore's Law & the Holy Grail according to IBM
From m
Start-up nation ?Deuxième atout, les décideurs internationaux classent la capacité de recherche et d'innovation au premier rang des atouts de la France, loin devant ses capacités touristiques et ses infrastructures. Un vrai changement d'appréciation."Ce n'est pas encore une image de start-up nation, mais c'est une perspective très positive", se félicite Marc Lhermitte.Un coup de chapeau à Fleur Pellerin, secrétaire d'Etat chargée de l'Economie numérique, qui a lancé la French Tech, ce label qui regroupe toutes les jeunes entreprises françaises technologiques. Flambeau repris par Axelle Lemaire et Emmanuel Macron, avec les encouragements de François Hollande. Ils se sont efforcés de promouvoir les start-up, mais aussi de rendre la fiscalité et les réglementations plus hospitalières.
Philippe J DEWOST's insight:
La French Tech en 2016: +30% d'investissements étrangers , +24% de créations d'emplois !Ces superbes résultats ne doivent pas nous faire oublier la prochaine étape qui d'ici environ 2 ans deviendra décisive : un marché d'exits (corporate et mises en bourse) suffisant pour générer de la liquidité, valoriser correctement les meilleures de nos startups, générer des retours satisfaisants pour tous les investisseurs (y compris les Fonds du PIA) et éviter incidemment que la French Tech ne deviennent l'open bar de nos amis américains et chinois.
La start-up parisienne Stanley Robotics vient d'officialiser une levée de fonds de 3,6 millions d'euros auprès d'Elaia Partners, de Bpifrance (via le fonds Ville de demain) et d'Idinvest Partners. Fondée en 2015, Stanley Robotics a développé un robot voiturier baptisé Stan. L'automate est le fruit d'une dizaine d'années de R&D, les fondateurs ayant travaillé précédemment dans un laboratoire de recherche dédié aux technologies des véhicules autonomes. L'objectif de cette augmentation de capital est de déployer sa solution à l'international.Testé à l'aéroport de Roissy-Charles-de-GaulleDepuis le mois de février dernier, Stan est expérimenté dans deux parkings de l'aéroport de Roissy. "Il suffit au conducteur de garer sa voiture dans un box dédié à l'entrée du parking, puis de s'enregistrer sur un automate à proximité. Une fois le véhicule isolé du public, le robot se met en position, repère les pneus, s'ajuste à la longueur de la voiture, la soulève, puis la transfère", expliquent nos confrères de L'Usine Nouvelle. Le système est par ailleurs connecté au billet d'avion du conducteur et connaît donc sa date de retour. De cette façon, le robot ramène le véhicule dans le box situé à l'entrée du parking en temps voulu.Stocker 50% de véhicules supplémentairesSi ce service de voiturier autonome facilite l'arrivée et le départ des voyageurs stationnant leur véhicule sur de longues périodes dans les aéroports, il propose surtout des avantages significatifs aux gestionnaires des parkings. Selon les créateurs de Stan, ce service autonome permettrait d'optimiser le stationnement des véhicules et ainsi de stocker 50% de voitures en plus.D'après la start-up, les avantages de sa solution ne se limitent pas au seul gain d'espace. Elle permettrait de repenser entièrement la conception de nouveaux parkings où la présence du public serait interdite. Les contraintes réglementaires seraient alors significativement allégées, ce qui permettrait de diviser par deux le coût d'une place de parking, détaille L'Usine Nouvelle.Cap sur l'internationalLa start-up, qui emploie actuellement 25 collaborateurs, entend déployer sa solution dans d'autres régions du monde. "D'autres projets sont en cours de développement en France et à l'étranger. Le premier d'entre eux sera lancé d'ici la fin de l'année", indique-t-elle. "Europe, Amérique du Nord, Asie, Golfe… Nous regardons attentivement toutes les zones où le trafic aérien va exploser dans les prochaines années", précise Stéphane Evanno, COO et cofondateur de Stanley Robotics. La pépite parisienne n'est toutefois pas la seule à développer ce genre de service. En Allemagne, par exemple, le robot Ray, mis au point par l'entreprise Serva Transport Systems, a été testé à l'aéroport de Düsseldorf dès juillet 2014.
