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Michael Jordan And Antoine Walker Were Once Down $900,000 In Spades – Landon Buford

March 23, 2021 | Author: admin

Last April, Michael Jordans love of gambling has once again become a subject of discussion after the screening of the documentary series The Last Dance in 2020.

Earlier this month, three-time All-Star Antoine Walker was a guest on the All Things Covered with Patrick Peterson and Bryant McFadden. During their chat, Walker shared some crazy stories about Jordans gambling encounters.

Including a story were they two played spades for 36 hours straight.

When Mike calls, the buy-in goes up a little higher. Its going to be a number that everybody has to bring to the table. Id say $20,000 just to get in. If you dont have $20,000 to get in, you cant even play, said Walker. Mike was competitive. I remember one time we played spades for 36 hours. We were playing against two other guys, and Mike and I were partners. They had us behind $900,000.

According to Walker it was right around the time Jordan announced that he was going to return to the Chicago Bulls following his brief stint in the minor league in baseball. In fact, Walker also shared that Jordan postponed the return press conference because they were playing spades.

Walker would later have to file for bankruptcy in 2010, according to CNN. Walker reportedly went through $108 million dollars.

I thought I was set for the rest of my life, Walker told CNNMoney. My story is sad. Its sad to see other guys work so hard throughout their life and then they just lose it in two or three years.

During his eleven year career, Walker averaged 17.5 points, 7.7 rebounds and 3.5 assists. He also won an NBA championship with the Miami Heat in 2006.

Ultracold Quantum Collisions Have Been Achieved in Space for the First Time – Scientific American

March 23, 2021 | Author: admin

Even for scientists who have dedicated their lives to understanding gravity, the forces relentless downward pull is sometimes a drag. Consider, for instance, the researchers who study Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) as precise probes of fundamental physics. BECs emerge when a dilute gas of atoms is cooled close to absolute zero and begins behaving as a single, strange chunk of quantum mattersimilar to how wriggling water molecules transform into a block of ice once they are chilled. These odd assemblages magnify otherwise hidden quantum-mechanical effects such as the wavelike nature of matter, making them visible at macroscales. Yet sometimes gravitys pernicious influence can get in the way.

Earthbound escapes from gravitys hold involve subjecting BECs to free fall, usually for short spates inside tall drop towers or airplanes flying in parabolic arcs. But the best approach is arguably to leave Earth behind, placing BECs in rockets to experience longer periods of weightless free fall in outer space. Recently, a team of physicists supported by Germanys space agency reported on doing just that. In Nature Communications this past February, they published the results of a 2017 experiment that manufactured BECs on a millimeter-sized chip in a suborbital sounding rocket almost 300 kilometers above the planets surface. The BECs then crashed together in the microgravity conditions, allowing the physicists to study the collisions in exquisite detail. Their mission, MAIUS-1, was the first to successfully collide BECs in space, and it points the way toward new space-based tests of fundamental physics.

When two BECs collide, instead of bouncing off one another like atoms usually do, they interact as waves. When their peaks line up, they form an even taller wave. If the peak of one matter wave overlaps with the trough of another, they cancel each other out, leaving behind empty space. An encounter between two misaligned condensates results in a wave-interference pattern: alternating bright stripes where the two waves enhanced each other and dark stripes where they annihilated each other. Creating and studying these patterns in matter is called atom interferometry.

Onboard the MAIUS-1 rocket, a carefully choreographed system of lasers split the ultracold atoms into multiple matter waves before letting them collide. Images captured inside the rocket, and analyzed once the spacecraft returned to Earth, showed a detailed striped interference pattern that emerged from slight differences in the shapes and positions of each BECs peaks and troughs. By studying such details, the researchers could tell whether, prior to crashing, the matter waves had been changed by interacting with light or any other forces in their surroundings.

Atoms are sensitive to all of it, says Naceur Gaaloul, a physicist at Leibniz University Hannover in Germany and co-author on the study. The stripe pattern produced by colliding BECs, Gaaloul says, is a bit like an archeological dig: it helps scientists determine the precise precrash history of the matter waves and pinpoint anything that could have moved their peaks and troughs.

Gravitys pull complicates all of this because it makes BECs fall while they move toward each other, resulting in vanishingly brief clashes and blurred interference patterns. The microgravity conditions of space remove these limitations.

According to Maike D. Lachmann, a physicist at Leibniz University Hannover and the studys lead author, escaping gravity has always been her teams motivation. The whole thing started in a collaboration, which was aiming to do experiments in a drop-tower facility, she recalls. But the long-term goal was always going to space. Dropping ultracold atoms from a nearly 150-meter-high tower bought scientists several seconds of microgravity. The MAIUS-1 rocket bumped that up to nearly six minutes.

Microgravity is just really where you want to be, says Cass Sackett, a physicist at the University of Virginia, who was not involved with the study. I expect that as time goes on, we will see atom interferometers in space that are better than anything thats been on the ground. In fact, in 2018 NASA launched an ultracold atom experiment into space. The space agencys Cold Atom Laboratory (CAL) has been cooling atoms onboard the International Space Station (ISS) ever since.

CALs ability to create quantum states in microgravity for scientists to play with captivated many physicists, including Sackett. Anita Sengupta, an aerospace engineer who served as CALs project manager during the first five years of its development and was not part of the new study, echoes this sentiment. My personal motivation behind the mission was to engineer a facility to explore the fundamental physics of the BEC, to open a new doorway into the quantum world, she says. Researchers using CAL have recently performed atom interferometry experiments similar to the work of the MAIUS-1 team as well, Sengupta adds.

Regardless of the specific space-based platform being used, one common research goal for atom interferometry is to test the fundamental principle that bodies of all compositions fall at the same rate under the influence of gravity. According to Lachmann, conducting the MAIUS-1 matter wave interference experiment multiple times using batches of elementally different atoms would test this idea to unprecedented levels of precision. In the unlikely event gravity moved one set of atoms more than the other, their two stripe patterns would be visibly different.

The extreme precision offered by atom interferometry also ushers in the small possibility that signatures of exotic forces, perhaps those associated with some models of dark energy, could be spotted through the technique.

