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Unprepared retail industry a tempting target for cyber attacks
 Photo: Shutterstock

In the midst of the retail industry’s most lucrative time of the year, a new report finds the industry ranks fifth in overall cybersecurity health out of 18 major industries.

“As a trust-based industry the retail industry has a compelling reason to move up within the ranks,” says the report by cybersecurity firm SecurityScorecard. The company analyzed more than 1,900 companies in the retail industry and compared the results to 17 other major industries across a variety of cybersecurity categories.

The holiday shopping season is expected to rake in up to $682 billion, according to the National Retail Foundation. However, “for retailers who are not paying enough attention to their cybersecurity health, [the start of the holiday shopping season] could mean the start of a slippery slope from cyberattacks to reduced sales and eventually to store closures,” the report says.

Retailers make a particularly tempting target for cyber criminals, owing to all the customer data and credit card information they retain, making even small retailers potential targets. “Retailers are a goldmine of personal data but their high-profile nature and sometimes aging complex systems make them a popular target for hackers,” said Jeremy Drew, partner at UK-based law firm RPC, which recently released its own report on the cybersecurity environment for the retail industry.

The National Retail Foundation says it’s working on long-term solutions with all parties to ensure that consumer information is protected. “Cybersecurity is a perpetual game of high-stakes leapfrog where each new level of security devised by legitimate businesses is quickly overcome by criminals,” the NRF says, “so there is no single answer and no single industry that can provide it.”

Because retail is essentially a trust-based business, cybersecurity mishaps can cause customers to bolt to competitors. Nineteen percent of customers won’t shop at a store that’s been hacked recently, the report says, and 33 percent of customers stay away for at least three months.

Retailers suffered more than 4,000 security incidents over the last year, the report says. “Compounded with the fact that a cyberattack may increase a company’s churn by 2.9 percent, having poor cybersecurity health can be a real threat to the financial viability of companies in this industry.”

A particular weakness in the retail and e-commerce sector involves application security. Web applications have grown in importance and are a tempting target for hackers, but such applications haven’t kept up with increasing security demands. The retail sector ranks near the bottom in terms of cybersecurity performance, the report says, and it’s getting worse. “This year, web application exploits were one of the most common cybersecurity attacks against e-commerce retailers, accounting for 13 percent of all attacks,” the report says.

The root of the problem can be tracked to the “decentralized ownership of technology in brick-and-mortar shops,” the report says. In such instances, unqualified personnel may have been installing critical equipment, such as WiFi networks. The result: Vulnerabilities are introduced into the network that remain undetected until it’s too late.

A 2013 report found that 64 percent of retail stores took more than 90 days to detect intrusions, with the average time being 210 days.

The retail industry also finished dead last in the area of “DNS Health,” which is critical for the authenticity of emails. Inadequate protection in this area can lead to “increased potential for phishing attacks—a type of attack where a hacker tricks consumers to visit a fraudulent site and attempts to steal login credentials or credit card information,” the report says.

Weakest Sector in Retail

An analysis of the bottom 50 U.S. retailers reveals that clothing stores were among the poorest performers. “There were more poor performing clothing stores than poor performing department stores, car dealerships, food stores, grocery/pharmacy stores, wholesale retailers, office supply stores, and stores selling sports good combined,” the report says.

Top retailers scored in the mid-A range across 10 security factors, while bottom retailers received an overall grade in the mid-C range, on average, with network security and patching cadence—how often software updates are installed—receiving a grade of D.

“Ultimately, as cyberattacks continue to steal the headlines and consumers become more educated on the potential risks of poor cybersecurity performance, the retail industry, especially its bottom performers, will require significant investments in cybersecurity to keep its doors—physical or digital—open from this holiday season to the next,” the report says.

Output: The retail industry is particularly vulnerable to cyber attack, warns a report, and are a cybercriminal's goldmine of customer and credit data during the holiday shopping period. "For retailers who are not paying enough attention to their cybersecurity health, the start of the holiday shopping season could mean the start of a slippery slope from cyberattacks to reduced sales and eventually to store closures," the SecurityScorecard report warns. Jeremy Drew at law firm RPC said retailers' high profiles over Christmas and often ageing IT systems "make them a popular target for hackers".


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Banks could lose £1bn in rise of fintech challengers: Carney
 British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson speaks with head of Tyro Fintech Hub Andrew Corbett-Jones during a visit to the Tyro Fintech technology hub in Sydney, Australia, July 26, 2017.

REUTERS/William West/Pool

Impact of fintech on the UK banking sector included in Bank of England's stress testing scenario for the first time ever.

The Bank says lenders could lose £1 billion in profits from increased competition and higher customer liquidity.

The BoE admits that it may be underestimating the risks posed by fintech.

LONDON – The Bank of England thinks banks could be underestimating the risks to their business posed by financial technology startups.

The Bank wrote in its stress testing results that fintechs could:

reduce banks' overdraft revenues

erode payment services fee income

increase liquidity risk as customers switch accounts more frequently

and make it harder for lenders to attract and retain customers, or cross-sell products.

The BoE speculated that banking profitability could take a £1 billion hit from all this increased competition, although cautioned that these were just thought experiments rather than predictions.

The impact of fintech on the banking industry was included in the central bank's stress testing scenario for the first time ever this year. The stress tests are "war games" for the financial sector to make sure that lenders could cope with a nightmare economic scenario and ensure another financial crisis doesn't occur.

The results, published on Tuesday, show that all major lenders passed for the first time ever. But the BoE highlighted the growing threat of fintech as something banks must watch out for.

Speaking at a press conference on Tuesday, Bank of England governor Mark Carney said that banks "took the good from financial technology and said that will help drive down their costs" when asked about the impact on their businesses.

But he questioned their "basic assumption" that fintech will allow established banks to lower the cost of acquiring and maintaining customers as it lowers costs.

"Actually, from a consumer perspective, this is potentially a very exciting environment," Carney said, suggesting customers could switch banks more often and therefore push up their cost of business for traditional lenders.

He pointed to new reforms coming into force in the new year that will make data sharing and accounting switching easier.

"It's possible that some banks become not front-facing to the customer but utilities behind," Carney said, adding that new apps that are not even banks could become consumers' main point of contact with financial services.

This kind of competition is included in the Bank's stress testing scenario, which speculated that fintech "contributed to the significant squeeze in net interest margins banks experienced in the exploratory scenario, leading to a reduction of £1.1 billion in banks’ aggregate profits by end‑2023 — worth just over 0.2 percentage points of projected return on equity in 2023."

The Bank also admitted that it may be underestimating the risks posed by fintechs to traditional banks, saying in its stress testing results: "Competitive pressures enabled by FinTech, and in particular the emergence of Open Banking, may cause greater and faster disruption to banks’ business models than banks project. "

The Bank stressed that they are supportive of the fintech sector, which the government see as a key service to export in post-Brexit Britain, despite the possible threats it poses to traditional banks.

The fintech industry has exploded in the UK over the last decade and is now worth an estimated £7 billion. Banks such as Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Barclays, and BNP Paribas have moved to embrace the sector in recent years by investing, partnering, and monitoring startups in the space. They hope that these innovative new businesses can help them reduce costs and future-proof them.

NOW WATCH: The CIO of a crypto hedge fund explains the value in cryptocurrency — and why the market will explode over the next 2 years

See Also:

SEE ALSO: CITI: The technology banks are going wild for could turn them into 'dumb pipes'

DON'T MISS: Bank of England says UK lenders could cope with 'disorderly' Brexit — as all banks pass stress tests for the first time

NEXT UP: Here's the doomsday scenario British banks faced in the Bank of England's annual stress test

Output: Bank of England Governor Mark Carney has urged established lenders not to underestimate the fintech sector, saying increased competition from digital start-ups was exciting for consumers but could reduce banks' profits by £1bn ($1.4bn). The comments followed the first ever tests of the impact of fintech competition on the industry. All the major lenders passed, but Carney warned upcoming open banking regulations "may cause greater and faster disruption to banks’ business models than banks project".


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TalkTalk TalkTalk gala night raises £420,000 for autism charity
 As seen on Channel 4, our film blends drama and documentary to tell one autistic girl’s story.

This film, directed by the Oscar-winning Tom Hooper, follows a day in the life of 15-year-old autistic girl Ash – featuring her real-life family and best friends. We’re sure many of you will recognise your own experiences in Ash and her family’s story.

Our campaign aims to shine a light on autistic women and girls to increase understanding of the gender gap in autism diagnosis.

Output: UK telecoms provider TalkTalk raised £420,000 ($563,000) during a recent gala event for the charity Ambitious about Autism, bringing its total raised for the charity since 2006 to more than £3.5m. The Night of Ambition, held in central London's Supernova pop-up venue, was hosted by actor Tina Hobley. Guests also pledged to support Autism Exchange, an initiative aimed at getting more young autistic people into work.


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Russia launches Soyuz-2.1b rocket to deploy weather satellite
 A Soyuz rocket is scheduled to lift off Tuesday from a launch pad in Russia’s Far East with a new Russian weather satellite and 18 secondary payloads from companies and institutions in the United States, Canada, Japan, Norway, Sweden and Germany.

The liquid-fueled launcher is set for blastoff at 0541:46 GMT (12:41:46 a.m. EST) Tuesday from the Vostochny Cosmodrome, a facility in Russia’s Amur region near the Chinese border.

Liftoff is scheduled for 2:41 p.m. local time at Vostochny.