Philippe J DEWOST's insight:
Un très bel investissement du Fonds "Ville de Demain" souscrit par la Caisse des Dépôts et géré par sa filiale Bpifrance dans le cadre du PIA.
From medium
Back in 2007, when London was booming as the financial capital of the world, a new field called "algorithmic trading" was emerging. In essence, it is about leveraging Artificial Intelligence to place…
Philippe J DEWOST's insight:
Absolute must read. Y compris par le nouveau Ministre.
From digiconomist
Key Network Statistics
Bitcoin's current estimated annual electricity consumption* (TWh)= 12.79
Annualized global mining revenues = $1,425,461,447
Annualized estimated global mining costs = $639,742,471
Country closest to Bitcoin in terms of electricity consumption = Mozambique
Estimated electricity used over the previous day (KWh) = 35,054,382
Implied Watts per GH/s = 0.332
Electricity consumed per transaction (KWh)= 110
Number of U.S. households that could be powered by Bitcoin = 1,184,708.00
Number of U.S. households powered for 1 day by the electricity consumed for a single transaction = 3.71
Bitcoin's electricity consumption as a percentage of the world's electricity consumption = 0.06%
*The assumptions underlying this estimate can be found here.
Did you know?
Ever since its inception Bitcoin's trust-minimizing consensus has been enabled by its proof-of-work algorithm. New sets of transactions (blocks) are added to Bitcoin's blockchain roughly every 10 minutes by so-called miners. While working on the blockchain these miners aren't required to trust each other. The only thing miners have to trust is the code that runs Bitcoin. The code includes several rules to validate new transactions. For example, a transaction can only be valid if the sender actually owns the sent amount. Every miner individually confirms whether transactions adhere to these rules, eliminating the need to trust other miners.
The trick is to get all miners to agree on the same history of transactions. Every miner in the network is constantly tasked with preparing the next batch of transactions for the blockchain. Only one of these blocks will be randomly selected to become the latest block on the chain. Random selection in a distributed network isn't easy, so this is where proof-of-work comes in. In proof-of-work, the next block comes from the first miner that produces a valid one. This is easier said than done, as the Bitcoin protocol makes it very difficult for miners to do so. In fact, the difficulty is regularly adjusted by the protocol to ensure that all miners in the network will only produce one valid bock every 10 minutes on average. Once one of the miners finally manages to produce a valid block, it will inform the rest of the network. Other miners will accept this block once they confirm it adheres to all rules, and then discard whatever block they had been working on themselves. The lucky miner gets rewarded with a fixed amount of coins, along with the transaction fees belonging to the processed transactions in the new block. The cycle then starts again.
What kind of work are miners performing?
The process of producing a valid block is largely based on trial and error, where miners are making numerous attempts every second trying to find the right value for a block component called the "nonce", and hoping the resulting completed block will match the requirements (as there is no way to predict the outcome). For this reason, mining is sometimes compared to a lottery where you can pick your own numbers. The number of attempts (hashes) per second is given by your mining equipment's hashrate. This will typically be expressed in Gigahash per second (1 billion hashes per second).
Philippe J DEWOST's insight:
Bitcoin as a country would rank #82 between Mozambique and Slovenia in terms of energy consumption !
Fascinating and uptodate index with a trove of data for any of those who want a better insight on "the energy issue" posed by Bitcoin Mining, with several comparisons helping you to seize and frame notions such as TeraWatthour (TWh) per year.
And as a bonus, a very clear explanation of what mining is about and why proof of work has been designed as such.
Philippe J DEWOST's curator insight, May 12, 12:25 PM
Bitcoin as a country would rank #82 between Mozambique and Slovenia in terms of energy consumption !
Fascinating and uptodate index with a trove of data for any of those who want a better insight on "the energy issue" posed by Bitcoin Mining, with several comparisons helping you to seize and frame notions such as TeraWatthour (TWh) per year.
And as a bonus, a very clear explanation of what mining is about and why proof of work has been designed as such.
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text:
Treasuries Under Pressure Again, 10Y Yield Rises Above 2.4%, TLT Down 1.2%
The latest post-Fed bond sell-off continues apace Thursday, with the ten-year bond falling further in price, lifting its yield (which moves in the opposite direction) to 2.421%, per Tradeweb data, up from 2.131% to start the week and 1.624% on May 2.