A more immediate and practical application for devices such as the MAIUS-1 chip could emerge in celestial navigation. Because BEC interference patterns are so sensitive to even the smallest fluctuations in gravity, they can be used to map out details of gravitational fields. Similar to how maps of underwater currents help ships navigate, these gravitational-field maps could be useful for fine-tuning a spacecrafts deep-space maneuvers.

During its mission, the MAIUS-1 team already achieved several technological advances. The scientists experiment fit on a single ruggedized chip rather than being laid out on a large table like the arrangement in most terrestrial laboratoriesbecause it had to survive the rockets bumpy flight through Earths atmosphere. Also, the researchers could not communicate with the rocket after it launched, so autonomous systems cooled, manipulated and imaged the atoms. In the future, they want to equip the rocket with commonly used navigation sensors and compare those sensors performance to that of their chip.

For now, NASA and MAIUS-1 scientists are collaborating on developing upgrades for future installation on CAL onboard the ISS that will offer more options for microgravity experiments, including using atoms that have magnetic spins or that interact with one another strongly. Combining their experiences of trying to wrestle atoms away from gravitys pull, researchers hope to put fundamental physics under an even more powerful magnifying glass in outer space.

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Ultracold Quantum Collisions Have Been Achieved in Space for the First Time - Scientific American

I’m Agonizing over My Naive Realism – Scientific American

March 23, 2021 | Author: admin

Ive been squabbling about realism lately, with myself as well as with others. I dont mean realism in the colloquial sense, meaning hardheadedness, or political realism, which assumes were all selfish jerks. (Hypothesis: political realists are jerks who project their jerkiness onto everyone else.)

No, I mean realism in the hifalutin philosophical sense, which assumes that the world has an objective, physical existence, independent of us, that we can discover through science. This position is sometimes called scientific realism or, by critics, naive realism.

Philosophers will probably object to my definition, but philosophers object to any definition. Thats what philosophers do. In this column Ill present a few thoughts on realism, in the hope that they help me reach a conclusion that satisfies me, if no one else.

REALISM AND THE END OF SCIENCE

When you present the realist position to nonphilosophers, they often react with some equivalent of: Duh, what idiot doubts that there is a real world out there and that science discovers it? Actually, many people object to realism, and some are quite clever.

Antirealism can take many different forms, including postmodernism, which denies that absolute truth is attainable and brackets scientific knowledge in scare quotes; idealism, which says mind is more fundamentalmore real! than matter; and the simulation hypothesis, the idea that were living in a virtual reality, like The Matrix. Although antirealist perspectives vary, most suggest that objective, physical reality is illusory or unknowable.

Realism is a central premise of my 1996 book The End of Science. Scientists have constructed a map of nature so accurate, so true, I contend, that it is unlikely to undergo significant revisions. We have discovered, not merely imagined, features of nature such as electrons, atoms, elements, DNA, bacteria, viruses, neurons, gravity and galaxies. These things are real; they exist whether or not we believe in them, and only fools and philosophers would dare to claim otherwise. I dismiss the claim of Thomas Kuhn, a pioneer of postmodernism, that science never gets a firm grip on reality and hence is always ripe for revolution.

QUANTUM UNCERTAINTY

Then, beginning last summer, I dove into quantum mechanics. This project has thrown me for a loop, forcing me to question my commitment to realism. Quantum mechanics accounts for countless experiments, and its applications have transformed our world. Many physicists think that quantum mechanics represents the final framework for physics. No matter how his field evolves, Steven Weinberg told me in 1995, I think well be stuck with quantum mechanics.

Experts cannot agree on what quantum mechanics tells us about the nature of matter, energy, space, time and mind. Some interpretations challenge the realist assumption that reality is strictly physical. I just finished the marvelous little book Q Is for Quantum, in which physicist Terry Rudolph boils quantum mechanics down to its odd mathematical essence. Quantum mechanics, Rudolph says, makes it hard to sustain the naive realistic belief that the universe has physical properties of some form independent of my concerns.

In The End of Science, I say that particle physics rests on the firm foundation of quantum mechanics. Firm foundation? Ha! The more I ponder quantum mechanics, the more physics resembles a house of cards. Floating on a raft. On a restless sea. Physics seems wobbly, ripe for revolution, for a paradigm shift that sends science veering off in unexpected directions.

ALL NUMBERS ARE IMAGINARY

My quantum experiment has also made me suspicious of mathematical models of reality. The Schrdinger equation, for example, employs so-called imaginary numbers, multiples of the square root of 1. My efforts to understand how imaginary numbers map onto the real world have led me, perversely, in the opposite direction. Instead of imaginary numbers becoming more real, real numbers, which fall on a line extending from positive to negative infinity, are becoming less real.

If the inclusion of imaginary numbers is worrying, philosopher R.I.G. Hughes writes in The Structure and Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics (recommended by Jim Holt, one of my quantum advisors), it is worth considering the sense in which a negative number, 6 say, is realor, come to that, the sense in which 6 itself is real. Hughes cites Bertrand Russells definition of mathematics as the subject in which we never know what we are talking about, nor whether what we are saying is true.

Physicists Gerard t Hooft and Sheldon Glashow make similar points in a recent online exchange, Confusions Regarding Quantum Mechanics. t Hooft calls real numbers artificial, manmade and arbitrary, suggesting that they give us a sense of false, unwarranted precision. Glashow points out that t Hooft is not the first to question the reality of real numbers. He cites mathematician Gregory Chaitin and physicist Nicolas Gisin, who have also suggested that real number might be an oxymoron.

These remarks undercut the realist claim that mathematical theories like quantum mechanics and general relativity work because they mirror nature. Perhaps we should view the theories as calculating devices that predict experimental outcomes but have an obscure relation to reality, whatever that is.

DOES MATTER COME FROM MIND?

No wonder, then, that some scientists and philosophers have challenged scientific realism and its corollary, materialism, which decrees that reality consists of matter. Quantum theorist John Wheeler proposes that we live in a participatory universe, in which our questions and observations define reality and even bring it into existence. QBism (pronounced like the art movement) suggests that quantum mechanics represents our subjective perception of the world. And your perception isnt necessarily the same as mine.

I recently participated in an online symposium with idealist critics of materialism, including philosopher Bernardo Kastrup and psychologist Donald Hoffman, authors, respectively, of Why Materialism Is Baloney (love that title) and The Case Against Reality. These authors contend that matter stems from mind rather than vice versa. Atheists like Richard Dawkins deride Deepak Chopra, the spirituality and health mogul, for insisting that reality consists of consciousness. Wouldnt it be funny if Chopra turned out to be right and Dawkins wrong?