Tuesday’s flight will be the second launch from Vostochny, a multibillion-dollar spaceport built to help Russia shift more launches to its own territory from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. A Soyuz rocket made the first launch from the Siberian spaceport in April 2016.

Russia’s Meteor M2-1 weather satellite is the Soyuz rocket’s main passenger, beginning a five-year mission collecting imagery and data for Roshydromet, the Russian government’s weather agency. Launch services for the 17 satellites from international customers were booked through Glavkosmos, a Russian commercial launch broker.

The Soyuz-2.1b rocket will head north from Vostochny, dropping its four kerosene-fueled boosters, nose shroud and core stage to fall in the Siberian forest. A third stage powered by an RD-0124 engine and a Fregat upper stage will deliver the satellites to a preliminary parking orbit about 12 minutes into the flight.

The Fregat upper stage’s main engine will ignite seven times on Tuesday’s mission, first to place the Meteor M2-1 weather satellite into its targeted orbit, then to maneuver to different altitudes for deployment of 18 more spacecraft.

The seventh and final Fregat main engine burn will steer the upper stage back into Earth’s atmosphere for a destructive re-entry in the Pacific Ocean southwest of Mexico.

The 6,062-pound (2,750-kilogram) Meteor M2-1 weather observatory awaiting launch Tuesday carries four meteorological instruments: two multi-channel scanners and cameras to obtain infrared and visible images of clouds and ice cover, a microwave radiometer to measure temperature and humidity in the atmosphere, and an infrared spectrometer to monitor the ozone layer.

The Russian weather satellite also hosts a search-and-rescue radio transponder and a payload to relay data from remote weather stations and offshore buoys to Russian forecasters.

Meteor M2-1 is the first Russian weather satellite equipped to receive emergency distress beacons through the international Cospas-Sarsat network.

This video shows technicians readying the Meteor M2-1 weather satellite for launch, including the removal of instrument covers and other ground equipment before encapsulation inside the Soyuz rocket’s payload fairing. Video credit: Roscosmos

Built by VNIIEM, a Moscow-based aerospace contractor, the Meteor M2-1 spacecraft is the third in a series of upgraded Meteor M weather satellites. Two Meteor M satellites launched in 2009 and 2014 are still functioning, according to VNIIEM.

Once operational in polar orbit around 513 miles (826 kilometers) above Earth, the Meteor M2-1 satellite will provide data inputs to help Russian meteorologists craft medium-range forecasts.

More than 70 Russian Meteor weather satellites have launched since 1964.

Separation of the Meteor M2-1 satellite from the Fregat upper stage is set for 0642 GMT (1:42 a.m. EST), shortly after the mission’s second Fregat main engine burn.

A third Fregat engine firing will move the perigee, or low point, of its orbit closer to Earth for deployment of the IDEA OSG 1 spacecraft shortly after 0800 GMT (3 a.m. EST) in an elliptical egg-shaped loop around the planet.

Manufactured and owned by the Japanese company Astroscale, the suitcase-sized IDEA OSG 1 satellite is covered with sensors to register impacts with tiny pieces of space junk smaller than a millimeter in diameter. The space debris detectors, developed by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, will help tell scientists and engineers about the amount of space junk in low Earth orbit, focusing on satellite and rocket fragments too small to be tracked by ground-based radars.

The IDEA OSG 1 spacecraft’s two-year mission is sponsored by OSG Corp., a Japanese tool maker, and is the first of several satellites planned by Astroscale. A follow-on mission conceived in partnership with Britain’s Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd. could launch in 2019 to demonstrate a relatively low-cost method of removing small pieces of space debris from orbit.

Another 16-second firing of the Fregat main engine will circularize its orbit at an altitude of approximately 370 miles (600 kilometers) for the release of 16 more satellites.

The Baumanets 2 microsatellite built by students at Bauman Moscow State Technical University is set to separate from the Fregat upper stage at 0815 GMT (3:15 a.m. EST). The 190-pound (86-kilogram) spacecraft’s mission is primarily educational, but the satellite also carries an optical camera and a communications experiment.

A few minutes later, the Norwegian Space Center’s AISSat 3 satellite will deploy from the Fregat upper stage, kicking off a three-year mission to monitor ships and determine their position, speed and direction. The 14-pound (6.5-kilogram) spacecraft, built in Canada by the University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies Space Flight Laboratory, is the latest in a series of Norwegian maritime tracking satellites.

A staggered deployment sequence for 14 CubeSats will come next. The exact order of the separation maneuvers has not been disclosed.

Two commercial Landmapper-BC CubeSats manufactured and owned by Astro Digital, formerly Aquila Space, are also on Tuesday’s Soyuz flight. They are the third and fourth Landmapper-BC satellites to launch, following two craft that flew on a Soyuz mission in July, and failed shortly after reaching space.

Astro Digital’s Landmapper-BC satellites are about the size of a shoebox and weigh around 22 pounds (10 kilograms), packing color and infrared cameras for wide-area imaging. The Silicon Valley-based company aims to field a commercial Earth-imaging fleet, initially with 10 CubeSat-class satellites.

San Francisco-based Spire Global has 10 Lemur-2 satellites on Tuesday’s Soyuz launch, ready to join the company’s commercial weather monitoring constellation.

Spire’s Lemur-2 craft carry GPS radio occultation antennas, using satellite navigation signals passed through Earth’s atmosphere to derive temperature and humidity profiles that can be fed into numerical forecast models.

Spire’s satellites — each weighing about 10 pounds (4.5 kilograms) — also track ships out of range of terrestrial receivers.

With Tuesday’s flight, the company will have launched a total of 67 Lemur-2 CubeSats, some of which have ended their missions.

Spire won a NOAA contract last year to supply pilot weather data to determine the information’s usefulness in forecasting.

Two European CubeSats will also be deployed.

The SEAM mission, led by Sweden’s KTH Royal Institute of Technology, will conduct measurements of magnetic and electric fields in the ionosphere, a layer in Earth’s upper atmosphere where auroras are generated. The SEAM spacecraft is also a pathfinder for the design of future small-scale European science missions.

Billed as the first German commercial CubeSat, the D-Star One spacecraft has four communications modules on-board, two of which will be used by the amateur radio community. Developed by German Orbital Systems in Berlin in cooperation with the Czech company iSky Technology, officials hope to build follow-on satellites to construct a low Earth orbit communications network.

Two more maneuvers by the Fregat upper stage will set up for separation of an experimental communications craft for Telesat, a leading Canadian-headquartered operator of large geostationary broadcast satellites.

Telesat ordered two demonstrator satellites in April 2016 to help engineers wring out technical hurdles before the company builds out a 117-satellite constellation to provide global broadband communications coverage from orbits less than 1,000 miles up, a goal officials say could be realized by 2021.

Telesat’s LEO Vantage 2 satellite is the first of the test craft to reach the launch pad. The roughly 154-pound (70-kilogram) prototype satellite was built by the University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies Space Flight Laboratory, and Space Systems/Loral in Palo Alto, California, serves as prime contractor.

Telesat eyes the U.S. military and the aviation and maritime industries as prime markets for the Ka-band network. The satellites will also link under-served communities and far-flung outposts with high-speed Internet connectivity.

Another test satellite, named LEO Vantage 1, is set for launch on an Indian Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle in late December. It was provided by Surrey Satellite Technologies Ltd., a British subsidiary of Airbus Defense and Space.

Telesat will verify each satellite design’s capabilities and performance next year.

The LEO Vantage 2 spacecraft is expected to deploy from the Fregat upper stage into a 620-mile-high (1,000-kilometer) orbit at 0954 GMT (4:54 a.m. EST), followed by a final Fregat engine firing at 1043 GMT (5:43 a.m. EST) for a de-orbit burn.

Email the author.

Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: @StephenClark1.

Output: Russia has successfully launched a Soyuz-2.1b rocket from the Vostochny Cosmodrome to deploy 19 satellites into orbit, most notably the country's upgraded Meteor M2-1 weather satellite. The 2.75-tonne observatory will measure humidity and temperature in the Earth's atmosphere, while scanners and cameras will capture images of cloud and ice cover, and infrared spectrometry will measure the ozone layer. The Meteor M2-1 is also the first Russian weather satellite to able to use the International Cospas-Sarsat network to receive emergency distress beacons. The other 18 payloads come from countries such as the US, Canada, Japan and Germany.


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NASA and SpaceX to launch ozone measurement sensor to ISS
 NASA and SpaceX are teaming up to save the world from itself — sort of.

On Monday, December 4, the aerospace company will launch a Dragon spacecraft aboard a Falcon 9 rocket, carrying a NASA instrument called TSIS-1 as part of its special delivery to the International Space Station (ISS). TSIS-1, which is short for Total and Spectral Solar Irradiance Sensor, will measure sunlight with unprecedented detail, in order to study the sun’s impact on Earth’s ozone layer.

“TSIS-1 makes two key measurements: total solar irradiance, or TSI, the sun’s total energy input into Earth, and solar spectral irradiance (SSI), the distribution of the sun’s energy input across ultraviolet, visible, and infrared wavelengths of light,” NASA explained in a post. “TSI measurements are needed to quantify the solar variations in the total amount of energy input to the Earth. SSI measurements are also vital because different wavelengths of light are absorbed by different parts of the atmosphere.”

The ozone layer — situated in Earth’s stratosphere — is responsible for absorbing ultraviolet radiation blasted off by the sun, making our planet habitable. TSIS-1 is a great step toward understanding the sun’s impact on the ozone region, especially considering how careless humanity has been about it.