How much of a surprise has this latest move been? Not even 24 hours ago, at noon yesterday, DoubleLine bond guru Jeff Gundlach said that Treasuries were due to start rallying "fairly quickly" and that he didn't think the ten-year yield would reach 2.5% at any point this year. That yield threshold is already looking perilously close.
The strange, and troubling, part of this rate rise is that it comes even as inflation has lagged Fed expectations. Here's Guy LeBas, chief fixed-income strategist at Janney Montgomery Scott, with his take this morning:
The FOMC issued its June monetary policy statement, which was followed up by a press conference in which Chairman Ben Bernanke laid out a path to moderate the pace of bond buying. That path would have bond buying slow by late-2013 and end by mid-2014, in line with consensus views. Despite the largely as-expected nature of the Chairman's path, the interest rate markets sold off sharply, with the ten year note making the biggest one day move since 2011. Yields on the benchmark note rose 17 basis points to 2.35%, while two year yields rose 4 basis points to 0.31%. This morning, the curve is selling off further, with tens coming in slightly north of 2.40%, yet ten year inflation breakevens are trading down to their lowest level in twelve months, and real yields are now at the same level as when Operation Twist was introduced in 2011.
Bond ETFs continue to get hit. The iShares Trust Barclays 20+ Year Treasury Bond Fund (TLT) is already down 1.2% in the first ten minutes of stock trading Thursday to $110.75. The iShares Barclays U.S. Treasury Bond Fund (GOVT) is down 0.5% to $24.60.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
pmwhewitt wrote:Is strict Buddhism and strong political opinions compatible?
I mean, is Buddhism essentially exclusive to a certain political beliefs or ideal, or is it generally quite open?
As someone who isn't hugely knowledgeable about general Buddhism yet, I personally can't really see how Buddhism and conservatism would ever be compatible,
pmwhewitt wrote:As someone interested in politics, I have briefly read about the Buddhist stance on politics but not a huge amount.
Is strict Buddhism and strong political opinions compatible? I mean, is Buddhism essentially exclusive to a certain political beliefs or ideal, or is it generally quite open?
As someone who isn't hugely knowledgeable about general Buddhism yet, I personally can't really see how Buddhism and conservatism would ever be compatible, but maybe I'm wrong (not that it ultimately matters, I'm quite liberal actually lol).
Dhammanando wrote:I find them to be perfectly compatible. To the extent that the Buddha has anything at all to say on social and political matters, the positions he takes are for the most part traditionalist conservative ones. The most political Buddhist text of all —the Mahasupina Jataka— reads almost like a manifesto of classical western conservatism (though not of what goes by the name of 'conservatism' in contemporary Britain or America).
http://www.dharmaweb.org/index.php/Dr._ ... nd_Culture
Buddhism and Politics
The Buddha had gone beyond all worldly affairs, but still gave advice on good government.
The Buddha came from a warrior caste and was naturally brought into association with kings, princes and ministers. Despite His origin and association, He never resorted to the influence of political power to introduce His teaching, nor allowed His Teaching to be misused for gaining political power. But today, many politicians try to drag the Buddha's name into politics by introducing Him as a communist, capitalist, or even an imperialist. They have forgotten that the new political philosophy as we know it really developed in the West long after the Buddha's time. Those who try to make use of the good name of the Buddha for their own personal advantage must remember that the Buddha was the Supremely Enlightened One who had gone beyond all worldly concerns. There is an inherent problem of trying to intermingle religion with politics. The basis of religion is morality, purity and faith, while that for politics is power. In the course of history, religion has often been used to give legitimacy to those in power and their exercise of that power. Religion was used to justify wars and conquests, persecutions, atrocities, rebellions, destruction of works of art and culture. When religion is used to pander to political whims, it has to forego its high moral ideals and become debased by worldly political demands.