Mystical experiences seem to corroborate mind-centric metaphysics. Many mystics come away from their visions convinced that our everyday material world, consisting of people and other things, is illusory, and that a cosmic consciousness transcending that of any individual lies at the bottom of things. My psychedelic experiences make me sympathetic toward this idealist view. One trip left me wondering whether our reality is actually virtual, the fever dream of an insane God.

REALISM AND WHAT REALLY MATTERS

And yet. Although my realism has been wobbling lately, I remain a realist. Before I explain why, I need to make a point that is subtle, perhaps incoherent. Here goes. There is something tendentious, question-begging and contradictory about the terms real, realism and reality. When you say, This is real or This is reality, you are implicitly saying, This is what matters. Ostensibly, you are making a claim about what is objectively real, and hence true. Actually, you are making a subjective value judgment.

Take, for example, What Is Real?, a terrific book on quantum mechanics by Adam Becker. That title reflects physicists judgment that their work represents knowledge-seeking at its most profound. Many physicists still believe that one day they will discover a complete, consistent account of the physical realm, which some call a theory of everything.

The absurdity of that phrase! If physicists ever find such a theory (a big if), it will tell us nothing about death, sex, love, fear, war, justice, beauty and other deep, defining features of the human condition. These matter more, and hence are far more real, than wave functions or dark energy. Pride and Prejudice and Ulyssesworks of fiction!tell us more about our messy, painful human reality than physics ever will. (And please dont send me links on quantum social science.)

But some antirealist perspectives, including the simulation hypothesis and my own psychedelic theology, are equally absurdand even, I would argue, immoral. When they suggest that our material world is an illusion, they trivialize human suffering and injustice, and they undermine our motives for making the world a better place.

Another insidious effect of antirealismand this is especially true of postmodernismstems from its claim that scientific knowledge reflects our subjective fears, desires and biases. There is some truth to this assertion, of course. Scientists lust for fame, glory and money can corrupt them. Moreover, as I emphasize in Mind-Body Problems, we cant escape our subjectivity when we try to understand ourselves. But taken too far, postmodernism can undercut efforts to analyze and solve all-too-real problems like climate change, economic inequality, militarism and the COVID-19 pandemic.

Filmmaker Errol Morris, who studied under Kuhn in the 1970s and ended up loathing him, contends that Kuhnian-style postmodernism makes it easier for politicians and other powerful figures to lie. Philosopher Timothy Williamson makes a similar point in In defence of realism. Imagine a future, Williamson writes, where a dictator or would-be dictator, accused of spreading falsehoods, can reply: You are relying on obsolescent realist ideas of truth and falsity; realism has been discredited in philosophy.

Philosopher Michael Strevens sticks up for scientific realism in his insightful new book The Knowledge Machine: How Irrationality Created Modern Science. The radical subjectivists, Strevens notes, can explain everything about the messy human business of scientific inquiry except what matters most: the great wave of progress that followed on the Scientific Revolution. Medical progress, technological progress, and progress in understanding how it all hangs together, how everything works. Immense, undeniable, life-changing progress.

Yes, thats the same argument I made in The End of Science, and that I continue to make to my postmodern pals. So, Id like to reiterate my support for a particular kind of realism, a pragmatic, ethical realism, which acknowledges sciences power as well as its fallibility and puts mortal, troubled humanity at the center of things. Like democracy, realism is flawed, but it beats the alternatives.

Postscript: My Stevens Institute colleagues Greg Morgan and Michael Steinmann, who are philosophers, and James McClellan, a historian of science, have labored mightily (and they probably think in vain) to make my realism less naive. Thanks guys!

Six fabulous facts about the Standard Model – Symmetry magazine

March 23, 2021 | Author: admin

In ancient times, Greeks interested in forecasting the future would voyage on the seventh day of the month to the Temple of Apollo in Delphi to seek insight from the oracle. Today, we dont need to decipher the riddles of a high priestess; scientists build mathematical models that predict everything from the economy to the weather.

One particularly powerful mathematical prophet is the Standard Model of particle physics. It produces sharp predictions about the subatomic world.

The Standard Model is a collection of ideas that tells us about nature and how all the particles in the universe interact with each other, says Tulika Bose, a physics professor at the University of Wisconsin.

The Standard Model describes the behavior of the smallest building blocks we know: six types of quarks, six types of leptons, three fundamental forces (and their four associated particles), plus the Higgs boson.

Like the soothsayers of antiquity, the Standard Model speaks in riddles that only trained practitioners can interpret. But unlike Pythia of Apollo, the Standard Model is an amalgamation based on the work of thousands of independent scientists, and its predictions have weathered decades of experimental testing.

Today in Symmetry, learn six fabulous facts about one of the most robust scientific models in the world.

Illustration by Sandbox Studio, Chicago with Corinne Mucha

By the 1960s, physicists had built up quite a collection of what they considered to be fundamental particlesdiscrete pieces of matter that could not be broken down any further into constituent parts. There were so many different particles, they referred to them as the particle zoo.

But in 1964, physicists Murray Gell-Mann and George Zweig theorized that many members of the particle zoo were actually composite particles made up of even smaller pieces, which we now call quarks. The list of true fundamental particles was significantly smaller, and scientists began to see new patterns. This was the beginning of the development of the Standard Model of particle physics.

The first references to a standard model appear in papers published in the 1970s. At this stage, physicists were still using standard as an adjective, not as part of a proper noun.

If you start digging through the papers, you see in lowercase, the standard model of gauge interactions and the standard description of electroweak interactions, says Richard Ruiz, a theorist at the Institute of Nuclear Physics in Krakow, Poland.

This was the era of model-building. The ideas that worked the best were considered standardbut in the traditional sense of the word. Over time, in the 80s and 90s, slowly the S and the M got capitalized.

Illustration by Sandbox Studio, Chicago with Corinne Mucha

The Standard Model makes some basic assumptions about the universe. And it would function very differently if any of them turned out to be untrue. Here are a few of those assumptions:

Illustration by Sandbox Studio, Chicago with Corinne Mucha

The Standard Models equations currently suggest that our universe could be metastable: With an unlucky quantum occurrence, it could collapse.