In the past, humans have caused ozone depletion by spraying aerosol cans, which release chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) into the atmosphere. These can break down ozone molecules and make the ozone layer worse at its job — which, in case you forgot — is keeping us all from getting burned to a crisp. In the 1980s, this was a big concern, which led to the creation of the Montreal Protocol in 1989.

In short, the TSIS-1 — and the ozone layer — are good. We hope scientists at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center will have plenty of data to comb through once TSIS-1 is up and running.

Output: SpaceX is set to transport a NASA sensor to the International Space Station, where it will monitor the sun's effect on the Earth's ozone layer, which absorbs deadly ultraviolet radiation. According to a NASA statement, the total and spectral solar irradiance sensor  will measure total solar irradiance, the sun’s total energy input into Earth, and solar spectral irradiance, the distribution of the sun’s energy input across ultraviolet, visible and infrared wavelengths of light.


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Invesco Canada introduces robo-advice capabilities
 A Bay Street sign, a symbol of Canada's economic markets and where main financial institutions are located, is seen in Toronto, May 1, 2013.Mark Blinch/Reuters Share

Invesco Canada Ltd., one of the country's largest mutual-fund providers is keeping with the times in launching a robo-adviser tool that will help wealth-management firms and their advisers bring digital advice to Canadian investors.

"The wealth-management industry is undergoing massive change due to new technologies and proposed regulations, and one of our global priorities as an organization is to help advisers navigate this rapidly changing environment," Peter Intraligi, president of Invesco Canada, said in a statement.

Robo-advisers – also known as online portfolio managers or digital advisers – have recently gained traction in the Canadian financial landscape. Over the past five years, the total number of providers has jumped from only a handful in 2012 to more than 15 registered platforms today.

The new platform, titled advisorDUO, has similar capabilities to a traditional robo-adviser, where clients are able to sign up for accounts digitally and receive a recommended portfolio based on risk tolerance and investment goals.

Unlike other platforms, Invesco's offering is only being rolled out to mutual-fund dealers to use exclusively with their financial advisers. Investment firms must sign an agreement with Invesco in order for their advisers to gain access to the platform. The platform doesn't deal directly with individual investors. Already, there are seven mutual-fund firms signed up to pilot the platform, including Sterling Mutuals Inc., an investment firm in Windsor, Ont., that has over 250 advisers.

"AdvisorDUO has the potential to be a game changer for us," said Nelson Cheng, chief executive of Sterling Mutuals. "It has the capacity to increase the reach and productivity of our advisers while enabling us to benefit from how an ever-increasing number of investors prefer to work with a financial adviser."

The platform will allow Invesco to strengthen its relationships with mutual-fund firms – and their financial advisers – during a time when competition continues to emerge for asset managers, leaving many independent dealers having to think outside the box for distribution access.

"Investors and their advisers are looking for solutions that meet their evolving needs – enriching the client experience while improving the adviser's practice efficiency," said Andrew Manning, head of marketing for Invesco Canada. "Built and designed using Invesco's in-house digital expertise, advisorDUO maintains the adviser-investor link, with the intent of increasing the competitiveness of financial advisory firms and allowing advisers to serve clients in the way they wish to be serviced."

Another difference with conventional robo-advisers is that Invesco's platform provides investors access to exchange-traded fund products through five mutual fund "fund-of-fund" portfolios. The majority of robo-advisers recommend portfolios that are predominately made up of individual ETFs.

Invesco is well known on the Street for both its mutual fund and ETF lineups, with assets under management of $40-billion. The company was one of the first mutual-fund companies to enter the ETF industry in 2009, and now has $8.6-billion invested in its PowerShares ETF products, as of Oct. 31.

The platform recommends one of five fund-of-fund Invesco Target Risk Portfolios. Each portfolio provides investors exposure to Invesco's Powershare ETFs, as well as ETFs from rivals Vanguard and BlackRock Canada. Portfolio management fees for fee-based accounts range from 0.41 per cent to 0.51 per cent, while the adviser series ranges from 1.41 per cent to 1.51 per cent. These fees include all underlying ETF fees, and are competitive compared with stand-alone mutual funds, which can have fees ranging from 1.5 per cent to 2.5 per cent.

Many traditional robo-adviser platforms are starting to partner with investment firms, offering hybrid models, discounted pricing for adviser accounts or licensing agreements of their proprietary technology.

For firms, digital partnerships are enticing as they eliminate burdensome paperwork during account openings and minimizes administrative costs.

But the ability to maintain client assets in house and under their administration was a big draw for Sterling's Mr. Cheng.

"With other digital platforms we looked at, we would have to sign a referral agreement and then the assets are 'off book' and the client no longer belongs to the dealer," says Mr. Cheng. "The other firm can do whatever they want and the dealer can't do anything about it. That was not a route we wanted to take."

Output: Invesco has introduced a robo-adviser platform for its Canadian clients. The platform is called advisorDUO and will let clients sign up to receive portfolio recommendations based on their risk tolerance. The platform is only being provided to mutual fund shops to use within their existing adviser relationships. Invesco says seven mutual fund providers have signed up to use the robo-adviser platform. The platform will allow investors to gain exposure to exchange-traded funds, like the majority of robo-advisers do, but this exposure will come in the form of mutual funds invested in ETFs.


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Chinese taste for luxury ham forces Spanish into traditional food
 Having discovered the joys of French wine, caviar and truffles, China’s new rich are turning to a new gourmet delicacy to satisfy their demand for luxury goods from the west: Spain’s jamón ibérico, or Iberian ham. But demand is now threatening to outstrip supply, leaving Spaniards facing steep price rises in their most prized Christmas delicacy.

The recent lifting of import restrictions has allowed top-of-the-range ham to find its “rightful place in the market, alongside caviar and truffles”, René Lemée, the head of exports for the famous Cinco Jotas brand, told El País newspaper.

The Chinese, pork lovers par excellence, have now been seduced by jamón ibérico. The problem is that the best ham takes years to produce and, as demand outstrips supply, it is pushing up the price by as much as 10%. A 7.5kg leg sells at between €150 and €600 (£135-£540).

Spanish ham comes in many forms, but to be defined as jamón ibérico de bellota (acorn-fed Iberian ham), which is what the Chinese want, it must first come from Iberian blackfoot pigs, or from 50% crossbreeds. These pigs must then spend several months of the year roaming the dehesa, a pasture planted with oaks, feeding on grass and acorns. During the last few months before being slaughtered they must live exclusively on this diet.

Iberian pigs search for acorns. Photograph: Karen Robinson/The Observer

Not only are there relatively small areas of dehesa – mostly in north-west and western Spain – but each pig needs about two hectares (five acres) to fulfil its needs. Once slaughtered, the animals’ legs are plunged into vats of salt and hung and dry-cured over a range of temperatures for a minimum of 36 months, with the best hams cured for about 48 months.

“It’s inevitable that the price in Spain is going to rise,” said Roberto Batres, the director of Shanghai de Delaiberia Gold, which exports ham, wine and olive oil to China. “The companies licenced to trade in China don’t have enough jamón de bellota to meet Chinese demand.”

In an effort to meet demand the Chinese have started importing raw frozen pork from Iberian pigs and curing the meat themselves, although Batres says the product is excessively salty.

The production and consumption of top-quality ham is the subject of the same awe and mystery as the making of fine wine. Cutting de-boned jamón de bellota on a ham-slicing machine is regarded as sacrilege. The leg must be bolted on to a frame called a jamonero and then cut by hand using a long, narrow blade. Most towns in the ham-producing areas of Extremadura, Castilla y León and Andalucía hold solemn ham-slicing competitions, often attended by hundreds of spectators.

“They have established a ham-cutting school in China and a professional association,” said Batres. “That’s a sign of how far the product has penetrated the local market.”

Output: China's increasing demand for Spanish jamón ibérico is forcing up prices of the ham as Spaniards prepare to tuck into the traditional Christmas delicacy. The recent lifting of import restrictions on the luxury item has strained supplies of the Iberian-ham, produced slowly from carefully raised pig breeds, and increased prices 10%. As we highlighted previously, China is the world's largest consumer of pork and its rising middle class is being enticed by luxury brands.


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China funds suspension may hit pace of Hong Kong investment
 China's securities regulator has suspended approval of Hong Kong-focused mutual funds, according to the industry newspaper China Fund, potentially slowing the pace of Chinese money into Hong Kong stocks.

New funds with "Hong Kong" in their names - which rules dictate must allocate at least 80 percent of their portfolio into Hong Kong-listed stocks - have seen their approvals suspended by the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC), China Fund said on its website, citing two unidentified fund sources.

The move could delay the launch of 59 products that are backed up in the queue, although funds that invest less than 50 percent of their portfolio in Hong Kong will not be affected, according to the newspaper, which is affiliated with the official People's Daily.

The sources, who were notified by the CSRC, said the body did not explain why it was suspending Hong Kong-focused funds.

But they speculated that regulators may hope to cool fervor in a market that has soared over 30 percent this year, aided by Chinese money inflows, according to the newspaper.

Output: Chinese investment in Hong Kong stocks may be curbed by a surprise directive from Beijing that has suspended the approval of 59 mutual funds linked to the former British colony. The China Securities Regulatory Commission has given no reason for the move but it's thought to be motivated by a desire to cool a market that has surged more than 30% this year, fuelled by Chinese money. Hong Kong-linked fund portfolios must be heavily weighted towards stocks listed in the southern city.


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App-based challenger bank Revolut to add cryptocurrency support
 Bitcoin and other digital currencies are not "a fraud," the chief executive of app-based bank Revolut told CNBC, ahead of the start-up's plans to launch a range of services for cryptocurrencies.