The thrust of the Buddha Dhamma is not directed to the creation of new political institutions and establishing political arrangements. Basically, it seeks to approach the problems of society by reforming the individuals constituting that society and by suggesting some general principles through which the society can be guided towards greater humanism, improved welfare of its members, and more equitable sharing of resources. There is a limit to the extent to which a political system can safeguard the happiness and prosperity of its people. No political system, no matter how ideal it may appear to be, can bring about peace and happiness as long as the people in the system are dominated by greed, hatred and delusion. In addition, no matter what political system is adopted, there are certain universal factors which the members of that society will have to experience: the effects of good and bad kamma, the lack of real satisfaction or everlasting happiness in the world characterized by dukkha (unsatisfactoriness), anicca (impermanence), and anatta (egolessness). To the Buddhist, nowhere in Samsara is there real freedom, not even in the heavens or the world of Brahama.
Although a good and just political system which guarantees basic human rights and contains checks and balances to the use of power is an important condition for a happy in society, people should not fritter away their time by endlessly searching for the ultimate political system where men can be completely free, because complete freedom cannot be found in any system but only in minds which are free. To be free, people will have to look within their own minds and work towards freeing themselves from the chains of ignorance and craving. Freedom in the truest sense is only possible when a person uses Dhamma to develop his character through good speech and action and to train his mind so as to expand his mental potential and achieve his ultimate aim of enlightenment. While recognizing the usefulness of separating religion from politics and the limitations of political systems in bringing about peace and happiness, there are several aspects of the Buddha's teaching which have close correspondence to the political arrangements of the present day. Firstly, the Buddha spoke about the equality of all human beings long before Abraham Lincoln, and that classes and castes are artificial barriers erected by society. The only classification of human beings, according to the Buddha, is based on the quality of their moral conduct. Secondly, the Buddha encouraged the spirit of social -co-operation and active participation in society. This spirit is actively promoted in the political process of modern societies. Thirdly, since no one was appointed as the Buddha's successor, the members of the Order were to be guided by the Dhamma and Vinaya, or in short, the Rule of Law. Until today very member of the Sangha is to abide by the Rule of Law which governs and guides their conduct. Fourthly, the Buddha encouraged the spirit of consultation and the democratic process. This is shown within the community of the Order in which all members have the right to decide on matters of general concern. When a serious question arose demanding attention, the issues were put before the monks and discussed in a manner similar to the democratic parliamentary system used today.
This self-governing procedure may come as a surprise to many to learn that in the assemblies of Buddhists in India 2,500 years and more ago are to be found the rudiments of the parliamentary practice of the present day. A special officer similar to 'Mr. Speaker' was appointed to preserve the dignity of the Parliamentary Chief Whip, was also appointed to see if the quorum was secured. Matters were put forward in the form of a motion which was open to discussion. In some cases it was done once, in others three times, thus anticipating the practice of Parliament in requiring that a bill be read a third time before it becomes law. If the discussion showed a difference of opinion, it was to be settled by the vote of the majority through balloting. The Buddhist approach to political power is the moralization and the responsible use of public power. The Buddha preached non-violence and peace as a universal message. He did not approve of violence or the destruction of life, and declared that there is no such thing as a 'just' war. He taught: 'The victor breeds hatred, the defeated lives in misery. He who renounces both victory and defeat is happy and peaceful.' Not only did the Buddha teach non-violence and peace, He was perhaps the first and only religious teacher who went to the battlefield personally to prevent the outbreak of a war. He diffused tension between the Sakyas and the Koliyas who were about to wage war over the waters of Rohini. He also dissuaded King Ajatasattu from attacking the Kingdom of the Vajjis.
The Buddha discussed the importance and the prerequisites of a good government. He showed how the country could become corrupt, degenerate and unhappy when the head of the government becomes corrupt and unjust. He spoke against corruption and how a government should act based on humanitarian principles. The Buddha once said, 'When the ruler of a country is just and good, the ministers become just and good; when the ministers are just and good, the higher officials become just and good; when the higher officials are just and good, the rank and file become just and good; when the rank and file become just and good, the people become just and good.'(Anguttara Nikaya) In the Cakkavatti Sihananda Sutta, the Buddha said that immorality and crime, such as theft, falsehood, violence, hatred, cruelty, could arise from poverty. Kings and governments may try to suppress crime through punishment, but it is futile to eradicate crimes through force. In the Kutadanta Sutta, the Buddha suggested economic development instead of force to reduce crime. The government should use the country's resources to improve the economic conditions of the country. It could embark on agricultural and rural development, provide financial support to entrepreneurs and business, provide adequate wages for workers to maintain a decent life with human dignity.