But scientists think its unlikely the universe is actually in existential danger. They attribute this anxiety-provoking prediction to the data the Standard Model is working withour inexact measurements of the masses of the two heaviest known fundamental particles, the top quark and the Higgs boson.

These particle masses matter so much because the Standard Model is derived from experimental measurements.

Just as you cant use the Pythagorean theorem to figure out the length of the hypotenuse of a right triangle without knowing the length of the triangles other two sides, you cant use the Standard Model to make predictions without other inputs. By itself, the Standard Model cannot predict the mass of the various fundamental particles, nor can it predict how strongly they will interact with each other.

Because the Standard Models predictions depend on data from experiments, the predictions are not static, but constantly evolving as detectors and analytical methods improve.

And as predictions become more precise, there are hints that some of them might no longer be consistent with each other.Its a bit like a scavenger hunt where each measured value is a clue that helps lead us to the next, Ruiz says.

Illustration by Sandbox Studio, Chicago with Corinne Mucha

The Standard Model is quite a bit more complicated than the Pythagorean theorem. Whereas Pythagoras needed only two inputs to determine the length of the third side of a right triangle, the Standard Model needs values for at least 18 independent variables to predict the behaviors of subatomic particles. These inputs include factors such as the particle masses, the strength of the Higgs field, and how the various forces intersect with each other.

Its like 18 independent knobs that each have a fixed value, Bose says. They are free parameters that are not tied to each other.

The Standard Model funnels these independent values into equations that can predict how particles form, decay and bond to create all matter in the visible universe.

Illustration by Sandbox Studio, Chicago with Corinne Mucha

The Standard Model needs inputs such as the masses of particles to make predictions. But some particles, such as photons and gluons, have no mass.

An early version of the Standard Model assumed that another type of particle, the neutrino, was massless as well. But when scientists discovered that was not true, theorists needed to fit this discovery into the Standard Models equations. (And they are still working on it!)

According to Bose, the Standard Model has developed through decades of trial and error. The initial description of the Standard Model was far from complete or correct, Bose says. Our understanding has changed significantly over the years.

Physicists are hopeful that future discoveries will provide further insight into the big questions in physics that the Standard Model fails to address.

Illustration by Sandbox Studio, Chicago with Corinne Mucha

The Standard Model is a trustworthy guide when it comes to its 17 fundamental particles and three fundamental forces. But observations from astronomy and cosmology let us know that theres more to the subatomic world.

A big open question is gravity, Bose says. We dont have any way to account for gravity on subatomic scales.

Gravity, dark matter and many other phenomena are omitted from the Standard Model, and experimental results so far have only served to discredit promising ideas for ways to include them.

But Bose isnt worried. As the history of the Standard Model shows, just knowing where the questions lie is an important step. Interesting questions lead to intriguing answers, and intriguing answers lead to even more interesting questions.

Its one of the greatest theories of all timeand almost a theory of everything, Bose says. Were excited to see how new experimental results might shake things up and enable the Standard Model to keep growing and evolving.

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Six fabulous facts about the Standard Model - Symmetry magazine

Cryptocurrency: Can it be climate conscious, and if so, how? – Landscape News

March 23, 2021 | Author: admin

This article is the first in a two-part series on cryptocurrency and climate change.

Are you thinking of investing in Bitcoin? The worldslargest cryptocurrency by market caphas surged in value since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, fueled by furloughed millennials and high-profile investors like Elon Musk, co-founder of Tesla. The car manufacturer revealed in February that it hadinvested USD 1.5 billion in Bitcoin.

With investments rocketing five-fold since October, many are wondering, How do I get into Bitcoin? But, given thatclimate change is forecastedto reduce average global incomes roughly 23 percent by 2100, we should be asking a more fundamental question: What impact do cryptocurrencies have on the environment?

In this first article of our two-part series on cryptocurrency and climate change,Landscape Newswent to the experts and put Bitcoin under the microscope.

InHow Bad Are Bananas? The Carbon Footprint of Everything, professor Berners-Lee describes cryptocurrencies as one of the most fundamentally pointless ways of using energy. Its a forthright statement, but the data would seem to support Berners-Lee.

A 2019 study from twosustainability researchers at Aalborg University,Susanne Khler and Massimo Pizzol,estimated that the Bitcoin mining network in 2018 had an annual footprint of 17.29 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent.That is roughly the same asdriving from San Francisco to New York 15,000 times, or the amount of carbon hypothetically sequestered by a forest the size of Portugal.

But Khler and Pizzol were using data from 2018, when the market value of Bitcoin was a seventh of its value today. According to theCambridge Centre for Alternative Finance, Bitcoin currently uses more electricity than the entire countries of Austria and Greece combined. Since the most recent surge in market price, which began in November 2020,the energy demands of the Bitcoin network have doubled.

In order to understand why this has happened, we must first understand how cryptocurrencies work.

Fundamentally, currencies only have value because a group of people believe that they have value. The only reason that we can exchange goods and services with the tap of a credit card is because everybody trusts the system. As anthropologist David Graeber wrote inDebt: The First 5,000 Years, the value of a unit of currency is not the measure of the value of an object, but the measure of ones trust in other human beings.

With conventional currencies, that trust is backed up by a national or federal central bank, the government, the police and, ultimately, the military. As a result, most people have a lot of faith in the system and, most of the time, the system works. Bitcoin, in contrast, is backed by absolutely nothing: no central bank, no government and certainly no military. So why do so many people trust it?

The answer is blockchain technology, invented in 2008 by a still-anonymous creator called Satoshi Nakamoto. In cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, the blockchain serves as a distributed ledger, a public record of transactions that is virtually impossible to defraud. Over the years, the Bitcoin blockchain has proved itself trustworthy again and again: to the point where a company like Tesla has trusted the cryptocurrency more than the US dollar for its latest investment.

The problem for the environment is that the Bitcoin blockchain is founded on something called proof of work. In proof of work blockchains, computers around the world (called miners) compete to add new blocks of currency transactions to the ledger by solving extremely hard mathematical puzzles. The first computers to solve these puzzles are rewarded in Bitcoin. The difficulty of these puzzles also helps keep financial transactions in the blockchain secure:it is simply too expensive to defraud the network.