The firm's CEO gave an alternative view to JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon, who has called the phenomenon a "fraud" that will "blow up."

"They are definitely not a fraud," Nikolay Storonsky said in an interview Tuesday. Revolut's co-founder said that, though people are less likely to use bitcoin in everyday transactions, the same could be said for commodities like gold.

"Real-world usage for gold is quite limited. But still there is a huge market, huge volumes that are being traded in the market, and these volumes determine the gold price," he said.

"The question, 'Where is the real gold price?' No one knows. It's the same with bitcoin. Volumes are increasing, the price is shooting up, there is no implication of bitcoin in the real world, it's quite limited."

He said that 99 percent of bitcoin transaction volumes are "speculation-driven," with just 1 percent of volumes involving everyday applications.

Some executives in the financial services sector have expressed concern about the volatile nature of bitcoin, however, with Credit Suisse's CEO Tidjane Thiam describing it as "the very definition of speculation and the very definition of a bubble."

But Storonsky, who is a former Credit Suisse trader, said bitcoin was similar to another commodity in this aspect — oil.

"If you look at the oil market, 90 percent of volume is speculation, 10 percent is real use case."

Output: UK app-based bank Revolut is set to launch support for cryptocurrencies including bitcoin, ethereum and litecoin. Customers will be bale to buy, hold and sell the digital currencies as well as enable their transfer between Revolut accounts. CEO Nikolay Storonsky said cryptocurrencies were "definitely not a fraud", in contrast to comments made by his JPMorgan counterpart Jamie Dimon. Storonsky compared bitcoin to gold, whose transaction volumes were mostly speculation-driven, with much smaller percentages of real-world usage.


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SA insurtech Fo-Sho launches for lower-income customers
 Accelerator Startbootcamp Cape Town has scored some success, with South African insurtech startup Fo-Sho set to launch this Thursday (30 November) with its short-term insurance offering aimed at lower-income consumers.

For the past three months the Johannesburg-based startup, which was founded in June last year, has along with nine other startups been part of Startbootcamp Cape Town‘s inaugural accelerator programme. The programme concludes with a demo day this Thursday.

The startup has been beta testing its product and has so far secured premium commitments in excess of R10-million.

In addition the company has already secured a “multi-million rand venture capital investment” from BEE investor and Alpha Vista Systems director Dempsey Naidoo, says Fo-Sho co-founder and CEO (pictured middle) Avi Naidoo. He however would not disclose the exact amount of the investment but he said the deal was signed in July.

Fo-Sho applies artificial intelligence, machine learning, behavioural economics and peer-to peer underwriting

Fo-Sho’s insurance products use artificial intelligence, machine learning, behavioural economics and peer-to peer underwriting. Policy holders are grouped into similar risk profiles. These groups create savings pools which then reduce the cost of risk and act to mitigate excess payments in the event of a claim.

In addition, the startup claims one can register for cover in about three minutes.

Naidoo told Ventureburn in a phone call that he got the idea behind the platform in May last year after seeing a Johannesburg community come together to assist a security guard who had his un-insured car stolen.

He said that’s when he realised that insurance is “really unfair”, citing “structural and pricing issues”. “People who need it (insurance) the most are the ones least able to afford it,” he added.

The startup, whose founding team is made up of three insurance industry veterans who claim to have total of 50 year’s worth of experience between them, will have its products underwritten by A-rated insurance company Constantia.

Although the startup has not yet been granted a license by the Financial Services Board (FSB), Naidoo said his company is in the process of applying for one. In the meantime, the company would operate under Constantia’s license.

But he added that Fo-Sho would still, despite this, make its own decisions regarding pricing and the services it offers consumers.

Startupbootcamp Cape Town managing director Zachariah George believes that Fo-Sho’s model that makes use of “socially validated methodology” will allow consumers access to a fairer form of insurance.

“The result is the pooling of like-minded risk groups and a reduced risk of fraudulent claims, a major point for policy issuers – and subsequently giving issuers greater leeway to increase the amount of cash-backs paid to claim-free clients. We know that this will skyrocket to become the new norm in the industry,” said George.

Featured image (left to right): Fo-Sho founding team Mithun Kalan, Avi Naidoo, and Siva Moodley (Supplied)

Output: South African insurtech Fo-Sho has launched with the goal of providing short-term insurance policies for lower-income portions of the population. The firm says it makes use of artificial intelligence, machine learning and data analysis in underwriting its risks. Fo-Sho has reportedly written over ZAR10m ($729,000) in premiums during a testing period. Customers will be able to register and apply for coverage in as little as three minutes, the firm says.


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Half of US fracking wells are close to private water systems
 Hydraulically fractured wells in California's Central Valley. Credit: Debra Perrone

How safe is the water you drink? For the 45 million Americans who get their drinking water from private groundwater wells rather than a public utility, the answer is decidedly murky. The Environmental Protection Agency regulations that protect public drinking water systems don't apply to privately owned wells, leaving owners responsible for ensuring their water is safe from contaminants.

In assessing how frequently hydraulic fracturing takes place close to a public water supply, a 2016 EPA report said that drinking water supplies located near hydraulic fracturing sites are more likely to be impacted should a contamination event occur. How many privately owned groundwater wells could face a similar fate is undetermined.

Motivated by the EPA study, UC Santa Barbara researchers Scott Jasechko and Debra Perrone sought to change that.

The investigators amassed a large database of private drinking water wells and compared their locations to hydraulic fracturing sites. Conducting a scientific analysis of data that spanned 15 years, from 2000 to 2014, and covered nearly 27,000 wells in 14 states, they found that about half of all hydraulically fractured wells stimulated in 2014 existed within 2 to 3 kilometers of a domestic groundwater well. Their results appear in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"This co-location emphasizes the need to determine the frequency that hydraulic fracturing activities impact groundwater well water quality. This knowledge is important to maintaining high-quality water in many domestic wells," said co-author Jasechko, an assistant professor at UCSB's Bren School of Environmental Science & Management. "Our results underscore the importance of increased water monitoring efforts near both hydraulically fractured and conventional oil and gas wells in ascertaining the risk of contamination and in protecting water well quality."

Jasechko and Perrone charted the data on a variety of maps, one of which tracked hotspots. "These hotspots are areas where, in light of potential contamination mechanisms, limited resources for assessing spill frequency and well integrity could be used more effectively and efficiently," explained Perrone, an assistant professor in UCSB's environmental studies program.

Perrone noted that some hotspot areas include not only hydraulically fractured but also conventional oil and gas wells, which are more abundant. "We can use these hotspot analyses to focus resources, so that we can learn more about oil and gas contamination mechanisms: How often do they occur, and do they have an impact on groundwater?" she said.

"Our analysis underscores the need to increase monitoring efforts to maximize the probability that we can identify well waters that may be impacted, and do our best to remediate, contain and isolate potentially contaminated waters before they cause harm," Jasechko added. "We can consider stronger policies that include requirements for repeated groundwater quality testing of the many domestic self-supply wells that exist close to hydraulic fracturing."

Often, research can be limited by the amount of data available. In this case, the problem is a lack of consistent data across states as well as across industries. In fact, the scientists found vast differences in how states collect groundwater data.

"One policy recommendation would be to have a national standard for data collection on groundwater well construction," Perrone said. "On the energy side, a national standard for data collection for both unconventional and conventional oil and gas wells could provide opportunities for increased transparency across jurisdictional boundaries."

Output: Almost half of hydraulically fractured wells in the US are within 2 km to 3 km of a domestic groundwater well, according to a study from UC Santa Barbara researchers Scott Jasechko and Debra Perrone, highlighting the need to determine the impact of fracking on groundwater well quality. Environmental Protection Agency regulations do not give the same protections to private water supplies that they do to public water systems, with owners being responsible for maintaining their water quality. The researchers said that water quality near fracking sites needed to be more closely scrutinised.


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Fashion brands urged to stop wasting 25% of material resources
 LONDON – Non-profit Made-by and Reverse Resources has launched a report that suggests manufacturers producing textiles and clothing for many major fashion brands are wasting an average of 25 per cent of virgin material resources. WRAP also worked with Made-by to support the findings.

Output: Leading fashion brands are wasting an average of 25% of virgin material resources, according to a report by European non-profit Made-by and industrial textile upcycler Reverse Resources. The findings are supported by UK waste reduction charity, Wrap. As a result of the research, Made-by has launched a project that will target European apparel brands and suppliers. Companies will be supported to reduce spillage rates and to avoid incineration and landfill. The project will form part of the European Clothing Action Plan, which is the first EU-funded project aiming to increase sustainability throughout the entire lifecyle of clothing.


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New bans urged as UK children see 12 TV junk-food ads per hour
 Children are seeing as many as 12 advertisements for junk food within an hour while watching family television shows such as The Voice, new research has revealed on Tuesday.

Children as young as four are seeing ads for pizza, burgers, sweets and biscuits in breaks during shows on ITV, C4 and E4 such as Hollyoaks and The Simpsons, Liverpool University researchers found.

The findings have led to renewed calls from health experts to ministers to toughen up rules restricting the broadcast of adverts for foods high in fat, sugar and salt (HFSS), which they claim are “not fit for purpose”.

Dr Emma Boyland and Dr Rosa Whalen, from Liverpool University’s appetite and obesity research group, found that a half-hour episode of Hollyoaks on E4 in February – seen by 140,225 children – contained no fewer than nine adverts for such products. They included promotions of McDonald’s bacon double clubhouse burger, Domino’s chicken strippers and their pepperoni passion pizza, Oreo thins biscuits and Haribo sweets.