In the Jataka, the Buddha had given to rules for Good Government, known as 'Dasa Raja Dharma'. These ten rules can be applied even today by any government which wishes to rule the country peacefully. The rules are as follows:1) be liberal and avoid selfishness, 2) maintain a high moral character, 3) be prepared to sacrifice one's own pleasure for the well-being of the subjects, 4) be honest and maintain absolute integrity, 5) be kind and gentle, 6) lead a simple life for the subjects to emulate, 7) be free from hatred of any kind, 8) exercise non-violence, 9) practise patience, and 10) respect public opinion to promote peace and harmony.
Regarding the behavior of rulers, He further advised:A good ruler should act impartially and should not be biased and discriminate between one particular group of subjects against another. - A good ruler should not harbor any form of hatred against any of his subjects. - A good ruler should show no fear whatsoever in the enforcement of the law, if it is justifiable. - A good ruler must possess a clear understanding of the law to be enforced. It should not be enforced just because the ruler has the authority to enforce the law. It must be done in a reasonable manner and with common sense. -- (Cakkavatti Sihananda Sutta)
In the Milinda Panha,it is stated: 'If a man, who is unfit, incompetent, immoral, improper, unable and unworthy of kingship, has enthroned himself a king or a ruler with great authority, he is subject to be tortured' to be subject to a variety of punishment by the people, because, being unfit and unworthy, he has placed himself unrighteously in the seat of sovereignty. The ruler, like others who violate and transgress moral codes and basic rules of all social laws of mankind, is equally subject to punishment; and moreover, to be censured is the ruler who conducts himself as a robber of the public.'
In a Jataka story, it is mentioned that a ruler who punishes innocent people and does not punish the culprit is not suitable to rule a country.
The king always improves himself and carefully examines his own conduct in deeds, words and thoughts, trying to discover and listen to public opinion as to whether or not he had been guilty of any faults and mistakes in ruling the kingdom. If it is found that he rules unrighteously, the public will complain that they are ruined by the wicked ruler with unjust treatment, punishment, taxation, or other oppressions including corruption of any kind, and they will react against him in one way or another. On the contrary, if he rules righteously they will bless him: 'Long live His Majesty.' (Majjhima Nikaya) The Buddha'semphasis on the moral duty of a ruler to use public power to improve the welfare of the people had inspired Emperor Asoka in the Third Century B.C. to do likewise.
Emperor Asoka, a sparkling example of this principle, resolved to live according to and preach the Dhamma and to serve his subjects and all humanity. He declared his non-aggressive intentions to his neighbors, assuring them of his goodwill and sending envoys to distant kings bearing his message of peace and non-aggression. He promoted the energetic practice of the socio-moral virtues of honesty, truthfulness, compassion, benevolence, non-violence, considerate behavior towards all, non-extravagance, non-acquisitiveness, and non-injury to animals. He encouraged religious freedom and mutual respect for each other's creed. He went on periodic tours preaching the Dhamma to the rural people. He undertook works of public utility, such as founding of hospitals for men and animals, supplying of medicine, planting of roadside trees and groves, digging of wells, and construction of watering sheds and rest houses. He expressly forbade cruelty to animals. Sometimes the Buddha is said to be a social reformer. Among other things, He condemned the caste system, recognized the equality of people, spoke on the need to improve socio-economic conditions, recognized the importance of a more equitable distribution of wealth among the rich and the poor, raised the status of women, recommended the incorporation of humanism in government and administration, and taught that a society should not be run by greed but with consideration and compassion for the people.
Despite all these, His contribution to mankind is much greater because He took off at a point which no other social reformer before or ever since had done, that is, by going to the deepest roots of human ill which are found in the human mind. It is only in the human mind that true reform can be effected. Reforms imposed by force upon the external world have a very short life because they have no roots. But those reforms which spring as a result of the transformation of man's inner consciousness remain rooted. While their branches spread outwards, they draw their nourishment from an unfailing source -- the subconscious imperatives of the life-stream itself. So reforms come about when men's minds have prepared the way for them, and they live as long as men revitalize them out of their own love of truth, justice and their fellow men.