The problem for the environment is that the Bitcoin blockchain is founded on something called proof of work.

The issue is that Bitcoin is designed to be scarce, like gold. Satoshi Nakamoto designed Bitcoin so that one block would be added to the blockchain roughly every 10 minutes. This 10-minute rule is regulated by the difficulty of the mathematical puzzles and, as computing power has increased since 2008, the difficulty of the mining puzzles has also increased exponentially.

In January 2009, the difficulty of the puzzles was 1.0. In March 2021, the difficulty of the puzzles is 20 trillion.Because the puzzles are harder, the mining computers need to work harder, using more and more electricity. In 2018, Bitcoin miners in Kosovo drained enough power from the gridto make digital clocks all over Europe lose time.

Unfortunately, as more and more investors pile in, the price of Bitcoin is rising faster than the electricity bills of the mining companies.

I dont think you can participate [in Bitcoin] and have zero impact, says Susanne Khler, a sustainable blockchain researcher at Aalborg University. Firstly, one could attribute to your transactions the related share of the systems impacts. Secondly, using Bitcoin adds to the miners revenues and likely impacts the market price, so you are perpetuating a system that has a negative impact, whether thats you buying USD .05 Bitcoin or Elon Musk buying 1.5 billion.

You dont have to search hard to findarguments defending the vast energy use of Bitcoin, many of them extremely convincing, but the resounding message from researchers looking at its environmental impacts is to beware the true believers. Having these conversations can be extremely frustrating because there are so many people that believe in Bitcoin and dont want to look at the negative sides, says Khler.

Next well examine some of the arguments that Bitcoin believers use to defend the cryptocurrencys high energy cost.

Using survey data from May 2020, Cambridge Universitys3rd Global Cryptoasset Benchmarking Studyfound that 39 percent of global proof of work mining was powered by renewable energy. For miners based in Europe and North America, that proportion goes up to 70 percent and 66 percent respectively.

There are some Bitcoin mining operations that are projected to positively impact the world of renewable energy, but on a large scale, that is likely not the case, Khler says.

Because of low energy prices, including from renewables,around half the worlds Bitcoin mining takes place in China. However, the enormous environmental cost is already putting the industry on a collision course with President Xi Jinpings pledge to achieve carbon neutrality before 2060, and the Chinese government recently announced that allBitcoin mining operations in Inner Mongolia will be shut down by the end of Aprilbecause they were preventing the region from meeting its carbon reduction goals.

Ultimately, the question of whether the power used to mine Bitcoin is environmentally-friendly or not is somewhat irrelevant.Renewables only supply 28 percent of the worlds electricity, so the Bitcoin networks use of green energy simply means that other areas of the economy cannot decarbonize.

There have been multiple cases where Bitcoin mining facilities have displaced other electricity consumption, Khler says. So, if they use the renewable electricity, others may not have access to [renewables] anymore.

Some Bitcoin mining sites around the world are powered by stranded or curtailed energy energy that, for whatever reason, cannot be connected to the grid and would otherwise be wasted.

This argument has been used to defend Bitcoin mining in places like Sichuan, China, where, during the rainy season, hydroelectric dams generate a huge excess of power. By only using curtailed power, Bitcoin is in effect preserving surplus energy in the same way thatIceland captures its surplus renewable power by smelting aluminum.

But, according to Khler, this defense is no longer valid. Were not at the scale where that is possible any longer, she says. The Bitcoin network is increasing and cannot be covered by curtailed power alone.

There are two further arguments against the idea of using curtailed electricity, even if itwereable to cover the energy demands of Bitcoin. Firstly, as Khler says, it disincentivizes power plants from being integrated into international grids and, secondly, it also disincentivizes research and development into grid-scale batteries that could store and transport the energy off-site.

Christian Stoll,co-author of another paper that estimates the carbon footprint of Bitcoin, points out that Bitcoin is currently responsible for less than 1 percent of global carbon emissions. Although Stoll agrees that proof of work cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin are not climate conscious investments, he also suggests that there are bigger levers to meet the Paris Agreement goals.

For comparison, the entire Bitcoin network currently uses abouthalf as much power every yearas all the electronic devices that citizens of the U.S. leave plugged in when they are not using them.

The entire Bitcoin network currently uses about half as much power every year as all the electronic devices that citizens of the U.S. leave plugged in when they are not using them.

Nevertheless, because the mathematical puzzles underpinning the cryptocurrency are getting harder and harder to solve, there is no doubt that Bitcoin is environmentally harmful and getting worse,despite a 96 percent increase in mining machine efficiency over the past seven years. That puts a hole in the argument that Bitcoin mining technology might somehow reduce its impact through efficiency gains.

If proof of work is the problem, the question is: are there any greener alternatives? Finally, heres some good news.

Stephen Reid, selected as the Green Party candidate for Totnes, U.K. at the last General Election, is one of the teachers ofTools for the Regenerative Renaissance, a course that combines technology and blockchain education with climate consciousness.

Bitcoin was the very earliest instantiation of this technology, and it is incredibly energy inefficient, says Reid, who holds a masters degree in physics and another in complexity sciences. But, nevertheless, it was a stroke of absolute genius. It is changing the world as much as Einsteins 1905 papers on quantum mechanics and special relativity.

Satoshi Nakamoto pieced together three or four different concepts to produce the first decentralized form of money, in a way that no one had thought before. Bitcoin is incredibly energy inefficient and cannot be defended over the long term, but, happily, people have come up with vastly more energy efficient consensus schemes.

The most promising alternative to proof of work is called proof of stake. In proof of stake blockchains, the blocks are forged rather than mined and, instead of solving hard puzzles, the creator of the next block in the chain is chosen using a combination of randomization and how much of the cryptocurrency they hold thats the stake.

Dont worry. You dont necessarily have to understand the finer details to get the point that proof of stake is better for the environment than proof of work. If you do want to learn more,Coindesk has a great explainer.

Proof of work blockchains are designed to need computers running all day, every day. Proof of stake blockchains only need computers to run for milliseconds at a time. Because it doesnt require hard computing work, proof of stake has the potential to massively reduce the energy needed to add blocks to a cryptocurrencys blockchain.

Not using proof of work would reduce the calculated footprint to zero and the overall footprint by approximately 99 percent, Khler says.