An episode of The Voice the next day on ITV watched by 708,500 children featured 12 ads for HFSS foods, including Domino’s pizzas, McVitie’s chocolate digestive nibbles and Anchor spreadable butter.

Part of a Domino’s pizza TV advert. Photograph: YouTube

“This report is another grim reminder why we’re losing the fight against the scourge of childhood obesity,” said Prof Mary Fewtrell, nutrition lead at the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health.

“Children are very impressionable and need protection from the hundreds of millions of pounds spent each year on junk food advertising, much of which is within the family viewing hours of 6-9pm.”

Under current rules, put in place a decade ago by the broadcasting regulator Ofcom, adverts for HFSS foods are banned from being shown in or around children’s programmes or any programme where 75% of the audience will be children.

But the Obesity Health Alliance (OHA), which commissioned the new study, said children were still being exposed to adverts for unhealthy foods because no such restrictions apply to shows aimed at adults but watched by many under-18s. It wants the ban extended to everything shown before the 9pm watershed.

“We know brand recognition influences children’s behaviours from as young as 18 months, which is why the government saw it fit to ban junk food advertising during children’s shows back in 2010,” added Fewtrell.

Caroline Cerny, the OHA’s lead, said: “The rules to protect children from junk food advertising in the UK are 10 years old. They weren’t strong enough then and they are definitely not fit for purpose now, as they only cover 27% of children’s viewing time.” Three-quarters of adverts during The Voice would be banned if Ofcom changed the rules, the OHA said.

ITV said the Ofcom rules do not need to be extended. “There is already a robust system of regulation in place in the UK to restrict both the content and scheduling of advertising for food high in fat, salt or sugar, to children and young people, which is enforced by the Advertising Standards Authority, is endorsed by Ofcom and is rigorously applied by ITV across all of its platforms,” said a spokesman for the broadcaster.

The government ruled out any change. “Current advertising restrictions in the UK on junk food are among the toughest in the world, including a ban on advertising junk food in children’s media.”

Labour pledged that it would ban all junk food advertising before the 9pm watershed if it was elected.

Output: Children as young as four view as many as 12 advertisements for junk food per hour while watching family television shows, according to research by Liverpool University and commissioned by the Obesity Health Alliance (OHA). Current rules, instituted a decade ago by regulator Ofcom, ban ads for foods high in fat, sugar and salt from being shown in or around children’s programmes, or shows for which 75% of the audience will be children. The OHA has called for the ban to be extended to all broadcasts before 9pm.


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Montreal 'upcyclers' use decommissioned trains for new projects
 Montreal’s Metro system celebrated its fiftieth birthday this October. And for a limited time its first-generation “MR-63” cars were available to buy for the bargain price of C$C750–1,000 (£445-£593), along with a C$4000 (£2,370) shipping fee. The two-ton, baby-blue cars make up the oldest fleet in North America. They are gradually being decommissioned.

Out of 30 submissions, the Société de transport de Montreal (STM) has picked seven projects that will receive cars. These include a high-rise community centre built from multiple cars stacked on each other; a 13-story building that will encase over one hundred cars; a car plonked in a botanic garden in remote northern Quebec; and an art-installation made of 16 sets of sliding doors. Submissions were evaluated by the STM on criteria that included optics, heritage value, feasibility and sustainability.

“We wanted to do something crazy, but not too “in-your-face” crazy,” said Frédéric Morin-Bordeleau, co-founder of Projet MR-63, one of the lucky finalist projects. “So we thought, let’s get eight metro trains, create a building out of it, make it self-sustaining and generate revenue, and showcase the culture of Montreal.” He expects the sculpture, which will house a café, bar, gallery and community space, to be complete in 2020.

Artist’s impression. Image: Project MR-63.

Morin-Bordeleau acknowledged that his love of the metro carriages, like many Montrealers’, is steeped in nostalgia for the “glorious era” of the sixties, when Montreal hosted Expo ’67, the world fair that marked Canada’s centennial and attracted fifty million visitors to the city.

On top of the metro system, which was hurriedly built to accommodate Expo crowds, remnants of this era include Moshe Safdie’s iconic Habitat 67 complex, the Montreal Biosphere (capped by a geodesic dome designed by Buckminster Fuller) and two large man-made islands in the St-Lawrence river, created and reshaped using rubble dug out by the subway construction.

While he was not alive in the sixties, Morin-Bordeleau’s mother was a photographer for Expo ’67 and “would talk about [it] with stars in her eyes,” he said. He sees the project, which he founded with his brother, as an homage to this period. “We want to make Montreal proud and the metro trains were exactly the symbol we needed. It’s a mix between the glory of the past and visions for the future,” he said.

The brothers were initially inspired by the Village Underground arts centre in Shoreditch, London, which rents out studio space in four upcycled tube carriages to artists and designers.

Parts of MR-63 cars will travel internationally in the form of a travelling art installation. Another finalist of the STM’s call for proposals is interactive art piece Thresholds, a corridor of 16 opening and closing subway doors that people can walk through. Created by Montreal artist Michel de Broin, it was exhibited in Montreal’s this summer and he plans on taking it abroad.

While he acknowledged that the “distinctive” doors of the metro were likely to have a particular effect on a Montrealer, he believes the experience of the piece “will work anywhere”. His website describes the experience as “recalling the digestive tract’s ingestion process as the installation breathes and swells”.

MR-63 cars that are not being upcycled are slowly being retired, a process that is anticipated to finish in mid-2018. Montreal-based metal recycling firm American Iron and Metal is recycling the cars at the rate of one a day, with a new car ferried each morning to their headquarters on a specifically-designed trailer.

The invitable metro map. Image: STM.

The question of what to do with old subway cars has been approached in a variety of ways by different cities. In England, tube cars shuttle passengers down the east coast of the Isle of Wight, while a 1967 Victoria Line tube carriage hosts a monthly supper club in Walthamstow.

In 2015, over 2,500 New York subway cars were dropped into the Atlantic to create an artificial underwater reef for fish and crustaceans. Two of Buenos Aires’ iconic 1913 wooden cars have been converted into diesel-electric buses, and Washington architect Arthur Cotton Moore wants to transform his city’s old metro cars into one-bedroom prefab apartments for the homeless.

Back in Montreal, the subway is receiving a new generation of trains – but like their predecessors, the city’s new underground cars will arrive at stations accompanied by the faint smell of burning wood. That’s because designers have opted to continue making the tyre brake pads out of yellow birch sourced from Quebec’s forests. According to the STM, wooden brake pads are quieter than steel or graphite disc pads, and environmentally safer, given that they do not release of carbon dust into the atmosphere. To prevent friction or burning, the wood is saturated in hot peanut oil, left to drip-dry for 30 days, and soaked in salt water.

Montreal commuters have come off lightly with their subway’s trademark fragrance. Washington DC’s subway cars organic brake pads are often blamed for a lingering fishy smell.

Output: Artists and architects are among those who will receive decommissioned Montreal Metro carriages. In celebration of the metro's 50th birthday, the Société de transport de Montreal (STM) put up some of its first-generation MR-63 cars for sale at the price of CAD750-1,000 ($584-$778), along with a CAD$4,000 shipping fee. STM then chose seven submissions to receive the disused baby-blue cars, which are part of the oldest fleet in North America. Winning projects include an art installation made up of 16 sets of sliding doors and a community centre built from multiple carriages stacked on top of each other.


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Australia can reach renewable energy tipping point by 2020: EY
 Australia can reach a renewable energy tipping point in 2020, with renewable generation costs to be less than fossil fuels, EY power leaders say.

Australia may be one of the first nations to reach this stable grid parity point, EY Global Advisory power and utility leader Serge Colle told Fairfax Media.

"As early as 2021, [globally] we reach what we call grid parity; with Australia, the expectation is that this will come one year earlier, as early as 2020," Mr Colle said.

Grid parity is when renewable or alternative sources can produce energy at a levelised cost of electricity (LCOE) equal to or less than buying energy generated from traditional power sources such as coal or natural gas.

Output: The cost of renewable energy may fall below coal and natural gas in Australia by 2020, a year earlier than in many other markets, because of the high price of baseload power in the country, according to EY. "If gas in Australia was near its historical cost levels or near that of the USA – of $3 to $4 per gigajoule – then gas would still be competitive for a few years yet, but that is not the case with gas at $10/GJ", said Grattan Institute energy director Tony Wood.


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UPS to convert New York delivery vans from diesel to electric
 Financials

UPS Releases 1Q 2023 Earnings

UPS today announced first-quarter 2023 consolidated revenues of $22.9 billion, a 6.0% decrease from the first quarter of 2022.

Output: US logistics company UPS is planning to convert two-thirds of its New York delivery fleet from diesel to electric. The project will be conducted under a partnership between the company and the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, which will provide $500,000 of funding to help develop effective conversion technology. Unique Electric Systems will work with UPS to design and build the system, which should be operational next spring. The plans would mean about 1,500 UPS vans going electric by 2022.


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AI quicker than human analysts to locate missile sites
 Intelligence agencies have a limited number of trained human analysts looking for undeclared nuclear facilities, or secret military sites, hidden among terabytes of satellite images. But the same sort of deep learning artificial intelligence that enables Google and Facebook to automatically filter images of human faces and cats could also prove invaluable in the world of spy versus spy. An early example: US researchers have trained deep learning algorithms to identify Chinese surface-to-air missile sites—hundreds of times faster than their human counterparts.