The doctrine preached by the Buddha is not one based on 'Political Philosophy'. Nor is it a doctrine that encourages men to worldly pleasures. It sets out a way to attain Nibbana. In other words, its ultimate aim is to put an end to craving (Tanha) that keeps them in bondage to this world. A stanza from the Dhammapada best summarizes this statement: 'The path that leads to worldly gain is one, and the path that leads to Nibbana(by leading a religious life)is another.' However, this does not mean that Buddhists cannot or should not get involved in the political process, which is a social reality. The lives of the members of a society are shaped by laws and regulations, economic arrangements allowed within a country, institutional arrangements, which are influenced by the political arrangements of that society. Nevertheless, if a Buddhist wishes to be involved in politics, he should not misuse religion to gain political powers, nor is it advisable for those who have renounced the worldly life to lead a pure, religious life to be actively involved in politics.
pmwhewitt wrote:Is strict Buddhism and strong political opinions compatible? I mean, is Buddhism essentially exclusive to a certain political beliefs or ideal, or is it generally quite open?
As someone who isn't hugely knowledgeable about general Buddhism yet, I personally can't really see how Buddhism and conservatism would ever be compatible, but maybe I'm wrong (not that it ultimately matters, I'm quite liberal actually lol).
jcsuperstar wrote:i had a talk similar to this once with a friend and i sugested to him that maybe all the people we on the left "hate" really arent evil, maybe they really think theyre doing the right thing... i have a hard time seeing bush as evil, a buffoon yes, but evil probably not. chainey and rush on the other hand...
Individual wrote:Could you gives some specific examples?
For instance, what statements by the Buddha might be used to support censorship of pornography or prohibition of drugs?
gavesako wrote:The Buddhist Contribution to Good Governance. By Ajahn Brahm.
http://seeingthroughtheinsight.googlepa ... ak2550.pdf
Dhammanando wrote:Here's a link to the Mahasupina Jataka:
The Jataka describes a visit King Pasenadi pays to the Buddha, seeking an interpretation of sixteen evil dreams that have been troubling him. The Buddha treats each dream as a premonition of some future evil event that will come to pass during a time of evil rulers. From the things identified by the Buddha as social evils one may draw inferences as to what sort of social arrangement he would view as optimal.
Dhammanando wrote:Russell Kirk's Ten Conservative Principles
Best wishes,
Dhammanando Bhikkhu
Rui Sousa wrote:Dhammanando wrote:Russell Kirk's Ten Conservative Principles
Best wishes,
Dhammanando Bhikkhu
To my surprise, because of my ignorance of what conservative meant, I subscribe all ten principles.
Dhammanando wrote:Russell Kirk's Ten Conservative Principles
First, the conservative believes that there exists an enduring moral order. That order is made for man, and man is made for it: human nature is a constant, and moral truths are permanent.
This word order signifies harmony. There are two aspects or types of order: the inner order of the soul, and the outer order of the commonwealth. Twenty-five centuries ago, Plato taught this doctrine, but even the educated nowadays find it difficult to understand. ...
The non-conservative believes that no enduring moral order exists. There is no order made for man, and man is not made for any order. Human nature is inconstant, and moral truths are impermanent. ...
Like, for example, the deregulation that brought us the current global recession? I don't think anyone can reasonably argue that financial and industry deregulation was brought to us by "liberals and radicals" as the terms ordinarily are understood. (Maybe blame it on "radical conservatives"?) (Although in the U.S. admittedly a lot of it occurred under Bill Clinton's watch.)Liberals and radicals, the conservative says, are imprudent: for they dash at their objectives without giving much heed to the risk of new abuses worse than the evils they hope to sweep away.
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BRAINTREE TOWN have suffered an early season blow after Matt Paine was ruled out for at least six weeks with a knee injury.
The versatile former Colchester United youngster is likely to be sidelined until October after suffering the injury during the Iron's 1-0 defeat at Macclesfield Town, last weekend.
Braintree boss Alan Devonshire said: "Matt could be out for quite a while."