It is worth emphasizing that the overall energy use of a proof of stake cryptocurrency is not zero: it still needs a peer-to-peer computer network to verify transactions and secure the system. The numbers that we calculated are 100 percent the mining process, Khler explains. They dont include the servers that host the blockchain nodes.

Nevertheless, proof of stake still represents a huge improvement in energy efficiency over proof of work cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. There are already proof of stake cryptocurrencies out in the world: Avalanche, Cardano and Harmony to name three of the largest but they are all small fry compared to Bitcoin. However, the worlds second largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, Ethereum, is midway through a complicated transition from proof of work to proof of stake.

According to Ethereums website, the transition to proof of stake has three phases, the first of which is already live and the third due sometime in 2022. Everybodys been waiting for Ethereums move to proof of stake for years, but its a slow, step-by-step process, says Khler.

The good news is that, should it be successful, the carbon-saving benefits of the transition will not only effect those who hold the Ethereum cryptocurrency. Ethereum is fundamentally different to Bitcoin, Khler explains. It is a cryptocurrency, but it also hosts tons and tons of applications.

Whereas Bitcoin aims to become the world currency, Ethereum aims to become the world computer: it is a blockchain that supports a programming language. In theory, anything that can be imagined and programmed can be hosted on the Ethereum network.

Applications on the Ethereum network include numerous other cryptocurrencies and financial services including venture capital and insurance, but also smart contracts, social media and even, perhaps controversially,carbon credits. To cap it all, on 11 March, British auction house Christies, founded in 1766,sold a crypto-artwork hosted on the Ethereum network for USD 69.3 million. Christies, of course, accepted payment in cryptocurrency.

If Ethereum manages to move to proof of stake, then, by association, all these projects using Ethereum will also be working with a more environmentally friendly blockchain, Khler says.

In principle, Bitcoin could do the same, Stephen Reid says of Ethereums shift to proof of stake. So why dont they?

The problem is that the majority of Bitcoins miners and stakeholders, everyone from Elon Musk to the miners of Sichuan, would have to come together and agree to change the underlying design of the blockchain. That would be an almost incredible feat of decentralized democracy.

But this question also assumes that the Bitcoin community evenwantsto move away from proof of work. The miners are not interested in moving to proof of stake, Khler says. They make tons of money with the current system and are highly invested in it, so why would they want to move to a different one?

The problem is that, when the price of Bitcoin rises, miners can use their higher revenues to reinvest in more mining machines, increasing both their profits and their overall carbon emissions. This relationship needs to be studied further, Khler says, but it seems to be a vicious cycle.

Continue reading part two of this series on cryptocurrency and climate change: Can cryptocurrencies help the planet?

Global Internet Security Market Report 2020-2024: Market is Poised to Grow by $20.41 Billion – ResearchAndMarkets.com – Business Wire

March 21, 2021 | Author: admin

DUBLIN--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The "Global Internet Security Market 2020-2024" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

The internet security market is poised to grow by $ 20.41 bn during 2020-2024, progressing at a CAGR of 10% during the forecast period.

The market is driven by the rapid adoption of BYOD policy, the growing need for secure and compliant cloud solutions and an increasing number of advanced and sophisticated threats.

The reports on the internet security market provide a holistic analysis, market size and forecast, trends, growth drivers, and challenges, as well as vendor analysis covering around 25 vendors. The report offers an up-to-date analysis regarding the current global market scenario, the latest trends and drivers, and the overall market environment. The internet security market analysis includes solution segment and geographical landscapes.

This study identifies the growing popularity of managed security service providers (MSSP) as one of the prime reasons driving the internet security market growth during the next few years. Also, increased use of security solutions in connected retail chain and growing use of single-sign-on (SSO) will lead to sizable demand in the market.

The report presents a detailed picture of the market by the way of study, synthesis, and summation of data from multiple sources by an analysis of key parameters.

The robust vendor analysis is designed to help clients improve their market position, and in line with this, this report provides a detailed analysis of several leading internet security market vendors that include AO Kaspersky Lab, Cisco Systems Inc., Fortinet Inc., Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co., Intel Corp., International Business Machines Corp., NortonLifeLock Inc., Palo Alto Networks Inc., Sophos Ltd., and Tata Consultancy Services Ltd.

Also, the internet security market analysis report includes information on upcoming trends and challenges that will influence market growth. This is to help companies strategize and leverage on all forthcoming growth opportunities.

The study was conducted using an objective combination of primary and secondary information including inputs from key participants in the industry. The report contains a comprehensive market and vendor landscape in addition to an analysis of the key vendors.

The report presents a detailed picture of the market by the way of study, synthesis, and summation of data from multiple sources by an analysis of key parameters such as profit, pricing, competition, and promotions. It presents various market facets by identifying the key industry influencers. The data presented is comprehensive, reliable, and a result of extensive research - both primary and secondary.

Key Topics Covered:

Executive Summary

Market Landscape

Market Sizing

Five Forces Analysis

Market Segmentation by Solution

Customer Landscape

Geographic Landscape

Vendor Landscape

Vendor Analysis

Appendix

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/1oa9ei

Go here to read the rest:
Global Internet Security Market Report 2020-2024: Market is Poised to Grow by $20.41 Billion - ResearchAndMarkets.com - Business Wire

Privacy vs Anonymity vs Security: Why They Don’t All Mean the Same Thing – MUO – MakeUseOf

March 21, 2021 | Author: admin

Three of the most important concepts to understand online are: privacy, anonymity, and security. But while most treat them as synonymsfor having a safe digital presence, they dont mean the same thing. And depending on your online needs, you should prioritize one over the other.

While the three often overlap, the only way to determine which one you need the most in a particular scenario is to understand what they actually mean.

You probably use technology in your day-to-day life substantially more than the average person 10 or 15 years ago. With that, comes the need to ensure everything you do online is secure. But what about privacy and anonymity?

Over the last few years, the words privacy, security, and anonymity became buzzwords that websites, apps, and tech companies in general use in promoting their products and services to gain peoples trust.

Some of them are honest and transparent in what they offer. Others prey on peoples cyber literacy and their inability to differentiate the meanings. That way, companies are safe from accusations of false advertisements while still giving users a false sense of trust.

