Lifeboat Foundation

Startups around the world are racing to become the globe’s premier source of “cultured meat.”

You could say that Illumina is to DNA sequencing is what Google is to Internet search, but that would be underselling the San Diego-based biotech company. Illumina’s machines, the best and cheapest on the market, generate 90 percent of all DNA sequence data today. Illumina is, as they say, crushing it.

But as lucrative as that 90 percent slice is for Illumina now, the whole pie is likely to get even bigger in the future. Less than 0.01 percent of the world’s population has been sequenced so far. So recently, Illumina has made bold moves positioning itself for the future: The company is consolidating its core hardware business—this week, it sued an upstart competitor, Oxford Nanopore Technologies, for patent infringement—while moving into the genetic testing business with new ventures like the liquid cancer biopsy spinoff, Grail.

The company is a looking toward a future in which a lot more people gets genetic tests—and a lot more often. “Grail’s business will be very different than Illumina’s core business,” Eric Endicott, Illumina’s director of global public relations, said in an email. “We are at a tipping point in genomics, where a broad community of scientists and researchers continue to translate the potential of the genome from science to discoveries and applications.”

Continue reading “Illumina, the Google of Genetic Testing, Has Plans for World Domination” »

80 million cyber attacks per year — 400 every minute — but as many as 70 percent of them go undetected. And, these numbers are anticipated to go drastically higher now “Ransomware” is paying off for hackers.

Using the internet is a risk most businesses and individuals take for granted. But as more data is stored online, the world is becoming ever more vulnerable, the head of global internet security firm Symantec, Michael Brown, says.

China goes 5G.

China Mobile has launched its 5G Joint Innovation Center project, the company said.

The company has set a business target of reaching 1.40 million TD-LTE base stations, selling 330 million 4G devices and expanding the 4G subscriber base to over 500 million by the end of 2016.

According to Shang Bing, Chairman of China Mobile, the company has deployed 1.10 million TD-LTE base stations as of the end of 2015, covering over 1.2 billion population and has achieved 4G roaming with 114 countries and regions; China Mobile sold 300 million TD-LTE devices in 2015, indicating the addition of more than 400 TD-LTE users every minute; China Mobile´s 4G subscriber base reached 340 million, accounting for about 30% of global number. Moreover, China Mobile has completed the deployment of carrier aggregation (CA) in over 300 cities and has commercialized VoLTE services in 100 cities.

Continue reading “China Mobile readies for migration from 4G to 5G” »

A very bad and at times dangerous trend:

Hackers for hire; very lucrative new consulting business for out of work tech specialists.

As hackers switch to malware-as-a-service model to make their malicious tools and services available to general public, security firms struggle to find a way to catch the bad guys.

Continue reading “When Malware Becomes a Service, Anyone Can Be a Hacker” »

Google Fiber is heading close to home for its next location: San Francisco. Google announced this morning that it intends to bring its fast gigabit internet to “a portion of San Francisco,” specifically to apartments, condos, and affordable housing units. Details on exactly where and when are nonexistent for now, and Google suggests that we may be waiting a while to hear more.

What Google Fiber does say is that it won’t be building out its own network in San Francisco, as it’s done in many other cities. Instead, it’ll rely on existing fiber networks to provide its service. That may limit what Google can do and where it can go, but it also means a much faster path to launch. “To date, we’ve focused mostly on building fiber-optic networks from scratch,” Michael Slinger, Google Fiber’s business operations director, writes in a blog post. “Now, as Google Fiber grows, we’re looking for more ways to serve cities of different shapes and sizes.” Google Fiber is already taking this approach in a couple other markets, including Huntsville, Alabama, where earlier this week it announced plans to launch using the city’s municipal network.

As it’s done elsewhere, Google Fiber plans to provide free gigabit internet service to “some public and affordable housing properties” in San Francisco. It’s also working with a nonprofit to teach people basic internet skills, like setting up an email account and applying for jobs.

Continue reading “Google Fiber is coming to San Francisco” »

Ireland has real opportunity to benefit from increased global investment and establish itself as a world-class hub for cyber security practices, solutions and investment, according to a new report from Deloitte. Conducted in association with the International Sustainability and Investment Centre, the report found that Ireland has proven itself to be an innovative centre for technology and has the potential to become a world leader in cyber security.

Respondents to a survey for this report identified increased regulation on data privacy (73%), more sophisticated scamming and phishing (59%), and growth in identity theft (53%) as the major trends in the cyber area over the next five years. This will force businesses to change how they organise and manage their data security.

More than one third (36%) of respondents believe there will a trend towards outsourcing cyber management to third party organisations, and 27 percent think that businesses will establish global/regional centres of excellence for managing this function. The implication of this will be that a small number of locations will be preferred for basing these centres of excellence.

Continue reading “Ireland can become global cyber security hub — study” »

I wish the CA AG a lot of luck; however, her approach is very questionable when you think about downstream access and feed type scenarios. Example, Business in Boston MA has an agreement with a cloud host company in CA, and Boston also has data that it pulls in from Italy, DE, etc. plus has a service that it offers to all of users and partners in the US and Europe that is hosted in CA.

How is the CA AG going to impose a policy on Boston? It can’t; in fact the business in Boston will change providers and choose to use someone in another state that will not impact their costs and business.

BTW — I didn’t even mention the whole recent announcement from China on deploying out a fully Quantum “secured” infrastructure. If this is true; everyone is exposed and this means there is no way companies can be held accountable because US didn’t have access to the more advance Quantum infrastructure technology.

Continue reading “Calif.‘s Harris Outlines ‘Reasonable’Data Security” »

TAQNIA and KACST signed an agreement on February 21, 2016, to form a joint venture that will be responsible for developing six or more sub-meter resolution imaging satellites.

KACST will construct, integrate, and launch the satellites, and it will own 50% of the satellites’ imaging capacity inside of KACST’s communication cone, which includes Saudi Arabia and the surrounding region. And, DigitalGlobe will have rights to the other 50% of the capacity inside this region and 100% of the satellites’ capacity outside of the region.

WESTMINSTER, Colo.–(BUSINESS WIRE)– DigitalGlobe, Inc. (NYSE: DGI), the global leader in earth imagery and information about our changing planet, today announced the formation of a joint venture with TAQNIA, a firm dedicated to accelerating technology development for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, in partnership with KACST to develop a constellation of highly capable small imaging satellites to support the needs of customers around the world.

Continue reading “DigitalGlobe Partners with TAQNIA and KACST to Develop Constellation of Small Imaging Satellites” »