Paine may not be the only Braintree player forced to sit out their Vanarama Conference clash with Dover Athletic at the Amlin Stadium tonight (kick-off 7.45pm).
New signing Remy Clerima is a doubt with a thigh injury, while striker Sean Marks is struggling to shrug off a back injury.
New boy Charlie Strutton is unlikely to be fully fit to return until next month, after breaking his leg playing for Aldershot Town, last season.


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Colts sign Mewelde Moore
Posted by Michael David Smith on June 19, 2012, 3:45 PM EDT
Mewelde Moore has a new NFL home, in a place where hell already know the offense.
Moore, a free agent running back who played the last four years in Pittsburgh, has signed with the Colts.
The 29-year-old Moore played his first four NFL seasons with the Vikings from 2004 to 2007 before signing with the Steelers in 2008. Colts offensive coordinator Bruce Arians was the Steelers offensive coordinator during Moores four years in Pittsburgh.
In his eight-year NFL career, Moore has played in 113 games with 15 starts. He has a career total of 494 carries for 2,247 yards and six touchdowns, plus 214 catches for 1,875 yards and seven touchdowns.
The Colts have also announced that they released quarterback David Legree, an undrafted rookie who signed with the team on May 17.


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I've been wanting to get rid of our home phone for a long time. Having traditional residential phone service seem super practical if your Internet or power goes, that system is self powered. That said, I don't want to pay $30+ a month for residential phone service "just in case the power goes out." I have been using Vonage for the past several years (Vonage is a VOIP…voice over Internet Protocol…that's nerd speak for internet phone) if the power goes out or my Internet goes out, I'll still have my cell phone.
Vonage was decent and only around $15 a month with taxes. They raised the prices, I called to cancel and they always found a way to keep my business for around $15…until last year. In 2014 I purchased an Ooma device. It is normally $130 but I picked my up refurbished for about $80. Ever hear of Magic Jack? Ooma is similar but it works great and is FREE for life. I am able to make unlimited calls from my home to anywhere in the US for free…well, I do have to pay taxes and a 911 fee but my monthly bill is about $3 a month. If you are looking to cut some corners and save some money you might consider dumping your home phone for Ooma. I know, you only use your cell phone, you don't have a home phone. I wanted to do that but it is good to not use up my cell minutes and it is nice knowing out boys and our babysitter have a home phone to use if they need to. It is worth every penny!


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The good and bad thing about the 76ers' current state of supreme flexibility is that we don't have a ton of players that we know for a fact are gonna be a big part of this team's future. In the long-term sense, just about everybody on this team is expendable, and it wouldn't be hugely surprising if two years from now, at least ten of the 12 guys who played the most minutes for the Sixers this year were wearing a different uniform (or in some cases, possibly out of the league altogether). Evan Turner, Spencer Hawes, Jason Richardson, Arnett Moultrie, even Kwame Brown--all of them can be had for the right price.
The only true untouchable on the team is probably Jrue Holiday, the team's 22-year-old point guard. He made his first All-Star team this year, the youngest player in franchise history to do so, he kept the team in playoff contention for about half the season (before running out of gas after the All-Star break), and he's signed to a bargain of a four-year / $41 million contract. Unless they're dealing for an MVP candidate--and there aren't a ton of those out there for the dealing--any deals they make are going to be to find a complementary player for the Damaja.
The real question is about Thaddeus Young, the Sixers' second-most-valuable player. Like Jrue, Thad had something of a career year last year, averaging career highs in rebounds, assists, steals and win shares, while playing the most minutes of his career, proving that he can be a starting forward for a good team in this league, maybe as a sort of poor man's Shawn Marion. And like Jrue, Thad is signed to a contract that now seems extremely reasonable, under team control for another three years and another $27 million or so.
However, Thad probably ranks below Jrue in terms of trade value for the Sixers and around the league, mostly as a function of his being a couple years further along his carer than the Damaja, and there being more of a sense that this is probably about as good as Young is gonna get as a player. He could expand his shooting range a little (though he'll probably never be a real three-point threat) and he could further improve his ball-handling (which he's already made great strides with), but he's probably a little too slight and undersized to be enough of a post presence to grow into a 20/10-type player. He'll always provide value in subtle ways, but he's not too likely to become a star, in the conventional sense.