You need to understandwhat it means when software or an app says that they secure your data or pride themselves on offering complete privacy or anonymity. This allows you to pick the right option for your needs without falling prey to the halo effect of similar words.

Privacy is the ability to keep certain data and information about yourself exclusive to you and control who and what has access to it.

Think of privacy as owning a smartphoneunencrypted and without a password. Everyone around you knows who the phone belongs to, but they dont know whats on it. If someone goes through your phone without permission, its an invasion of privacy, even if they don't use it to hurt or blackmail you.

When it comes to online privacy, its a matter of how much personal information you can keep to yourself when browsing the internet or using software on any of your devices.

Invasion of privacy, in itself, doesnt cause direct harm to you as an individual. But in 1948, the United Nations declared privacy a human right, making some types of privacy invasions illegal in some countries.

Make privacy your priority when using apps or services that have access to your personal information such as full name, email address, phone number, location, etc.

You should optimize your experience for privacy when using social media platforms and apps, messaging and emailing services, and browsers.

To be anonymous is to hide or conceal your identity, but not your actions. You can be anonymous in the physical world by covering your face and fingerprints. In the digital world, you can be anonymous by preventing online entities from collecting or storing data that could be used to identify you.

Anonymity is important for freedom of speech andparticularly for whistleblowers. That's especially true in areas of the world where having certain viewpoints and opinions could endanger your safety or put your career and future at risk.

Anonymity also often overlaps with privacy, allowing you to browse the internet without worrying about tracking logs. These record your every move and usecollected information to build a profile about you or include you in studies and statistics you didnt consent to.

Online anonymity is a case-by-case need. Generally, youd want to be anonymous anytime youre doing something you wouldn't want to be traced back to you or your online personas.

Its important when discussing sensitive topics; whether its asking for advice on online forums, expressing fringe political views, or exposing a public person or commercial entity's misconduct.

Security is a set of precautions and measures for protection against potential harm to your person and reputation, and files directly or indirectly from malicious parties. You can practice online and data security by using antivirus software, encrypting important files, and using passwords to secure accounts and devices.

We also advise using Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) on services where possible.

Security incidentscan cause direct harm to their victims. This could be a data breach that compromises passwords and other critical information, or a virus that damages your files and hardwareby turning off your devices cooling fan, for example.

Its natural to view security as the most important of the three. After all, compared to the other two, security is a need rather than a right or a preference. But more often than not, ensuring user security is used as an excuse to undermine rights to privacy and anonymity.

You need security to protect any type of information that others could use against you, such as private images and financial information. Look for services with the utmost security when dealing with password managers, antivirus, and financial services.

While privacy, anonymity, and security all mean different things, itsincreasingly difficult to separate them online.

Sometimes, having one could compromise the other, like how antivirus software keeps your files secure but doesnt always keeps them private. Other times, they work in tandem. For example, using anonymous social media accounts with fake credentials to protect your privacy.

While you should prioritize one over the other in certain situations, the trick is finding the right balance between the three, where you have a safe and free online experience without sacrificing convenience. This depends on understandingimplications your online actions have on your internet experience and real life.

The basic definitions of privacy, anonymity, and securitywon't change anytime soon. But how they're interpreted by the majority would naturallyalter the fine details of what they mean.

Its important to stay on top of the latest terminology tech companies use in promoting products and services. Thatway, youavoid falling victim to a misunderstanding and losing a valuable facet of your online experience.

How do you stay safe online? Here are 10 basic security tips to live by.

Hire and Train a Cyber Incident Response Team in Healthcare – HealthTech Magazine

March 21, 2021 | Author: admin

Although that particular attack occurred in 2016,the risks have only increased since then. To build a strong and resilient security operations team, speakers on the webinar recommended the following actions.

1. Build Clear Communication Strategies

Organizations should establish internal and external communication pathways for sharing information about potential and known breaches. Security teams need to know when to contact top administrators, as well as IT personnel, contractors and employees outside of IT.

MORE FROM HEALTHTECH: Here's how digital and omnichannel platforms modernize patient access.

For external audiences, IT security teams need clear protocols that define when and how to inform external counsel, patients and the public. As an administrative backup, these instructions should be printed on paper and distributed to key stakeholders.

2.Practice Detecting and Responding to Threats

TheCenter for Internet Securityoffers free exercises in which teams can practice responding to scenarios such as malware infections and cloud infiltrations. Running through these incident scenarios once a month can help a security team stay updated on new threats. It can also show an organization where communication and response gaps may exist.

Study those situations, work with people and develop workstreams to build a response, Shpantzer said. Who knows how to detect the threat? Who knows who to call? Who makes the business decisions?

3.Develop and Provide Resources for Your Team

MITRE, a nonprofit organization that operates federally funded R&D centers on behalf of state, local and federal governments,recommendsa review to ensure you have the optimal number of analysts needed to meet your organizations security operations center demands. It also emphasizes that opportunities and training are key for efficient and resilient teams.

DIVE DEEPER: Here's how new technologies create opportunity for healthcare providers.

For example, use creative analysts to write code that can automate security activities. Those are the staff members you want to hire and keep.

The whole idea of a CV and a skill set is not what were looking for anymore, said Vetter. Its attributes like perseverance.

Recent Developmens in Internet Security Software Market with Emerging Technologies, Business Opportunity and Industry Forecast to 2026 Jumbo News -…

March 21, 2021 | Author: admin

The latest report on Internet Security Software Market relies on a concrete research methodology focusing on both primary as well as secondary sources. The report is prepared by relying on primary sources including interviews of the company executives & representatives and accessing official documents, websites, and press releases of the private and public companies. Additionally, this report includes market analysis from several global experts and analysts who have in-depth knowledge about the Internet Security Software Market. To ensure a complete framework of the market, it also adopts several research tools such as statistical surveying for SWOT analysis, PESTLE analysis, predictive analysis, and real-time analytics.

Internet Security Software Market Report Highlights:

Avail Sample Copy of Report along with Graphs and Figures at https://www.in4research.com/sample-request/18614

Key players profiled in the Internet Security Software market include:

The depth idea of the competitors is studied by using primary and secondary research techniques which gives a clear idea about the global competition to seek the best solutions. This report gives extensive valuable data that gives a clear idea about the current scenario of the Internet Security Software market during the forecast period 2021 To 2026.