The deep learning algorithms proved capable of helping people with no prior imagery analysis experience find surface-to-air missile sites scattered across nearly 90,000 square kilometers of southeastern China. Such AI based on neural networks—layers of artificial neuron capable of filtering and learning from huge amounts of data—matched the overall 90 percent accuracy of expert human imagery analysts in locating the missile sites. Perhaps even more impressively, the deep learning software helped humans reduce the time needed to eyeball potential missile sites from 60 hours to just 42 minutes.

"The algorithms were used to find the locations where they said there is a high confidence of a missile site, and then humans reviewed the results for accuracy and figured out how much time the algorithms saved," says Curt Davis, a professor of electrical engineering and computer science, and director of the Center for Geospatial Intelligence, at the University of Missouri. "To my knowledge that’s never been studied before: How much time did you save, and how does that ultimately impact the human performance?"

The University of Missouri study, published on October 6 in the Journal of Applied Remote Sensing, comes at a time when satellite imagery analysts are figuratively drowning in a deluge of big data. DigitalGlobe, a leading commercial satellite imagery company, generates about 70 terabytes of raw satellite imagery each day, never mind all the imagery data coming from other commercial satellites and government spy satellites.

'How much time did you save, and how does that ultimately impact the human performance?' Curt Davis, University of Missouri

Davis and his colleagues showed how off-the-shelf deep learning models—heavily trained and modified for satellite imagery analysis—could identify objects of potentially great interest to intelligence agencies and national security experts. The deep learning models, including GoogleNet and Microsoft Research's ResNet, were initially created to detect and classify objects in traditional photo and video imagery. Davis and his colleagues adapted such models to the challenges and limitations of interpreting satellite imagery, such as training some deep learning models to interpret both color and black-and-white imagery, in case only black-and-white images of SAM sites were available.

They did so with satellite imagery representing a huge swath of Chinese territory, not that much smaller than the entire country of North Korea.

And in fact, analysts rely extensively on satellite imagery to keep track of how North Korea's weapons programs evolve. Human analysts have already likely identified most, if not all, existing SAM sites within the relatively small country. But similar deep learning tools could help automatically flag new SAM sites that appear in North Korea or other countries. Knowing the location of existing and new SAM sites can sometimes lead analysts to other locations of interest, because countries often place SAM sites in specific areas to defend valuable nearby assets from air attack.

The latest study also illustrates the challenges of applying deep learning AI to satellite imagery analysis. One major problem is the relative lack of large training datasets that include the hand-labeled examples needed to train deep learning algorithms to accurately identify features in satellite imagery. The University of Missouri team combined public data on the worldwide locations of about 2,200 SAM sites with DigitalGlobe satellite imagery to create their training data, and then tested four deep learning models to find the best-performing one.

Output: Scientists in the US have developed artificial intelligence (AI) systems which can detect undeclared missile sites from satellite images much quicker than human analysts. A team at the University of Missouri's Center for Geospatial Intelligence conducted an exercise using images of 90,000 sq km of southeastern China, which were analysed using the AI's deep learning algorithms. Using the system, they were able to reduce the time taken to identify potential missile sites from 60 hours to 42 minutes, and matched the 90% accuracy rates of human analysts.


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Airbnb buys Chicago-based adtech start-up AdBasis
 Image via Shutterstock

Airbnb just bet on Chicago-crafted adtech to extend its global reach.

AdBasis, a Chicago startup whose technology lets advertisers experiment with hundreds of variations for a single ad campaign at once, just announced that it has been acquired by Airbnb.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The startup said it will continue working on its ad testing and optimization platform as part of the Airbnb team. AdBasis will remain available to other customers, which include Angie’s List, Safeway and Tableau, until February 2018, according to a statement released by the startup. After that point, the platform will become an internal resource for Airbnb's marketing department, according to a source familiar with the deal.

AdBasis lets marketers drop Photoshop projects directly into its SaaS platform, indicating which elements of the ad they would like to run automated variations on. Variations can include anything from minor tweaks to copy or design elements to swapping out photos based on user demographics or location.

The startup's technology also tracks how different variations on a campaign perform, helping marketers stretch their advertising dollars further.

Airbnb, which is a longtime AdBasis customer and has more than 3 million individual listings across the world, will use the platform to improve its targeting and optimization efforts, the source said.

AdBasis was founded by Jason Puckett and Joseph DiVita, veterans of Chicago tech companies Social Katy and Belly, respectively. The startup launched its services in 2015.

Output: Airbnb has acquired a Chicago-based advertising start-up to boost its online marketing operation. AdBasis, which already counted Airbnb as a long-standing customer, provides brands with a system for optimising their adverts by testing hundreds of different versions at once. The company was launched in 2015 and provides services to clients including Angie's List, Safeway and Tableau, which it will continue serving until February 2018 when it will become an internal resource purely for Airbnb. Financial details of the deal have not been made public.


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Final tests begin on Tesla's Australian 'big battery'
 The world's largest lithium-ion battery being built in South Australia to store renewable energy is about to enter final testing.

State Premier Jay Weatherill has said Elon Musk's Tesla has finished installing the battery powerpacks at Jamestown, in the state's mid-north, where they are linked to an adjacent wind farm.

Weatherill said the 100-megawatt battery will now be energised and tested to ensure it meets all energy market and state government regulatory requirements, and will be up and running in time for the Southern Hemisphere's summer season.

When first announced in July, the battery came with a guarantee from Musk that it would be working within 100 days of the grid interconnection agreement being signed, or it would be free for the South Australian government.

The 100MW/129MWh battery is expected to provide backup and stability services through energy storage to the South Australian grid.

Last week, Musk unveiled the Tesla Semi, an electric truck with a range of 500 miles that is slated to be in production by 2019.

TechRepublic: Elon Musk and the cult of Tesla: How a tech startup rattled the auto industry to its core

While Tesla has yet to disclose the cost, battery size, or distribution plans for its new trucks, a number of companies have already signed up to purchase units.

In September, Musk's SpaceX venture also announced its plans for the BFR rocket, which is intended to allow for manned missions to Mars, as well as travel to any city on Earth within an hour after launch.

With AAP

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A collision between a self-driving shuttle and a human-driven truck in Las Vegas shows the inevitability of accidents, and who is more likely to be at fault, as we share the road with robots.

Output: Tesla's 100 MW energy storage project in South Australia is entering the final stages of testing. The world's largest lithium-ion battery will store energy from a wind farm at Jamestown and release it into the grid when demand is high or supply is low. Tesla CEO Elon Musk had pledged that the development would be completed free of charge to the South Australian government if it wasn't operational within 100 days of the agreement being signed.


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Irish agriculture tech firms increasing look to export market
 Enterprise Ireland, the Irish Government agency, aims to boost UK-Irish trade relations and support farmers to produce, sell and export more than ever before. Providing funding and support has allowed client companies to develop innovative solutions from the laboratory through to the farm, including a number of ‘smart farming’ solutions.

With Irish agricultural exports exceeding €44m in 2016, and several Irish companies exporting on a global scale, it is clear collaboration between the UK and Ireland will continue to be key despite current Brexit uncertainty. In particular, Enterprise Ireland expects to see a strong spike in demand for innovative technology, with a number of Irish disruptors gaining momentum in the UK market. Leaders in this space range from MagGrow, a magnetic spraying technology that helps farmers grow more by using less, to HerdWatch, the number one farm management app.

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The agricultural sector is changing rapidly and, with stats showing that food production must increase by 70% by 2050 to feed the 9.6bn people predicted to inhabit the planet[1], increasing the quantity and quality of agricultural production is paramount. One way to achieve this is through making farms more “intelligent” and more connected through ‘precision agriculture’.

Recognising the need to encourage, grow and develop the next generation of Irish agri-business companies and enable them to compete on a global scale, Enterprise Ireland supports innovative agri businesses through a series of initiatives, including:

· The Competitive Feasibililty Fund for Agri-Business – With a total fund size of up to €250,000, this fund aims to support agri-business entrepreneurs grow scalable businesses. Applications for funding are considered on a competitive basis.

· The Competitive Start Fund – Agriculture and Manufacturing - The purpose of the Competitive Start Fund is to accelerate the growth of start-up companies that have the capability to succeed in global markets. The fund is designed to enable those companies reach key commercial and technical milestones. The maximum support available is €50,000 for a 10% ordinary equity stake in the start-up company.

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· The National Ploughing Championships Innovation Arena Awards, in conjunction with Enterprise Ireland.

· In addition, there are Research & Development supports for clients in the form of funding. Enterprise Ireland also provides on-the-ground support for attending shows in-market, market experts, pathfinders and lead-generation support.

Sean Long, Senior Market Adviser at Enterprise Ireland, commented: “While unpicking the UK’s relationship with Europe is a huge task and there is a lot of uncertainty surrounding the future of UK agriculture, Ireland has historically been a first-point partner in the agricultural sector, and we hope this relationship will continue. The agricultural space is moving even faster into the digital world, and Ireland is perfectly placed to service the next generation of UK farmers.

Output: "Smart farming" systems are forming an important part of the Irish agricultural export market to the UK, which exceeded €44m ($52.3m) last year. The Irish government sees a key role for disruptive technologies in the sector, both for global export and for use on farms in the country. Examples that have made an impact on the UK market include a magnetic spraying technology called MagGrow and a farm management app called HerdWatch. The development and effective use of such technology is being encouraged with a package of government initiatives designed to support innovation and start-up agri-tech companies.