So Thaddeus Young stands not only as the Sixers' second-best player (and probably top all-around producer), but also as their most valuable trade chip, a player any team would love to have, on a contract that many teams could easily absorb without it becoming problematic. If the Sixers wanted to add a second core player to build around, along with Jrue, including Thad in a deal for that player would likely be the most efficient way to do it.
For instance--and I'm not suggesting that they should actually do this--the Sixers could probably make a real run at star Lakers big man Pau Gasol in the final year of his contract using a deal built around Thaddeus and an expiring contract or two. Thad would offer the Lakers a chance to get younger and more athletic, and his defensive versatility would help them further cover up the defensive deficiencies of their aging Nash-Kobe backcourt. He'd also help Mike D'Antoni by being able to play the three or four, allowing them to use him in small or big lineups, and his finishing ability would be a fantastic weapon for Nash and Kobe on the break or in the fast court.
However, you might look at all that and rightfully ask: If Thad is that good, and that valuable, why would you trade him at all? Why not keep him long-term and build around him and Jrue as the nucleus of the team's future? Having two young, cheap players like that locked up on team-friendy, multi-year deals is a pretty good starting point for any young team, and if you could add a third worthwhile core player through the draft or free agency without giving up Thad, wouldn't that be the better long-term play?
Undoubtedly it would, but unfortunately, that's much easier said than done. Barring a lottery miracle--their second in four years--the Sixers will likely have the 11th pick in this draft, said to be historically weak, and chances are much better of them adding a quality rotation piece than a true difference-maker. And if they keep both Jrue and Thad around for the next few years, that'll probably be good enough to keep them out of the top ten of the draft for the foreseeable future, meaning they'll have to strike late-lottery (or early-out-of-lottery) gold with another Jrue Holiday (who the Sixers nabbed with the #17 pick in 2009) to add another core player that way.
As for free agency, having Jrue and Thad is a good start to landing quality free agents. However, the Sixers don't have quite enough financial flexibility to add a max guy this off-season, and the free-agent class next season is pretty weak. And in the meantime, the rules of the most recent Collective Bargaining Agreement have so incentivised players to stay with their current teams (who can award them more years and more money per year than any new team) that the only reason marquee free agents have to really switch teams are to play in a major market or chase a championship, neither of which they would necessarily be doing if they signed with the Sixers.
This is all pretty broad-strokes stuff, but I do believe that generally speaking, it'd be much easier to add another difference-maker through trade than through other avenues, and Thad is their best asset with which to do it. And if so, I think that would ultimately be a sacrifice the Sixers have to make--as wonderful as Thad has been, he hasn't been good enough to be the second-best guy on a Sixers team that would actually contend for anything, and even though his production last year was his best yet, it was more due to an increase in minutes and role than any tremendous strides he made as a player, as his percentages and rates for the season--field goal percentage, PER, win shares per 48, etc.--were all basically in line with his last two years' averages.
That's not to diminish his accomplishments--being able to maintain that level of production in big minutes is a huge accomplishment in itself, and Thad proving he could do it was a huge step for his career. But as previously mentioned, it's hard to see him getting that much better from here, and a guy that gives you 15 and seven with solid peripherals and excellent defense is still more of a complimentary player, a third or fourth option, on a title-caliber team. Thad could easily put a team close to contention over the top, but it's hard to see him elevating a lottery team like the Sixers to that status without a whole lot of help. So if the right trade opportunity came along, I would like to see the Sixers open to trading Thaddeus, though not for anything less than an established star (or at least a player with the upside to be one), or a likely high future lottery pick.
Of course, as with so many of our Ten Biggset Questions, the Funny-Looking Kid With the Big Hair looms large over all. If the Sixers do end up rolling the dice a second time with Bynum, that high-upside guy they could get without giving up any other assets besides cap space, it might be worth holding to Thad for at least another year, since he would be an excellent frontcourt complement to Bynum, especially if he can be enough of a mid-range threat to give Drew some space on offense. But if Bynum is a no-go, our chances are better at getting the player we thought he was gonna be for us are better if we deem Thad expendable in such pursuits. Sad, but that's just how player acquisition works in the NBA.