This report also provides In-depth studies of the following points.

By Product Type The Internet Security Software Market Segmented as follows:

By Application, this report listed the main Internet Security Software Market:

Geographically, the detailed analysis of consumption, revenue, Internet Security Software market share and growth rate, historic and forecast of the following regions are:

For more Customization, Connect with us at https://www.in4research.com/customization/18614

This study mainly helps understand which market segments or Region or Country they should focus on in coming years to conduct their efforts and investments to maximize growth and profitability. Internet Security Software Markets competitive landscape and consistent in-depth analysis of the major vendor/key players in the industry along with the impact of economic slowdown due to COVID are included in this report.

How will this report benefit potential stakeholders?

It offers figurative estimations for upcoming years based on recent developments and historic data. For gathering information and estimating revenue for all segments, researchers have used top-down and bottom-up approaches. Based on data collected from primary and secondary research and trusted data sources the report will help both existing and new aspirants for the Internet Security Software market to figure out and study the markets needs, market size, and competition.

In todays competitive world you need to think one step ahead to pursue your competitors, our research offers reviews about key players, major collaborations, union & acquisitions along with trending innovation and business policies to present a better understanding to drive the Internet Security Software business in the correct direction.

In conclusion, the Internet Security Software Market report is a genuine source for accessing the research data which is projected to exponentially grow your business. The report provides information such as economic scenarios, benefits, limits, trends, market growth rates, and figures. SWOT analysis and Porters Five analysis is also incorporated in the report.

Speak to Our Analyst for More Understanding about Internet Security Software Industry @ https://www.in4research.com/speak-to-analyst/18614

For More Details Contact Us:

Contact Name: Rohan

Email: [emailprotected]

Phone: +1 (407) 768-2028

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Recent Developmens in Internet Security Software Market with Emerging Technologies, Business Opportunity and Industry Forecast to 2026 Jumbo News -...

Top 5 cloud storage security issues and how to contain them – TechTarget

March 21, 2021 | Author: admin

Cloud storage security has improved significantly over the past few years, but that doesn't mean administrators can rest easy.

Cloud storage security issues are still common, exposing enterprise data to unauthorized parties. This could potentially lead to angry customers, furious business partners, costly lawsuits and other headaches.

Below are five cloud storage security risks, and tips on how to avoid them.

By far, the top cloud storage security issue is misconfiguration, said David Horne, chief technologist at business management and IT consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton, which has its headquarters in McLean, Va. Misconfigurations can result from inexperienced or uneducated engineers, overly complex resource policies or ever-changing user interfaces, he said.

Circumstances play a role, too.

"An engineer might intentionally implement an overly permissive policy while troubleshooting a new feature or addressing a production outage ... but then forget about it due to shifting priorities," Horne said.

A comprehensive cloud storage plan can minimize the risk of misconfigurations.

"First, organizations need to establish clear policies and standards that describe which services may be used, what data can be stored in them and how they should be secured," Horne said.

It's critical to ensure that data is accessed only by authorized individuals [and] that the data is accessed for legitimate reasons. Nelson FordFounder and principal solutions architect, Pilotcore Systems

Train technical staff on approved cloud storage technologies and the organizational policies and standards that govern their use. Implement controls that restrict the number and type of engineers who can modify storage configurations. In addition, apply overarching account or project policies that preclude or disable high-risk configurations.

Finally, monitor cloud storage configurations with configuration management tools and audit logs, Horne said.

A lack of data governance, particularly after teams complete a project, can lead to cloud storage security issues.

"For example, in many situations users create storage pools for a specific project and, when the project is completed, they simply release the storage back to the cloud provider," said Kenneth Waldrop, managing director at business management and IT consulting firm EY, headquartered in London. "The storage may still contain residual data that bad actors can exploit."

To prevent data leakage, encrypt data at rest with strict key management, Waldrop said. Also, enforce segregation of duties to limit data access, educate cloud users on data protection and use third-party data protection tools to complement whatever the cloud provider offers.

Unauthorized third-party access to cloud files is a well-known threat that many organizations fail to adequately address.

"It's critical to ensure that data is accessed only by authorized individuals [and] that the data is accessed for legitimate reasons," said Nelson Ford, founder and principal solutions architect at Ottawa-based AWS consulting firm Pilotcore Systems.

Establish permissions based on the principle of least privilege, restricting users only to the files they need on a regular basis, Ford said. Log all file accesses and securely encrypt the files themselves.

"Using a log analysis and monitoring tool and receiving alerts on unusual activity is essential to proactive cloud storage management," Ford said.

Cloud storage security issues can develop from conflicting and overly complex security controls that, in many instances, require a cloud security engineer to implement. Organizations can address this issue in two ways, according to Zach Powers, CISO at Benchling, a life sciences research and development cloud platform developer based in San Francisco.

"One option is to go with a cloud storage solution that requires [customers] to set up basic security controls -- such as AWS S3 buckets -- themselves," he said. Another choice is to use a cloud provider that agrees to shoulder the responsibility of data storage security.

Compliance is a growing cloud storage security concern. Global enterprises must track and adhere to rapidly evolving and multiplying privacy and retention laws, said Santha Subramoni, global head of cybersecurity solutions at IT consulting firm Tata Consultancy Services, based in Mumbai, India. Compliance mandates vary depending on how and where organizations store data.

"Planning all aspects of data when embarking on a cloud journey is a prerequisite," Subramoni said.

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Ultracold Quantum Collisions Have Been Achieved in Space for the First Time – Scientific American

I’m Agonizing over My Naive Realism – Scientific American

Six fabulous facts about the Standard Model – Symmetry magazine

Cryptocurrency: Can it be climate conscious, and if so, how? – Landscape News

Global Internet Security Market Report 2020-2024: Market is Poised to Grow by $20.41 Billion – ResearchAndMarkets.com – Business Wire

Privacy vs Anonymity vs Security: Why They Don’t All Mean the Same Thing – MUO – MakeUseOf

Hire and Train a Cyber Incident Response Team in Healthcare – HealthTech Magazine

Recent Developmens in Internet Security Software Market with Emerging Technologies, Business Opportunity and Industry Forecast to 2026 Jumbo News -…

Top 5 cloud storage security issues and how to contain them – TechTarget

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