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BBVA completes export documents pilot using Wave's DLT
 BBVA, the Spanish banking group, in collaboration with Wave, a company which allows members of the supply-chain a direct exchange of documents in a decentralized environment conducted the first pilot that uses blockchain to automate the electronic submission of documents in an import-export transaction between Europe and Latin America.

Thanks to the Wave solution, which uses Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) and blockchain, BBVA was able to reduce the time required to send, verify and authorize an international trade transaction, which normally takes from seven to ten days, to just 2.5 hours.

The pilot was run on an actual sale transaction between Mexico and Spain, in which Frime, a company of Barcelona, Spain, bought more than 25 tons of frozen tuna from Pinsa Congelados, of Mazatlan, México. The payment was made using a letter of credit – the most common payment system in international trade transactions. BBVA Spain issued the letter and BBVA Bancomer processed the payment.

The large volume of documentation required by a letter of credit entails a series of different processes that in most cases involve error-prone processes such as manual checks and sending physical documents, of which can make the process last up to two weeks.

The Wave system made it possible to make changes or corrections that arose from the moment the goods were loaded until their arrival at the destination. The pilot also included the electronic signature of documents, the simultaneous distribution of copies to all parties and the reception of the ownership of the documentation at each step along the way.

Wave’s electronic submission of documents represents a huge step forward in terms of cost savings and greater efficiency, makes the entire process transparent and reduces operational risk.

This project is part of BBVA’s commitment to digitize the financial sector and make it more efficient through the use of emerging technologies like DLT and blockchain. In addition to the pilot with Wave, BBVA has also conducted others for currency conversions and international transfers.

BBVA belongs to the leading consortiums working on developing platforms and proofs of concept related to blockchain, such as R3, Hyperledger, Enterprise Ethereum Alliance and Alastria.

Output: Spanish banking group BBVA has used blockchain technology to complete an export deal between companies in Spain and Mexico. The bank used a distributed ledger technology (DLT) system developed by technology firm Wave, which enables users to verify and authorise documents automatically along the supply chain much faster and with more accuracy than by using conventional procedures. The trial operation involved a genuine sale of 25 tons of frozen tuna, and the transaction time was cut from seven to 10 days to just two and a half hours.


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Driverless buses to serve three Singaporean districts by 2022
 While driverless buses are making cameos in Las Vegas and Michigan, they're set to become a more common sight in Singapore in the near future. Following initial trials of an autonomous shuttle (fit for 80 passengers), the country plans to bring a mixture of the larger buses and smaller mini-vans to three new neighborhoods by 2022.

Singapore has been at the forefront of driverless tech for years, which fits nicely with its mission to become the world's first smart city. This year alone it launched a robo-cop car, allowed Scania to trial autonomous trucks on its roads, and gave the green light to Peugeot's driverless vehicle tests. Now, with the opening of a self-driving vehicle center, the nation is trying to lure even more manufacturers. And, according to the government, around six as-yet undisclosed firms are ready to try out their tech at its two-acre facility.

The center is also serving as the testing ground for the shuttles, before they make their way to Punggol, Tengah, and the Jurong Innovation District, where they'll run during off-peak hours. Commuters will be able to hail the buses using their smartphones.

But, Singapore already has some competition on its hands, in the form of Baidu's upcoming driverless bus trials in China, and Finland's pilot programs in Helsinki.

Output: The government of Singapore has unveiled plans to introduce driverless buses to three districts by 2022. Singapore recently opened an AV testing centre, where a number of companies are experimenting with the technology and which is being used to develop the shuttle buses. Commuters will be able to hail the buses with their smartphones.


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Drones, smartphones helping fight malaria spread in Tanzania
 The fight against malaria has been improving, but there's still lots more work to do. For one thing, anti-larval sprays are both expensive and time-consuming -- you can't always afford to spray an entire area. Thankfully, a mix of technology is making that mosquito battle more practical. Wales' Aberystwyth University and Tanzania's Zanzibar Malaria Elimination Programme have partnered on an initiative that uses drones to survey malaria hot zones and identify the water-laden areas where malaria-carrying mosquitoes are likely to breed.

An off-the-shelf drone (in this case, DJI's Phantom 3) can cover a large rice paddy in 20 minutes, and the data can be processed in the space of an afternoon. You can discover and spray trouble zones within hours, preventing outbreaks from getting started. And there are expansion plans, too. The next step is to bring the drone imagery to smartphones to both guide the spraying teams and track their progress. Instead of having only a general idea of where to go, sprayers can make a beeline for affected areas and report back when they're done.

It could be a while before drone-assisted spraying finds widespread use. There are concerns that drones may interfere with local wildlife and spark privacy concerns. The creators hope that familiarizing residents will make them more comfortable with the technology, though, and mindfulness could prevent clashes with the ecosystem. So long as that happens, it might be possible to virtually wipe out malaria in entire neighborhoods without having to spend a fortune or waste valuable hours.

Output: An initiative between Aberystwyth University in Wales and the Tanzanian Zanzibar Malaria Elimination Programme is using DJI Phantom 3 drones to survey malaria hotspots in Tanzania and identify areas were disease-carrying mosquitoes are likely to breed. The next stage of the programme will bring the imagery to smartphones to help guide eradication teams treating the affected area with anti-larval sprays.


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India approaching AI with caution as IT boom comes under threat
 When his employment was terminated, Kumar was earning close to $17,000 annually, a nice middle-class salary in India. Around the same time, Tech Mahindra announced profits for the previous financial year of $419 million, on revenue of $4.35 billion. (Tech Mahindra did not respond to a request for comment for this story.) IT services and related offerings in India record annual revenue of $154 billion and employ nearly four million people. The sector’s vigor has relied upon its ability to shave costs lower and lower—upon its ability to arbitrage the cheaply bought skills of workers like Sunil Kumar.

Bangalore is filled with IT professionals and engineers who resemble him. His curly hair is thin on top and gray at the temples; when we spoke he was wearing a faded checked Tommy Hilfiger shirt, a backpack, and a look of subdued anxiety. He grew up in a village a few hundred miles from Bangalore, where his father wove silk saris on a handloom. In 1995, when he was 15, he moved to Bangalore to study for a diploma in mechanical engineering; it was a step below a university degree, which he would gain later through a correspondence course.

Until he joined Tech Mahindra, in the summer of 2008, Kumar worked as a draftsman at an aerospace firm. The new job opened his life up the way the IT industry did for so many Indians, offering a chance to vault from a blue-collar background to a white-collar future. He got married, and the couple had a son; he took out a loan of $47,000 to buy a house, so that his parents and two brothers, who followed him to Bangalore, could stay with him. “I live a middle-class life,” he says. “I don’t want to showcase to people that I’m doing an IT job. Branded shirts, shoes—I don’t want them.”

The size and prestige of India’s IT industry are reflected in the design of Infosys campuses in Mysore (above) and Bangalore (below).

INDIAPICTURES/UIG VIA GETTY IMAGES

When Kumar lost his job, he became part of a wave of layoffs washing through the Indian IT industry—a term that includes, in its vastness, call centers, engineering services, business process outsourcing firms, and infrastructure management and software companies. The recent layoffs are part of the industry’s most significant period of churn since it began to boom two decades ago. Companies don’t necessarily attribute these layoffs directly to automation, but at the same time, they constantly identify automation as the spark for huge changes in the industry. Bots, machine learning, and algorithms that robotically execute processes are rendering old skills redundant, recasting the idea of work and making a smaller labor force seem likely.

An analysis by the business newspaper Mint reported that the top seven IT firms in India will lay off at least 56,000 employees this year. After its annual general meeting this summer, the $10 billion behemoth Infosys announced that 11,000 of its 200,000 employees had been “released” from repetitive tasks by automation and redeployed elsewhere within the company, the burden of their previous work now borne by algorithms. HfS Research, which studies the IT industry, predicted last year that automation will result in a net loss of 480,000 jobs in India by 2021. “If we sit still, there is absolutely no doubt that our jobs are going to be wiped out by AI,” Vishal Sikka said in March, when he was still the CEO of Infosys. (Sikka resigned in August.) “Sixty to 70 percent over the next 10 years—or maybe less than 10 years—of the jobs that we do today are going to be replaced by AI ... unless we continue to evolve ourselves.”

Automation could hit India particularly hard because much of its high-tech economy involves relatively routine work that is prime for computers to take over.

The fear that AI is pulverizing jobs is not unique to India, but automation could hit this country particularly hard because so much of its high-tech economy involves relatively routine work that is prime for computers to take over. In some cases, Indian IT services companies will automate the work themselves. In other cases, companies in the West will do it, so they no longer have to farm work out to humans in India.

Sunil Kumar wasn’t told, in any detail, why he was being let go; he insists that what he did at Tech Mahindra wasn’t automatable, and that he was fired as part of a drive to invigorate the bottom line. Devika Narayan, a sociologist at the University of Minnesota who is researching the subject for her doctoral thesis, thinks automation may indeed be getting too much blame for the loss of jobs like his. Companies might well be talking up automation to mask some of their own failures, or to distract from the ill effects of other factors beyond their control, she says. She points out that many IT giants are flabby and overstaffed, and that American companies are now wary, given the U.S. political climate, of sending work overseas. “The extent to which automation is being exaggerated is still unclear to me,” Narayan says. She suspects that Indian IT companies “want to leverage this automation narrative to undertake structural changes, particularly downsizing.’”

Output: The rise of automation in India is regarded as a double-edged sword, with companies benefitting from technological advances and reduced costs of artificial intelligence (AI), but human workers paying the price through unemployment, according to Samanth Subramanian. Writing for the MIT Technology Review, he said the country's two-decade old IT boom could be ended by chatbots and algorithms. While only about 25% of easily automated tasks are being carried out solely by machines in India, according to Forrester Research, Subramanian said Indian businesses are still "enthusiastically dabbling" in the sector, spelling potential doom for the IT industry.


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NASA sends E.coli into low orbit to test antibiotics in space
 NASA is sending E. coli to space for astronaut health

by Frank Tavares, Ames Research News

Moffett Field Ca (SPX) Nov 27, 2017

EcAMSat contains this experimental module, inside which the E. coli are stored. Nutrients, the antibiotic, a special dye and waste are stored in bags connected through a series of tubes to the microfluidics card - a device storing small pools of liquid containing the bacteria. Credits: NASA/Ames Research Center/Dominic Hart

Ever wonder what would happen if you got sick in space? NASA has sent bacteria samples into low-Earth orbit to help find out.

One of the agency's latest small satellite experiments is the E. coli Anti-Microbial Satellite, or EcAMSat, which will explore the genetic basis for how effectively antibiotics can combat E. coli bacteria in the low gravity of space. This CubeSat - a spacecraft the size of a shoebox built from cube-shaped units - has just been deployed from the space station, and may help us improve how we fight infections, providing safer journeys for astronauts on future voyages, and offer benefits for medicine here on Earth.

"If we find resistance is higher in microgravity, we can do something, because we'll know the gene responsible for it, and be able to design countermeasures," said A. C. Matin, principal investigator for the EcAMSat investigation at Stanford University in California. "If we are serious about the exploration of space, we need to know how human vital systems are influenced by microgravity."

Scientists believe that bacteria like E. coli may experience stress in microgravity. This stress triggers defense systems in the bacteria, making it harder for antibiotics to work against them. Bacteria on Earth do something similar by developing a natural resistance to traditional antibiotic treatments. By knowing how E. coli's resistance to antibiotics changes in space, we can also better understand bacteria on Earth, leading to more effective treatments here, too.

The E. coli strains used on EcAMSat are responsible for urinary tract infections, which can happen to astronauts in space in addition to other types of infections. With these results, scientists will learn about the ideal dosage of medicine to combat E. coli infections in space, and explore other techniques that could enhance the power of antibiotics that already exist today.

"Beyond low-Earth orbit, the compounding human health effects of microgravity and space radiation will require more knowledge about how biology reacts to the space environment," said Stevan Spremo, project manager for the mission at NASA's Ames Research Center in California's Silicon Valley.

"Lessons learned in this experiment will serve as a stepping stone for more advanced biological CubeSat missions, answering critical questions."

EcAMSat is a uniquely autonomous satellite, meaning it can conduct its experiment without any communication from Earth. After arriving at the International Space Station, crew will work with ground controllers to release the satellite into orbit, and it is programed to automatically begin its experiment. Students at Santa Clara University in California will monitor the spacecraft, handle mission operations and download data.

The spacecraft will awaken the dormant E. coli by flooding them with a nutrient-rich fluid, adjusting their containers to the temperature of the human body, and then injecting the bacterial samples with different amounts of antibiotics. Two types of E. coli will be compared: one with a naturally occurring gene that helps it resist antibiotics, the other without.

The bacteria will be mixed with a dye that changes from blue to pink. A dye that remains blue indicates most cells have died in reaction to the antibiotic. The more cells that remain viable and active in spite of the medicine, the stronger shade of pink the dye becomes. An on-board color sensor will detect these changes, and determine how strongly the two types of E. coli resist the antibiotic at different doses.

The experiment will last for 150 hours as EcAMSat orbits the Earth, and the dataset, less than a megabyte in total, will then be transmitted via radio down to Earth. After the conclusion of its mission, this little satellite will burn up in the Earth's atmosphere some 18 months later.

Keeping Astronauts Healthy Today, Searching for Life Tomorrow

EcAMSat is not only building on a legacy of reliable hardware design demonstrated on prior small satellite missions, but also maturing technology for future missions to enhance our understanding of life in our solar system. In the future, some of the same components designed for EcAMSat could live on in other missions.

"Though EcAMSat will only fly this once, many of its components may embark on a different mission: life detection in the solar system," said Tony Ricco, chief technologist for the mission at Ames. "Using sensors and the microfluidics technology from EcAMSat, NASA is developing the technology needed to look for life on moons such as Enceladus and Europa - ocean worlds covered by icy crusts."

In a package the size of a couple loaves of bread, the science from this satellite will provide health benefits for future astronauts and humans on Earth for decades to come.

Greenbelt MD (SPX) Nov 01, 2017

A diagnostic tool, similar in theory to those used by the medical profession to non-invasively image internal organs, bones, soft tissue, and blood vessels, could be equally effective at "triaging" extraterrestrial rocks and other samples before they are shipped to Earth for further analysis. In an effort designed to find creative uses of technology for future robotic and human missions to ... read more

Related Links

Output: NASA is using an autonomous satellite to conduct experiments to determine how low gravity might affect resistance to antibiotics. The project involves a small craft the size of a shoebox made up of cubes containing a strain of the bacteria E.coli responsible for urinary tract infections. Named the E.coli Anti-Microbial Satellite, it will be launched into orbit from the International Space Station and will conduct the experiments automatically over a 150-hour period before transmitting the results to scientists at Santa Clara University in California. It will then burn up in the Earth's atmosphere.


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Online lending firm WeLab plans $500m IPO
 Hong Kong-based online mobile lending start-up WeLab, backed by investors including Credit Suisse Group AG, local tycoon Li Ka-Shing and Alibaba Hong Kong Entrepreneurs Fund, is planning an initial public offering on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.

Output: Hong Kong-based online mobile lending platform WeLab is looking to an initial public offering (IPO) on the country's stock exchange to help raise $500m, according to anonymous insiders. The four-year-old start-up, which counts Alibaba Hong Kong Entrepreneurs Fund and Credit Suisse Group among its backers, analyses unstructured data in seconds to help borrowers make decisions on loans. The IPO comes at a time when China is cracking down on micro-lenders, and regulatory body the Internet Financial Risk Special Rectification Work Leadership Team Office recently asked local governments to stop issuing licences.


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Bitcoin’s mining uses more electricity than whole of Ireland
 Luke Broyles

@luke_broyles

$1 billion #Bitcoin...

Fidelity's @TimmerFidelity thinks #BTC could reach $1 billion by 2038, or 15 years from today.

This would make one sat worth $10.

Who knows if 2038 will be right... However if #Bitcoin thesis is correct there is no logical conversation rate for USD. 🤯

Output: Bitcoin’s mining network, used to prevent fraud, consumes more electricity annually than all of Ireland, according to cryptocurrency news platform, Digiconomist. The statistics, which showed Bitcoin using 30.14TWh per year, were released as the currency broke $9,000 for the first time. Such usage exceeds that of 19 European countries and means each Bitcoin transaction uses nearly 300KWh of electricity, equivalent to boiling 36,000 full kettles. One of Visa’s two US data centres, which conduct 200 million transactions daily compared to Bitcoin’s 350,000, is believed to run on 2% of the cryptocurrency's power.


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Bitcoin’s mining uses more electricity than whole of Ireland
 Bitcoin’s “mining” network uses more electricity in a year than the whole of Ireland, according to statistics released as the currency broke $9,000 for the first time.

According to Digiconomist the estimated power use of the bitcoin network, which is responsible for verifying transactions made with the cryptocurrency, is 30.14TWh a year, which exceeds that of 19 other European countries. At a continual power drain of 3.4GW, it means the network consumes five times more electricity than is produced by the largest wind farm in Europe, the London Array in the outer Thames Estuary, at 630MW.

At those levels of electricity consumption, each individual bitcoin transaction uses almost 300KWh of electricity – enough to boil around 36,000 kettles full of water. Although power consumption of other payment networks is harder to isolate, one of Visa’s two US data centres reportedly runs on about 2% of the power required by bitcoin. Between them, those two data centres conduct around 200m transactions a day; the bitcoin network handles fewer than 350,000.

The astronomical power draw is a facet of how the bitcoin network protects itself against fraud. With no centralised authority confirming transactions, bitcoin is instead backed by “miners”, who put specialised computers to work churning through extremely power-intensive computing problems. Solving those problems both rewards the miner, handing them almost a quarter of a million dollars in bitcoin, and verifies all transactions made in the last 10 minutes.

As the price of bitcoin goes up, so does the value of the reward, meaning that more miners put more computers to the task of running the network. But since the price of bitcoin doesn’t necessarily rise in step with the number of transactions, that disconnect can mean the currency uses a significant amount of power per transaction in periods of high prices.

The value of one bitcoin neared $10,000 on 27 November, as the currency continued to grow in its third significant boom in its history. Previous periods of sustained growth, in 2013 and 2014, each ended with substantial busts, leading commentators to label them, in hindsight, as speculative bubbles.

Output: Bitcoin’s mining network, used to prevent fraud, consumes more electricity annually than all of Ireland, according to cryptocurrency news platform, Digiconomist. The statistics, which showed Bitcoin using 30.14TWh per year, were released as the currency broke $9,000 for the first time. Such usage exceeds that of 19 European countries and means each Bitcoin transaction uses nearly 300KWh of electricity, equivalent to boiling 36,000 full kettles. One of Visa’s two US data centres, which conduct 200 million transactions daily compared to Bitcoin’s 350,000, is believed to run on 2% of the cryptocurrency's power.